<Begin Segment 16>

MN: Now, '43, the U.S. government came out with this controversial "loyalty questionnaire." Did your family have very extensive discussions on how to answer the two controversial questions?

YK: Oh, yes. Because... well, my father of course was so upset about what happened to us, plus having three brothers in the U.S. Army, not knowing what harm might come to them. And he had lost the farm and everything, and here now his whole family was in camp, so he was pretty bitter. And then my oldest brother was a Kibei, he was mainly raised in Japan, and when he came to the U.S. it was the Depression years. And then when we're finally doing good we get thrown into camp, so he wasn't too happy. But everyone said, "Well, you've got to answer "yes-yes," because one question was, "Are you willing to serve in the armed services and report for duty wherever ordered?" And the question there, which people said, "That's like asking to be drafted." And then the second question was, basically say you have supreme allegiance to the United States and would not have any allegiance to any other foreign country, or I don't know if they mentioned the emperor, but I think they did. And so there were some people who argued that, "Hey, you do that, the U.S. won't give you citizenship, never had." And so they all, the Issei still had their Japanese citizenship, they said, "You could be become stateless if you say 'yes-yes.'" So anyway, they were in a quandary. I always thought it was my father (that) made the final decision, and my sister, oldest sister thought it was the oldest brother. But then I found out later, I called them, wrote to him, I guess, he was in Japan, and he said it was actually my mother who said, "Look, I got three sons in the U.S. Army who are in harm's way, and then I may have two more, so let's declare 'no-no' and maybe then they'll be spared and also we'll keep the family together."

And so we became a "no-no" family and then we were shipped off to Tule Lake, which was a whole different ballgame because when you get there, it's an armed encampment, prison, where the front gate, you have all kind of guards and towers and you have very high security. And so, in fact the whole camp was surrounded not only by a barbed wire fence, but also beyond that was about fifty yards of no-man's land that nobody's going to go into. Then beyond that you have a ten-foot high chain-link fence with barbed wire at the top. Then you had a tower every so many feet apart with guards with their guns. And so it was a prison. Poston, we had some guards at the front, but after a while, the camp is just run by itself. There was no place you could go anyway. So Tule Lake was a whole different ballgame. It was a true concentration camp, prison-like situation.

MN: Now when you were in Poston and you became a "no-no" family, did the other Poston people treat you differently?

YK: Well, they kind of... some people said, "You're the disloyal troublemakers, you make the Japanese look bad." And, but most of the friends and relatives were more concerned, "What's going to happen to you?" Of course, we didn't know, but just a few months later, we were shipped off onto the train again in Parker, Arizona, and the long train ride to Tule Lake, which is on the northern border of California.

MN: Now I think you were only twelve years old at this time?

YK: Right.

MN: When you became a "no-no" family and you found out you had to leave Poston, how did you feel?

YK: Well, yeah, I felt bad because we had, I think we had in our block, we all became very close, we were on the same ball team, we ate together, and so we had close friends and so forth. So I felt bad that we're leaving them all. And I know my older sisters were upset because for the first time, they had some people that, of their same age who were Japanese that they could relate to and go to school with and play with. So they were not anxious to leave.

MN: So what is the process? How did your family pack to go to Tule Lake? Did you leave all the furniture that you created at Poston there?

YK: Oh, yeah. We can only take our suitcase.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.