Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Nancy Shimotsu Interview
Narrator: Nancy Shimotsu
Interviewer: Sharon Yamato
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: February 7, 2012
Densho ID: denshovh-snancy-01-0028

<Begin Segment 28>

SY: So do you remember during camp when they gave, everybody had to sign that "loyalty oath"? You know, the questionnaire, the "loyalty questionnaire"?

NS: Oh, yeah, yeah.

SY: Do you remember that coming up and you having to fill it out?

NS: Uh-huh. I think I did, but gee, it's been so long ago I kind of forgot what I wrote. [Laughs]

SY: So it wasn't, like, controversial.

NS: No, no.

SY: Everybody just filled it out and turned it in?

NS: Filled it out. We didn't turn anything back because we're in America. We want to stay in America. We didn't want, anything about America. That's why my brother told me not to do any kind of word that you don't want America. Because otherwise they'll send you someplace else, so my brother told me not to, my oldest brother.

SY: And how about your parents? Your father, he was fine with that?

NS: Yeah, oh, yeah. They wanted to stay. They didn't want to go to Japan. Good thing. Good thing that we didn't go, you know why? My brother-in-law went, he starved. When he went to Japan, they wouldn't give him food. Japan was so poor, and then the parents told him, "Nani shinikita ka," that means, "What did you come out here for? Why didn't you stay in America?" And he was so sad. He just came back to America right away.

SY: So he was able to come back?

NS: Yeah.

SY: So he didn't get --

NS: He was American citizen.

SY: He just chose to go to Japan.

NS: Yeah, because he was a Kibei, like. He was sort of raised in Japan for a while. Not all the time, 'cause he was in America most of the time, but he was raised as a Japanese, so that's why.

SY: So he wanted to but then he changed his mind and came back?

NS: So he wanted to come back. He knows American life. In Japan, they didn't have anything to eat.

SY: And so your parents...

NS: It's a good thing, it's a good thing that he himself went and my sister didn't go. He was married to my sister, and she had a little girl, and she was a baby yet at that time. That's why she didn't go, because she wanted to wait to see how he was gonna be. I told her, when I went to camp, I came back from Chicago, I went to her camp right away, not to go, because she was gonna go to Japan and I want her not to go. So that's why I came to see her in camp and I told her, "No, you're not going to Japan." Because Japan is so bad, they can't even find food to eat. And sure enough, she finally got a letter from her husband, and my sister sent the money for him to come back.

SY: So you kind of were in charge of your younger brothers and sisters.

NS: Yeah, oh, yeah.

SY: You kind of told them what to do.

NS: Because I knew what's going on. I was outside.

SY: And your sister, your younger sister was with her husband in another camp?

NS: Yeah. Don't you remember, Tule Lake? That's where all going to Japan, you don't remember?

SY: I do.

NS: Uh-huh. Well, okay. They were there.

SY: So he chose, and that's why he ended up in Japan.

NS: That's right, and he suffered. So he wrote to my sister he wants to come back to America.

SY: So they left from Gila River to go to Tule Lake, and then he went to Japan.

NS: Uh-huh. Well, he's a Kibei, he was a Kibei and he thought he could, he could get away with living in Japan or something, I guess. But when he went to Japan, it was just this... oh, it was so bad that he wanted to come home the next day.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.