Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Ken Yoshida Interview
Narrator: Ken Yoshida
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: San Francisco, California
Date: October 17, 2007
Densho ID: denshovh-yken-01-0010

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TI: So let's talk about this. So you were the first one to say no. What happened? I mean, how did the, what did they do next?

KY: Well, the FBI man and a sheriff came down and looked for me. And I was at the, you know, front door, and they asked who I was, and then says, "Oh, your name? Okay, we came to pick you up." I said, "Fine, let me go in and get my toothbrush, I'll go." So they came in, and it was windy that day and dusty. They came in, went inside, I got my stuff and I says, "Okay, let's go." I get in the car, and the FBI man tells me, he says, "With this wind blowing like this," and in the building itself, too, he said, "I wouldn't go in the service." I said, "Oh, I have no problem with this man." So I got on the bus and had no problem with him.

TI: Oh, so when the FBI man was saying, when he looked at the conditions that you were being held under, he was essentially saying he wouldn't have gone.

KY: He says, "I wouldn't have gone."

TI: Because he said based on how you were being treated...

KY: That's right.

TI: ...that he would have done a similar thing.

KY: So, you know, I felt, oh, real good, I had no problem. And I had no problem going to county jail or nothing. That man really took care of us; he didn't treat us rough or nothing. A lot of these other camps, the fellows got treated pretty bad, but I got, we were treated well. Oh, and the day that I got picked up, there was another fellow got picked up right after I did. And he was from the same block that I lived in, and I didn't know he wasn't going.

TI: Before you left, did you have an opportunity to talk to your mother about leaving? Did she say anything to you?

KY: No. They didn't know nothing. They know I wasn't gonna go, that's all they know. What else is gonna happen, they didn't know. All they know is when they came to pick me up, they were home, and they saw me, and I wouldn't go in the service, so they picked me up. And that's a normal thing that happened, I guess in camp days, there was nothing you can do about it anyway. You're in a concentration camp.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.