<Begin Segment 20>

TI: When you think back... and I guess the question is: what can we learn from your experiences? It's a really powerful, and in many ways, unique story. Because not very many Niseis had your same experiences, especially at Tule Lake. And I'm trying to think, what can we learn from that? What can we take away from that?

KG: Well, I guess what I wanted to get across as far as Tule Lake is how it had changed drastically from a regular camp, and when it became a desegregation camp, when you had all these people who had come over and who were determined, (...) very bitter and angry. They were all keyed up, and they were going to go to Japan, and (felt) everybody (should) get ready (for a life in Japan). It was extremely dangerous, because if you didn't go along with them, why, they really made life difficult for you and everybody else.

TI: So I'm curious, many people who went to Tule Lake, transferred to Tule Lake, some of them renounced their citizenship.

KG: Oh, yeah.

TI: And most of them ended up not going back to Japan, but spent a lot of time getting their citizenship back. Did you ever have, come across people who went through that process?

KG: Uh-huh. I had three classmates who renounced. This one fellow, I didn't realize it, but he had a brother fighting in the Japanese war in the Pacific, and his mother was pushing him to renounce. And I don't think he wanted to, but she really pushed. And he renounced, then after the war, they found out that his brother had been killed in battle, so there was no need to go Japan. He went on to college, so he didn't have any problem. It cost them about 150 dollars to reapply to get (his) naturalization... I don't know if it was automatically...

TI: Well, for him it might have been easier because he was under twenty-one. I think they were able, if you were under twenty-one and renounced, it was much easier.

KG: Was that the age? I don't know.

TI: I think that was the age. There was a certain age, I think it was, I'm pretty sure it was twenty-one. It might have been eighteen, but I think it was...

KG: Well, he would have been, he was a high school graduate.

TI: But there was a certain age that the government determined that --

KG: Yeah, I know. I had a neighbor who had gone to Japan with his family, and he came back because he was underage when he renounced, so he was all right. But the two girls, I had one classmate, the girl, and she had an older sister. And their older brother had not renounced, and he told me that his sisters were having a difficult time. First of all, it cost them a lot of money, which they didn't have, and so that was a problem. When you apply for a job, you know, there's a line that says, "Citizenship," and that created some problems. And I had read in the paper sometime later that there was some question about what the government was, or whether they automatically accept these applications?

TI: No, for some people, they had to go through a pretty time-consuming process, so the government considered each one on an individual basis. There was, hopefully, there was a hope that a sort of class action, they would have, as a group said...

KG: Yeah, whatever happened to that?

TI: So it went on for decades, people had to apply for their citizenship and go through a process. There was a lawyer who processed thousands of them by the name of Wayne Collins who did a lot of that. So it was a really big mess.

KG: And did it ever get resolved?

TI: Well, so, yeah, for most people, yeah, they got their citizenship back.

KG: Did they? That's good.

TI: What they generally showed was that it was a coercive process, that in some ways, you've outlined. That in many people felt pressured to renounce their citizenship while they were at Tule Lake, and so it wasn't really of their own free will.

KG: Uh-huh. I wondered about that, because I knew this one classmate of mine, her brother had said that his sister was having a very difficult time. But I knew this one fellow, he got into college and went into the ministry and all that, so it didn't bother him. I'm sure he reapplied, but at least he was, he went on to school. Whereas these two girls were not college inclined, so it was a problem.

TI: Now, did you ever get into a longer conversation with people who, someone you knew at Tule Lake about what it was like? Especially those who, perhaps, renounced their citizenship, and did you ever get a sense of regret or any other kind of feelings?

KG: Well, I'm sure they regret it, those that didn't go back to Japan. The thing that intrigues me is that a lot of the Kibeis, when we were in camp, they just badgered the dickens out of us because we (spoke) English, I mean, we didn't speak Japanese. And the group that went to Japan, they were just dumped. And Japan having lost the war, they were practically starving, and there were no jobs. And these people, the jobs that they got was teaching English, and they were the ones that badgered us because we spoke English, and there they were teaching English. And I thought, boy, how ironic. [Laughs]

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2015 Densho. All Rights Reserved.