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VY: Okay, and then what camp did your parents go to? At that time, your two siblings were already born.

NO: Yes. My mother's family was in Lancaster, and my father got his bags and his Model T Ford and drove to the farm, and they waited. And then they went together to Poston, which is by the Colorado River Indian tribe area, and they were there for quite a while until the "loyalty question" came out. There, he found happiness, he said, because he got a routine going. He was teaching judo by day, and night, he was not having to work so hard.

VY: Okay, so your father was teaching judo when he was in Poston?

NO: Correct.

VY: And then what happened after that?

NO: Well, he answered "no-neutral." Originally "no-no," but my grandparents, Tatsu Katsutaro and Tami Sugimoto, wanted them to stay. They begged my father to change his mind, but my father is a Kibei, person born here but raised in Japan, and as you know, judo people are very disciplined with martial arts, and he wasn't going to change his mind. So I interviewed my Auntie July to ask if she and Auntie June were there when this occurred, and she said she had already relocated to Chicago, where many Japanese people went. So they became schoolgirls over there, so my grandfather and grandmother, my mom's two brothers, were at the train station, and my father left with my mother and my two sisters for a very, very long train trip to Tule Lake.

VY: Okay, so they all left at the same time?

NO: Correct.

VY: And then what happened when they got to Tule Lake?

NO: When they got to Tule Lake it was October, and there were people coming from all different camps, the people who either didn't answer the "loyalty question" or answered "yes-no," or "no-yes," or, like my father, "no-neutral." So they were all put there, and so the people who were in Tule Lake prior, not everybody wanted to leave, so there were two types of people at the camp, and there was a problem. So one day, there was an accident, a truck accident, and someone died. And so there's a lot of history at this moment, because they wanted to have a funeral service. And because of the agitation, the man in charge, Raymond Best, decided that they couldn't do this, and so there was a negotiating committee formed to discuss this issue that they wanted to have more safety for their workers, and food was already being sold outside of the camp, because this camp had a very good agricultural area, lots of potatoes and pigs and chickens. Anyway, one time an administrator was caught on the railroad tracks because his truck full of pigs were leaving the camp instead of feeding the people. As a result, there was a meeting, and my father was attending the meeting, not in particular as a protest, but as a leader because he was the highest ranking judo man in Tule Lake and he had a responsibility to know what's going on. And as a result of him signing this sign-in sheet, he was arrested on November the 13th and taken to the Tule Lake stockade.

VY: Can you talk a little bit about what the stockade was like, what it was like for him to be in prison?

NO: Okay, well, first of all, Tule Lake was very unique. It became a military compound from four watchtowers to about twenty-eight. And so it was really under guard, and he initially was taken to what looks like an Indian tent, and this is November 13th, very cold in that region, and there was no heat. But the food was good the first day, because they didn't have a plan. The administration did not have a plan for these people who were arrested. And so as the days went on and they were wondering why they were there, what rights did they have, and so he began to write a diary, the diary of what happened each day and what he ate each day, what the men were doing, because it was all men. And one day there was nine, and at the highest point, about two hundred eleven, with three toilets, or three ways to go to the bathroom, which two were stuck. So it got to be pretty unbearable, but the men had organized themselves, and they would get coffee cans and use that and then dump it outside. They'd take turns getting coal, because eventually they had coal, and they were able to create a kind of a system of cooking and cleaning and taking care of things. But it was very cold, food was very bad, and the greatest worry was what happening to the 16,000 people still in the other side of the fence. So the fence was there, but the military created another fence. So it was pretty dark, so to speak, a bullpen, they called it.

VY: They called the stockade a bullpen?

NO: Yes.

VY: How long was your father there?

NO: He was at the stockade for a hundred days, basically three months and one day.

VY: Was he allowed to see his family at all during that time?

NO: No, but the women would come around the fence, and, of course, they were pushed back. But in the letters that I have, my mother said, "I saw you but you didn't see me, you look thin." And people would say, "Inouye-san, I think that's your wife." Because my mother was different than the other ladies. The other ladies are probably saying, "Otosan, Ojiisan," calling out. She goes, "Anata," jumping up and down. She's young, she's very young, and she's very Americanized. And so she had a real adorable way about her. He goes, "Yeah, that's my wife." He was very tall, very stoic, very thoughtful person in the sense that a person who could manage to come to America, buy a house and do what he did, and be a teacher, find ways to promote the sport he loved, because it was very helpful to the farmers in Lancaster because they were bullied, a very small population of Japanese people in the school. But once they learned how to do the different kata, they were not the aggressor, but if someone would come towards them, they would find themselves on the ground. Eventually these farmers were respected for that, but that's judo the gentle way.

VY: Talk a little bit more about that. So your father actually taught judo in Lancaster, that was before the war?

NO: Yes. So he taught judo in Lancaster, and these were his language students. And then he also taught in Poston, and he also taught in Tule Lake. And so someone said to me, "So when he came out of the stockade, what did he do?" I said, "He taught judo, he taught judo." Judo was his heart. He had gone as a young person to train as a judoist in Kumamoto, he went to see Mitsuru Toyama, who he really admired, and he was turned away many times because he was a pretty important man with a lot of guards. And some people thought of him as the "Black Dragon," and my father kept coming back at about sixteen, seventeen years old, and finally got an audience. And he asked Toyama-san for the honor of naming his dojo. So Toyama-san thought deeply, had a brush, and he wrote, "Senshin," which I have a copy of. So people come to my house, and they can't read it anymore, but they'll ask me, "What is it?" and I said, "To explain it to you, it would be like having a letter from Abraham Lincoln. It's very important, he was a very big person in Japan." So my father came with that, so he had, in his mind, a plan to bring the principles of judo, which is not only physical, but also spiritual and a way of thinking, because you're not attacking your opponent, you're sizing them up, you're looking at them. So I am a judoist, too, and many times when I face difficulty, I think about the patterns and the grace and beauty, and if necessary, take someone to the mat. Not physically, but mentally. That's where it ends.

VY: I love that. Well, it sounds like your father's reputation preceded him.

NO: Correct.

VY: It also sounds like judo was a very important part of not only his life, but his family's life and your life.

NO: Right. So I know we're talking about camp right now, but when we came back to Boyle Heights, he made a mat in the garage and he started his judo school again.

VY: Okay, so I guess back to the stockade, are there any other things that he did while he was there? You talked about how he wrote letters to your mom, talk a little bit more about those letters. Did they write letters to each other?

NO: Well, this is a young couple, aged twenty-seven and thirty-three, and he's on one side talking to people who have a lot of time. And he never liked gambling or drinking per se. Well, he did drink, I'll take that back. But he always used his time wisely. And so the question was, what did the letters say? They were basically letters of love, because he would be concerned about the children. He would tell my sister to write to her grandmother, who was my mother's mother, in Japanese to let her know they're doing okay. He didn't really want them to know he was in the stockade because they would worry. And so my sisters would write to him, so basically November, Thanksgiving came, Christmas came, my sister's birthday came, New Year's came, and the family was separated. And this is why I'm so intent about today's separation issue, with children separated from their parents. And so my sisters were sick children, they were not well like me, I'm very healthy. And so the medical conditions in camp were extremely poor, and he spoke to the FBI about that. He said, "We really, really need to look at the food and the medical services here because this is inhumane." He said, "This is America," and they were American citizens, of course. And so my father would write to her in his own way -- pardon me -- "I need geta, I need more paper, I need more pens, I need my books, Saikonton," he would read. And he would tell her to thank the neighbors because the neighbors really surrounded her making sure she was okay. So there are many stories that I know these people, they've all passed away, that they would bathe me. Three little girls, and she's all alone, and they took care of us.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.