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TI: Well now I'm curious, thinking back on what you said, this conflict with the other Kibeis at Moab and Leupp, do you have any sense of what they were arguing about? I wonder if it was around this issue in some ways, in terms of, how should we respond to the U.S.?

JT: I haven't seen anything that describes the issues they were fighting about, but I do know that they felt that he wasn't cooperating with them. Part of it, I think, was that they were intent on creating trouble, and he just, that wasn't the kind of person he was. Regardless of anything else about him, I think about him being in that situation where if they said, "Well, let's go raise hell," he wouldn't do that. That's not who he was. He was kind of like a nerd in a way where he just, "Let me read my book," that was kind of how he was.

TI: And the reason, as I'm doing this interview, there is a depth to him that is really interesting given his background, and I think his education probably made a difference in terms of how he looked at this.

JT: Yeah. And he is his father's son.

TI: And as we're finding, you're your father's son also.

JT: Yeah.

TI: So just some clarification, at some point, you said your father was reunited with the family, was this back at Manzanar?

JT: Yeah, he was the only one among those arrested and sent away to be allowed to come back to Manzanar, and it was because, at the behest of these directors at Leupp and Moab and Topaz, they're the ones who arranged that.

TI: And so it's interesting in terms of that, again, reading between the lines, the group, minus your father, ended up going to Tule Lake, which was sort of designated, in many ways, in the administration's mind, kind of as a more pro-Japan segregation camp.

JT: Yeah.

TI: And these directors, who, perhaps, had more knowledge about what was going on, kept trying to get him back to Manzanar with the family. And so that is kind of telling in some ways, also.

JT: Yeah, and quite honestly, he wouldn't have fit at Tule. He'd have gotten into a lot of trouble, not from the administrators or the soldiers, but from the other Kibei. He was so unlike them in so many ways. But he was a true Kibei, he grew up in Japan and came back really understanding what it means to be Japanese, and trying to figure out, "What is the American side of me?" and always fought to maintain that. And so we were brought up always, always understanding that we had a place in this country, this was our country, and we had to fight for it. So as I look back on all these things that happened in my family, it all makes sense in a lot of ways. But he's certainly a pivotal figure in all of it for us, for me, certainly.

TI: And then after Manzanar, they returned to Los Angeles?

JT: Yeah.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.