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TI: So going back to your father, you had just touched upon this, and I wanted to get a little bit more. You mentioned that after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the community is, in particular, the JACL is trying to figure out how to respond to this, you mentioned your father was at a meeting where there was a discussion about this, and he had a different viewpoint than what others were proposing at that time. Do you recall that?

JT: You know, my father was always angry about what happened to us. He just thought it was so unjust. And the sense... apparently the sense before the war, I mean, when the war broke out, and all the confusion among the Nisei of what to do, I think there was already the sense of shikata ga nai, something is going to happen, we can't control it, and my father... I didn't know this about him, I had heard from a couple of other Nisei, who told me this about my father, not in a nice way, but that my father was adamant that we should resist, that they can't do this to us, we're Americans. The difficulty for the Kibei is they were very strong-minded. They grew up in a majority society they didn't feel second-class, they understood their place. They were, in some ways, as obsequious as the Nisei in the face of a white population. But within the community, they were tough, they were really outspoken. But when all this conversation started about, "What do we do?" The war and the rumors that were going around, and then the rumors started about an evacuation. And my father said, "No, we will not go, we have to stand up against this." And I was told by two different people that the objection was, if you don't do this -- and I suspect this was a JACL person saying this -- that there will be violence, they'll hurt us. And he said -- and this is what I found out -- he said that, "If they're going to do that, then let us stand up against the wall, let them shoot us, and I'll be one of the people standing." I heard that and I thought he was nuts, but wasn't surprised, that's how my father was. He always demanded doing the right thing for the community. My father was so tied to the community, and I grew up with that sense from him. My brothers not as much, one of them hardly. But for some reason, the osmosis that was created by his activities in the community, I picked that up very strongly, and this sense of, you grew up in the community, you have certain obligations, you take care of the community first, and you place yourself secondary to it. You're never a hero in the community, it's not allowed, it's not Japanese. You're guided partly by enryo, and you're guided by so many of the cultural values, honor and obedience, and the things that really matter, that's what guides you. So when he was at this meeting, there was apparently this one meeting that took place, which is what was reported to me by a couple of older Nisei, "Oh, your dad was a troublemaker." And that's where he said, "No, we don't go. We have to resist this and stand up against the government, it's wrong."

TI: And when did you find out about this?

JT: Oh, during the redress days.

TI: Didn't that just floor you to hear that story? I would have said, "Oh, my gosh..."

JT: Yeah, because there was a guy here in San Francisco who was Kibei at Manzanar, who used to, at meetings, when I started... with redress, I started in '75 as the Northern Cal District Redress chair. I inherited that from Mike Honda when he got too busy with his job.

TI: And you called him out at a meeting and said, "You're not doing anything."

JT: "You're sitting on your ass, Mike." I challenged him. And his in inimical way, he sort of laughed and said, "Yeah, well, that's true, but I'm also really busy with this other stuff," and basically that was what the exchange was.

TI: "Since you're complaining, why don't you do the job?" [Laughs]

JT: Yeah, "Smartass." So I grabbed at it, I said, "Sure, gladly I'll chair." And because the influence for me was Edison Uno, and I wanted to be part of this because I knew it was important for us. This was, for me, community. This was what this whole issue was about, about the community. So when I became the chair, I was doing a lot of work in the community trying to get the Nisei to understand why this was so important, and why they shouldn't resist it. Why it as important for us and the country, and that added "and the country" was what started changing that. And for me it was like testing the message.

TI: But what's interesting and this little lightbulb went on, I mean, in some ways, you were paralleling your dad's fight. Before the removal, he was saying, "We have to fight, we have to resist," and people were saying, "No, we just have to go along with it." In many ways, when you grabbed this job, you're pointing out to Niseis, "We have to fight, we have to resist," and people said, "Oh, no, we just want to go along with this."

JT: Shikata ga nai.

TI: Yeah, it was kind of like you were, again, continuing in your father's battle in some ways. Even though it was kind of interesting, because you were now part of JACL, just there's so many layers to this.

JT: Yeah. But that was part of what I think I inherited from him, is do the right thing, even though, for you personally, it may not be the comfortable thing to do. You have to step out there. And so part of what I was trying to do in the Bay Area as the district chair, was to convince people that this is something that we, it's an obligation. We have to give this to our children, it's the legacy we want to hand to them, not this sense of shame that we all lived with from 1940 to '45. And for the Sansei, we felt that same kind of shame. We never talked to hakujin friends about camp, we just would turn it off. Because we were really embarrassed and felt a lot of shame about it. But for me, it was about community always, and that's where I trust people. If they're community, I almost instinctively, inherently trust who they are because they come out of that experience. If someone steps in from outside, there is never -- I have never experienced that kind of level of trust with somebody who made, say the right words, learns how to mimic all that, but it's just bullshit. And so, for me, doing these meetings was really important to try to get just this one community here in the Bay Area to understand why this is so important. Also given the fact that the JACL, in the structure, this was the largest and the most active district. You come as Northern Cal, you can carry Southern Cal, you can convince them if for no other reason than it's competitive. Like you stick your nose up at them and say, "Well, we got our chapters supporting," so they would hustle their chapters. It was constantly that kind of thing. But for me it really felt like we had to do it here, this is where it had to start. So I would have these meetings, and there was this one Kibei guy who would get up and say, "You know your dad was a traitor?" And at first, I didn't know what to do.

TI: Because at that point, you didn't really know the story? Or you knew the story and you just didn't know how to react?

JT: I didn't know the story about the meeting before this whole thing started, the pre-evacuation meeting, and I didn't know how to deal with that. But you know, my background is, I'm a teacher, I was an educator, so you learn, as a teacher, how to do the dance. You get thrown off by certain things, you know how to deal with it. I mean, that's just experience. And so this guy would say something, and he was a Kibei, and he would invariably, every single time, he would talk about my father. So I sort of challenged it, but I found a way to cope with that and not have it disrupt what I was trying to do. He was trying to discredit me through my father. And the funny thing was -- and this jumps way ahead -- I'm in Washington doing all the redress work, and I go to the National Archives whenever I feel like I can take a break from being on the Hill, which wasn't very often. One day I thought, oh, I'm going to go over to Suitland in Maryland, where they have all the property files. I'm going through some files, and I come across this document that has "confidential" on it. I thought, "Why is this sitting in this?" And I pulled it out, this is like karma. I pulled it out, it's an informant's report where this guy says, "Our informant at Manzanar," and this description of the people he's nailing, and there's my father. Then I realized later, all these -- not all, but several of the people on that report, apparently he was following them in camp. When the riots broke out at Manzanar, all the people who got arrested were Kibei. My father was one, there was another man named Harry Ueno, and a couple of others whose names I saw on that report. So I could go to, I guess I could go to jail for having done this, but I stole it. I took it out of the files and I slipped it under my shirt and walked out with that. And I made copies, thinking, I'll make copies, I'll go back and I'll put it back, which I never did.

TI: And so where is this? Do you have this someplace in your files?

JT: Oh, I had about five copies in different places. So the next time I was back... and by now, I was the national chair. I was back in San Francisco doing a meeting, and this guy shows up with his wife, and I said, "Come on over here, I want to show you something," and I give him this report. And if a Nisei could blush and then turn a whiter shade of pale, he did. I thought he was going to have a heart attack. And I said, "You were an informant, you were inu in camp." I mean, the only thing worse you could be... well, there was nothing worse you could be. And so I said, "I'll tell you what I want you to do. Every time I have a meeting, community meeting, I want you to get up and apologize, and say that you were wrong about my father, and you had fabricated these stories." And he refused to do it, and I said, "Okay, the Nichi Bei, the PC, the Rafu Shimpo, every Japanese paper in this country is going to get a copy of this." And he just tears it up, I said, "Don't be stupid, I have a bunch of copies. That's not the only one I have." So at that meeting, he did that, he got up and apologized to me. But later he said, "You know, I can't be at every meeting." And I said, "Well, it's really interesting, because you've been at every single meeting I've spoken at, and made this claim. So I kind of figure you can figure out where I'm going to be, and I'll make sure it's announced in the local papers." And for a year, he showed up at every single meeting and made this comment.

TI: And what was the apology? What did he apologize for?

JT: He said, "You know, I said before that John's father was a troublemaker and had stirred up this problem, troubles in camp," and he said, "actually, I realized I was wrong," and that was it. And I was satisfied with that.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.