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BN: Now, of course, in '40, early '43, there was one of the central episodes of many families' camp life, was the "loyalty questionnaire" episode. Was that an issue in your family at all that you knew of?

AM: No, I wasn't. I think my father must have decided very early, maybe like when he went back to Japan to bring a wife, that he wanted to live in the United States and he wanted his kids to be as American as they could be. So like he, like when Fumi and Nails were in Belmont High School, Nails was an Ephebian, which was one of the honor societies. And Fumi was a valedictorian, and so they really geared us. And they were those old fashioned, respectful of authority kind of people. So it was not an issue in our family. It was like, for my father's best friend, he had two sons, and he didn't want the sons to have to fight his relatives in Japan, so they did "no-no" and they were part of the group that went to trial in Cheyenne. One of my aunts' brothers also was one of the, what some people call "draft dodgers," and so we knew people who were. But I don't know, I feel this way, maybe I got it from my parents, I think those were decisions that were impossible to make. And it was really what the government was doing to us. It wasn't that the people who made one decision or another was bad, or disloyal or traitors or whatever. I think everybody was struggling to do whatever they could. So you had this division, and fortunately, because you probably know, it did break up families, it did break up friendships, it made for really bad feelings in the camp. But I'm glad, like my father and his best friend never stopped being best friends.

BN: You had mentioned earlier that after your two older siblings had gotten to Park, that they would send letters and postcards and so on to you. Talk a bit about that?

AM: Well, I really enjoyed their being away, because they would go to St. Louis and send me wonderful books, picture books, just other books that we had no access to. And because they were in college and they were, I think my sister was a literature major, they were in touch with things that I could never have gotten out of the Sears and Roebuck thing because I didn't have enough knowledge. So I looked forward to presents from them. And Park College was one of these typical small liberal arts colleges, and it had ivy-covered buildings and such. And so I've been associated with small colleges and I'm sure that had some influence on me. It also, I had this funny story when I was maybe about eleven or twelve, and I wanted to run away from home because my mother was scolding me so much, I must be a really bad girl. So I decided that, one night, I decided that I really needed to run away from home, but I was already dressed in my pajamas and robe and filled with my mother's scolding me, so I decided I would sleep in the car and the garage the first night, and then next day I would go to St. Louis. Because somehow, for me, St. Louis got associated with these very positive feelings. [Laughs] So I went to the car, and my one brother, Shogo, who was home then, found me there and took me into his room and let me sleep in his bed while he did his... I never got to St. Louis until I went to a convention as a social worker years later.

BN: Did it live up to your expectations? You don't have to answer that.

AM: [Laughs] It was different.

BN: You had mentioned also that eventually, both brothers ended up serving in the MIS.

AM: Yes, they did.

BN: How did your parents feel about that?

AM: They were delighted, because by then the war had ended, and Shogo ended up being an interpreter for MacArthur in the trials. And Nails spent the first part of his service in the Philippines interviewing where people who'd been arrested, Japanese soldiers who had been arrested. But both of them got to spend time in Tokyo, and they were able to look up relatives and reassure them what was happening to us and go and visit them. And they were, of course, very poor, so they would take them their c-rations when they would go and visit. And then the relatives would save the c-rations for their next visit to give to them to serve to them. My favorite cousin in Japan, I went to Japan when I was four with my mother, when her mother died. And my favorite cousin remembers the best thing that ever happened to him during the war was the Christmas party that my brothers took him to. He got presents and candy and Santa Claus was there and he just thought that was wonderful. So my brothers being able to be there was nice, it worked out well.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.