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BY: So back to your folks, what can you tell us about their removals and what they left behind, and how distressing it was for them?

TI: I think it was pretty typical. They got rid of almost everything that they could. They left things in trunks at places like... I'm trying to think. So my mom's side, they were with the Catholic church, Maryknoll, so I think they were able to store things with them as they left. But they had to, they were renting, so they just had to leave their homes and do that. So there wasn't much... yeah, so they just got rid of things. And I think, on my mom's side, this was part of Japanese American history, her oldest sister, Hiroko, was the personal secretary to Jimmy Sakamoto. And Jimmy Sakamoto is an interesting figure in history. He was one of the founders of the Japanese American Citizens League, and this was a national Japanese American organization that was formed in the 1930s, and it was made up of... and they were very pro-American. They didn't allow immigrants to join, so you had to be a U.S. citizen, and their focus was to really show Japanese Americans as these really patriotic Americans. And Jimmy Sakamoto was, in Seattle, one of the leaders of this. The JACL took a stance of cooperating with the government when the war started, so Jimmy Sakamoto was part of that. And my mom's oldest sister worked closely with Jimmy Sakamoto. So as you asked that question, so I realized that the family was able to, I think, get help from the JACL in terms of storing some things, too, through my mom's older sister and her connections, because she was able to stay in Seattle a little bit longer than other Japanese Americans to help in the removal process.

But in Japanese American history, especially during this time, this was a very divisive issue that, in particular, the immigrants, my grandfather's generation, were critical of, or some of them were critical of the JACL, thinking that they were collaborating too closely with the government, and that they were, in fact, maybe informing on different people when they shouldn't have been. So there was a lot of friction going on that not only happened in Seattle, but then went into the camps. Because of Jimmy Sakamoto and the strength of the JACL locally, the administration at Puyallup had this group, these Niseis, these U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry, actually do a lot of the administration at the Puyallup camp. And that caused incredible friction to the point where the leadership of that group, rather than going with the rest of them to Minidoka, Idaho, were actually sent to different camps because it was so tense in terms of some of these things.

BY: Yeah, I guess I hadn't realized that. It seems like it's pitting one generation against the other. I hadn't thought about the JACL mission in that way.

TI: Yeah, when you think about -- they met and they decided the best stance was to cooperate as much as possible to show the United States that we were, Japanese Americans were loyal, and so there wasn't... and they actually suppressed resistance against the government. So when, locally, when Gordon Hirabayashi decided to challenge, that was not with the support or blessing of the JACL. In fact, they didn't want those things to happen.

BY: Just excluding their own parents from membership seems tricky to me.

TI: Yeah. So it was... and so these are, going back to my father, when he said, "You don't want to get these stories," because he knew that these tensions were all there. And so there are people who, the JACL, we have people in our interviews calling, well, the nickname for them are the "Jackals," and that they were, or inu, which is "dog" in Japanese, that they were traitors to the community. And some believe to the point where, if they had taken a much stronger stance, that perhaps the removal wouldn't have happened. So there's all these tensions that were happening during this time period.

And later on, I talked about my family, my mom's brother who volunteered and fought in the 442, there was incredible tension in terms of men who believed strongly that they're under duress, they're being incarcerated, if they said, "Let our families and community free and we will fight for this country, but by what the government has done to us, we're resisters of conscience." And when they did that, it caused incredible friction in the family, and it even exists today, these divisions that happened. Because on the one side, the JACL felt, well, these resisters, by doing so, they're jeopardizing the whole community by taking this stance, that it's going to make it harder for the community by doing this. That by the actions of the 442 and our showing of patriotism, we will eventually have to go back into the community, having that as our story will make it much better. Whereas the resisters are saying, "No, we're Americans, we have to stand up for our rights. That's the best thing for our community, for us as individuals, and the country." So that was their stance, and it really became a very divisive thing.

BY: And your family embodies that in some ways. I'm trying to remember, your father-in-law's reason for resisting, I just read about it and it's escaped me.

TI: Yeah, so my wife's father, Frank Yamasaki -- and he's one of the reasons why I decided to actually start Densho. Because when I was dating my wife, now thirty-seven years ago, I remember just sitting down with him at the kitchen table. And I had read about the draft resisters, but this was the first opportunity where I was just sitting across from him over a couple bottles of wine, and he just opened up and told me what happened. And I just remember thinking, oh my gosh, I didn't know this. And it's so important for me to hear this, because I remember when I was in high school, and this was after the Vietnam War, the messiness, and I was very anti-war, having a conversation with my dad, who was a World War II vet, he eventually was drafted and joined the army. And I said, "So, Dad, why didn't you do that? Why didn't you resist?" And he got pretty upset with me. And I remember... and his stance was, "You really don't understand, you don't really know what it was like back then and what we had to deal with." And so I knew that story, so when I met my father-in-law and he talked about it, and just sensing to his core that what was happening to the community was wrong, that no one did anything wrong, and then to come into the camps and draft them to fight. At a time when the sense, the rumors, and actuality, it's probably true, the 442 was almost viewed as a suicide mission, that the casualties were so high that they were being viewed as, people thought, as cannon fodder. That they were always given the worst possible tasks to do, and they took heavy casualties, and that was intentional, and that was a way. So these men are saying, "This is just ridiculous, so we have to stand up for our rights." So all this was going on, so I heard this, and remembering, unless we captured these stories, and really sort of these less-told stories, they're going to be lost.

BY: And have your father and father-in-law talked about their differences at the time?

TI: Yeah, we do at family parties, and I will bring it up. I mean, my dad... so he joined the army right at the end of the war, because he was a little bit younger. My father was a really good athlete, and so oftentimes, before the war, he would be on these sports teams where he would be on teams where his teammates were two, three, four, five years older, and he played baseball, basketball, football. And so he kind of hung out with these older boys, generally. And he told me -- and this goes back to why he didn't want me to do the project -- this group, in particular, they're called the OTs, which was this group, and they thought they were pretty hot stuff. But he said of the fourteen, seven of them ended up going, joining the army, and seven of them either resisted or ended up going to Tule Lake. And so there were two distinct camps, and before the war, they were the closest group that he said you could ever imagine. And he watched that decision, having these men make decisions, just split them to a point where, after the war, they wouldn't even talk with each other, and that if they knew someone was going to be at an event, they would avoid it. And he said that it was the saddest thing, that he would watch this, and he had friends in both and so he would often try to get them together, but he said it was impossible. And so he saw the divisiveness, so he could share that with Frank, and Frank could talk about his, so I think there was some discussion and understanding about that.

BY: And what did OT stand for?

TI: Okay, I asked my dad...

BY: Because he's kind of evasive about that, I think.

TI: So the OT stands for "Odorless Turds," because they said they thought they were so good that their, essentially, their shit doesn't stink. And so that was their...

BY: Because I think euphemistically he says it's "Old Timers" or something like that.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2020 Densho. All Rights Reserved.