<Begin Segment 23>

SY: How did Kako respond to all this?

YM: I think she didn't say much, but she really, really was... what do you use that word? Unhappy? No, not unhappy. She didn't like hakujin at that time. She just couldn't stand them. She felt they took her father away with no reason. Well, we thought no reason, and I still think they had no right to do that, but they did.

SY: She was about nine years old at the time, I remember and...

YM: Was she?

SY: You mentioned it and you said that she never cried.

YM: No, she never cried. I wish she had. I think it did affect her physically or...

SY: Emotionally?

YM: I think emotionally, yeah. I think it did effect her very much because it took her a long time to get over it because when we came back from camp and she went to school, she wrote a essay about her father being picked up, and they had no right to do that. And she was very bitter. Not bitter, but, and the teacher said the government would never do such a thing. The government would never do such a thing. If you wanted to become a citizen, he could have become a citizen and he didn't. Then he found out later that he was wrong. Asians could not become a citizen. I don't know whether it was Japanese or what, but they could not become a citizen so he stood up, and he was very kind I thought --

SY: The teacher?

YM: Yeah, teacher apologized to Kako, but Kako would never accept it because it took her a long time to get over that. And so her friends were mostly Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese, Jewish, and blacks; but never hakujin. That's funny. She shied away from hakujin for a long, long time.

SY: How about you? Did you feel the same way?

YM: I didn't care for hakujins. I felt they're a bunch of liars, but it's all in what I thought.

Yukiko M. Interview - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved. - <End Segment 23>