<Begin Segment 19>

TI: Okay. So just talking about any... beyond school, what are some other memories for you growing up in Watsonville?

HY: I guess went all through grammar school and high school in Watsonville. You know, initially, there was discrimination. I remember going to a barber shop once and just sitting there, and the barber wouldn't cut my hair, so I finally left. I remember in the street once, I was just third or fourth grade, I was walking down the street and I dropped something. And this woman, she looked like a grandmother, nice woman, she said, "Get out of my way, you little Jap." So there were things like that that were happening in town. But then by the time I got to high school, it seemed the whole attitude had changed. Because the movies came out.

TI: Like Go for Broke?

HY: Yeah, and Sayonara and things like that. But Japanese things became popular. It was so funny how things changed so quickly almost. I mean, the time I was in high school, I had a lot of Caucasian friends and nobody would have said anything, because I was Japanese.

TI: So this is interesting. When you think about race relationships in the United States, so Japanese during the war were the most reviled group in the U.S.

HY: Yeah, because we looked different, too.

TI: Looked different, they attacked from Japan. And you're saying, essentially, fifteen years later, or even ten to fifteen years later, things changed. How can that happen?

HY: Yeah, I don't know. It was strange to me how all of a sudden things changed so quickly. And, in fact, Japanese things, people were popular. Of course, Japanese food still wasn't available anyway. But maybe the movies, maybe the movies have changed things, attitude toward Japanese.

TI: So at what point in your life did you kind of understand better what happened to you and your family? Like what Poston was, and why your family was there. I mean, as a young child you probably didn't really appreciate or understand kind of what was going on, but at some point you're probably saying, oh, this happened to Japanese and Japanese Americans, not to everyone that had to go to these camps and do all these things. When did that awareness happen for you?

HY: I guess when we moved back to California, we didn't talk about Poston anymore. Nobody talked about Poston among my relatives or anybody. Nobody would say, "Well, remember that this happened and how unfair that was?" No, nobody said that. It was just something that happened, and shikata ga nai and just wasn't anything that we obsessed about. Now I hear stories of people who went to camp, they had these feelings, and it surprises me. I don't know if you know Saburo... he was a minister at one time, Saburo Matsuda?

TI: A minister where?

HY: In the Christian church.

TI: In Watsonville?

HY: Yeah, he was in Watsonville at one time when I was going to high school. Saburo Masada?

TI: That sounds familiar.

HY: He's on some of the documentaries that I've seen on TV, but he has become very, I guess his father's died in camp from pneumonia or something. But he has some very strong feelings. At that time, I didn't know that. But anyway, we didn't talk about camp. It wasn't anything we thought was good or bad. In fact, my father said that it was probably one of the blessings that came out of that, is that we are more integrated as a nationality than, say, the Chinese Americans, for instance. Because I remember going to Berkeley, and I met some Chinese Americans, third, fourth generation Chinese Americans who still had an accent because they lived in Chinatown. And it made the Japanese go outside of California to the rest of the U.S. People did quite well. Many of the kids did well in school, they graduated as valedictorians and things like that and they did well in sports. So it was kind of... in a sense, my father thought that that it helped to integrate the Japanese more into American society. Maybe there was a guilt from the Americans. One of the people was Earl Warren. He was responsible for the evacuation and then he becomes a Supreme Court Justice and becomes this very liberal... things just changed so dramatically.

TI: Do you recall at any time studying what happened? Like in high school, was this ever a topic?

HY: No.

TI: Or in college did you ever...

HY: No, I never studied about this.

TI: So you've never been in a class where it came up?

HY: No. I'm sure most of my Caucasian friends didn't know anything about this, except those who were there in Watsonville and had seen some of this. But they didn't mention it either.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.