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PW: Let's switch over to your dad's side, because I know this is a complicated story. Fortunately, as we discussed, your father has already done an oral history for Densho. But let's go back to when he was growing up, you're saying in Uptown at this point? And he's got all these siblings. What happened, do you know what happened December 7th? Was the family deeply impacted by the immediacy?

PY: Yeah. So the family was always very aware of what was happening in the wider world. Like they'd been tracking the oil embargoes as Japanese aggression kind of increased through the '30s. His father, my grandfather, was kind of influential in J-Town and was one of the compradors between the Japanese American community and the larger community. And there again was kind of through the Flemings and the Episcopal church, and all the rest of that jazz. So they were, they saw this coming, they were very aware. My dad and my two uncles had enlisted in the army a year before, because my grandfather was pretty sure that this was what was going to happen, and that he wanted to make sure that the Yamazakis in particular, but the Japanese community were kind of showing their loyalty.

PW: And your father was also in college at the time, around 1941 or just finishing?

PY: He was just finishing and he was already, I think, at Marquette.

PW: So where did he go for his undergraduate?

PY: UCLA.

PW: Is that where he met your mother for the first time, do you think?

PY: Yes. So they were part of the Japanese American, she actually knew my Uncle Pete better, my dad's younger brother. Yeah, they were part of that whole pretty substantial group of Japanese Americans who were at UCLA at that time. Still feels like a family betrayal when any of our family goes to USC, for example.

PW: So when Executive Order 9066 was issued, what happens to your father's parents?

PY: Well, they start making preparations. They did as much as possible to try to stave off evacuation. I mean, that wasn't, evacuation wasn't a done deal. Nobody knew what was going to happen. Because they knew of the racism in the state and just kind of the general anti-Asian, anti-Japanese feelings just kind of, outcomes were not going to be good. So they, as much as possible, trying to prepare the community, in St Mary's parish, specifically what might happen.

PW: Because your grandfather had a whole congregation to care for. Do you know, by any chance, if it was one of those churches that provided shelter for people's storing of things?

PY: They did. And so particularly, just to jump ahead, became kind of, for the former parishioners and people, Japanese Americans in the neighborhood, just kind of a good landing spot where they could spend, if they needed to, if they didn't have housing, there was temporary housing there.

PW: It sounds like the children themselves were getting to be young adults. Your father, you said, had graduated from UCLA and was now enrolled at Marquette. Tell me about a little bit about this, and what is Marquette? What was he starting?

PY: So he was a medical student. Marquette, I believe, was one of the only very small handful of medical schools that accepted Asian Americans. And so there's a whole generation of Chinese and Japanese-descended doctors who were my dad's age, he was a hundred and five when he passed away, born 1916, who were all Marquette graduates. So a lot of the Japanese American physicians in Southern California, UCLA, Marquette, so there was that whole kind of fraternity there.

PW: Marquette is in Indiana?

PY: Wisconsin.

PW: Wisconsin. So he was not even on the West Coast when Pearl Harbor was bombed?

PY: That's correct.

PW: Interesting. So was he ever incarcerated in the camps, or did he stay...

PY: No, he was not incarcerated. He visited a couple, like he went to Rohwer a couple times where my grandparents were. Part of the congregation was in Arizona. So that whole west side community was split.

PW: So it sounds like your grandparents, though, went to Rohwer. Did they take any of their other children?

PY: Louise went to Rohwer.

PW: And how long were they incarcerated?

PY: They came out relatively early for Issei. So I think by maybe eighteen months in camp. But I'm pretty sure by the time my dad graduated from Marquette in early '44, they were out. They were in Chicago.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.