<Begin Segment 22>

SF: Were there meetings where people had forums to discuss the way people should vote on the registration?

FM: Yes, absolutely. As you know, in the centers, the centers were organized into blocks, and there were block meetings all over the center, almost every night, or every other night or so, over the issue of what we should do on this question. Now, the Kibei became the forerunners, the leaders of the anti-registration movement at Tule Lake. And this is clearly demonstrated statistically, in that, in so far as you are able to separate out the Kibei from the non-KibeiNisei, you can see that those who registered "no-no" are very much more predictably Kibei background than those who were Nisei, non-Kibei. And the Kibei, then, are most opposed to the registration at Tule Lake. The Issei are kind of in-between the two. Nisei, Issei, and Kibei separated out fairly clearly. The Kibei reaction was that, "We should not register at all, because registration puts the Kibei-Nisei, or people who want to resist the administration, uh, registration, into a very difficult position. So if we refuse to register, then they cannot charge us with having been disloyal. They cannot charge us with having agreed to enter the army," or doing anything positive of this kind, which they suspected was simply a ruse to get people out of the centers. And therefore, the argument was, "Let's not register."

At one meeting that I recall, in our block of block residents, the issue came up of whether the residents of the block -- and this proposal was going all around the seventy blocks or so in the center -- of total resistance, refusal to register, resistance against the registration program totally. Which was led by a Kibei resolution -- that everybody should refuse to register. That is, they were circulating a petition from the Kibei organization, which the Kibei wanted everybody to sign, refusing to register, and refusing until certain demands were satisfied, such as, "We are allowed to go back to our homes in California," something like that. Now, I, that was the one occasion in which I, which I left my research stance and got involved in the meeting, because I felt that that was not something I would agree to. I felt that registration should be an individual matter, that individual persons might be made to listen to arguments, pro or con, but they should not be forced to sign a petition that would prevent them from, you know, doing what they felt they should individually do with respect to the issue of registration. So I spoke up against that, and I recall hearing a Kibei behind me saying, "Let's bag this guy and throw him in the ditch, and beat him up." You know, this kind of thing. So there was a lot heated sentiment, all around, and some people did get beaten up as a consequence of expressing their feelings one way or the other on the registration.

SF: You mentioned that had immediate consequences for you, that night in the, in your barracks.

FM: Oh, yeah. Much more dramatic than in my case, although our case was dramatic enough. Because of this kind of expression, this kind of, remark that I heard, and mother and sister, who were sitting behind me, also heard, they got concerned that some guy might come, come and pull me out of the house and beat me, or something like this. And so, my mother came over later in the night, around midnight or so, with a hot, pan of hot water in one hand, and a long hairpin type of thing in her other hand, and knocked on our door. [Laughs] We thought that, here it was, you know, somebody knocking on our door. But it was my mother who had come, fearing that, you know, some people might attack us and she was concerned about that. And so she had come to see what, what our situation was.

My friends had an even more dramatic situation. He was on the farm crew, as one of our research members, and he lived in a block, where as it happened, the police decided they would go and single out one single block where the resistance was greatest, and arrest those people who had refused to cooperate with the registration. And this was Block 42 in our camp. And they went -- and this is one of the blocks where, I think, the people came from Clarksburg or Florin, or one of those Sacramento farming communities. Anyway, there was wholesale resistance in the block, against the idea of registration. So the police moved in, that is, the evacuee police and the military moved in, encircled the block, and arrested some thirty-odd guys who had refused to register. And that was, you know, the thing that aggravated the registration about as much as anything. The registration issue, as much as anything.

Now, my friend lived in this block, and he was afraid that everybody was, had picked him out as an inu in the block and that they were gonna come after him. And he had brought home from his, the job at the farm, one of these long sugar cane, beet, knives for topping the beets. And he said he brought it up his pants so that he -- he was a little stiff-legged walking, but [Laughs] he could bring it home without being observed! [Laughs] And he had a hammer, and his wife had a hammer, and they boarded up, or put braces against their door, and so on, in anticipation of an attack. And it was, the sentiment was so heated, that one -- you know, this is a very sane guy, ordinarily, and a very courageous guy, but he was sure that something was gonna happen, and he was not gonna simply let himself get beaten up. Anyway, this was the type of feeling that was around the center.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.