<Begin Segment 23>

SF: So this, after you spoke up, this ultimately led to your being pulled off the...

FM: Yeah.

SF: ...research project? Is that right?

FM: We, Dorothy Thomas decided that Shibutani, I and others of our research group, could no longer function effectively in the camp, and that we'd better be pulled out before we got hurt. Now, one of my colleagues on the research, in the research group, stayed on for several months thereafter, and he just decided he wanted to continue his research there. And he didn't get hurt or anything, but it was a very, you know, it was a kind of -- well, he felt he was more accepted. This guy happened to be of Kibei background himself. He felt he was well enough accepted not to be under the gun that much, and wanted to stay on, and so he did. So it was not all that critical a situation, actually, but given the circumstance, it was felt that we would not be effective as researchers, and so that we were pulled out.

SF: Were you worried about Michi? I mean they could...

FM: Oh, yeah. Well, yes I was. That she should not, you know, get involved. Although the beatings usually took place with respect to the males. And there were not all that many beatings. But the two or three, four that happened, were of male persons who were picked out and selected as object of the antago-, hostility of the rebellious group.

SF: What other violence was, occurred around this period in Tule, and were there other kinds of beatings of particular folks, beside the threatened beatings of the research group?

FM: Oh, yeah. The beatings that actually took, occurred, were not, not any of them related to our research group. One was an editor of the paper, Tule Lake paper. Very nice guy, very intelligent guy, who happened to live in a block where there were some rather violent Kibei, and they decided that they didn't like this guy's attitude, which was that, rather like mine, that, you know, you shouldn't force people to register or not register, that was their private right. And so -- and because he was somewhat of a public figure, in the sense of being editor of the Tule Lake paper, why, that, he was a kind of a leader who oughta get beaten up for expressing himself. Another guy who got beaten up was a Protestant minister. So there were instances of this kind. But, but it was not, there was not a wholesale warfare between, where the one group is against the other.

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