<Begin Segment 25>

SF: As I understand it, the WRA had this policy of discouraging people from clustering together, or hanging out together, and recreating Nihonmachis.

FM: I guess so, although I was not aware of there being such a policy as such. But, yeah, there was a kind of sentiment that it would be desirable for the Japanese American population to become more assimilated into the larger population. I think there probably was that kind of aim.

SF: Was that sentiment only from the organizations like the WRA and the larger society, or was that a sentiment among different elements among the Japanese community? Say the...

FM: No, I think it was more from the WRA point of view. As a policy matter, they probably were encouraging trying to gain acceptance into the larger population as much as possible, to avoid the type of discrimination and exclusion which actually had happened on the West Coast. But I don't recall it as a strong and distinct policy of the WRA. After all, they were drawing people into Chicago, and drawing them into New York, and... otherwise, they should have had a strict policy of sending them to Podunk, you know, wherever, rather than letting them concentrate in certain centers.

SF: So when the internees went to places like Chicago, would they immediately seek out other Nihonjins or Japanese? Or did they try to recreate the sort of community institutions that they had on the West Coast?

FM: I don't think there was so much a question of recreating the community institutions, as of finding help in finding jobs and apartment houses and the like. And in that sense, yes, there was seeking out of friends and people who would be able to help you. And as a matter of fact, we met people whom we hadn't known, seen, or heard from for a long time, suddenly turning up and greeting you as friends, simply because they were looking for someone who could, you know, give them information, help them find a place, and so on. In that sense, I think there was more clustering than had happened for some time, simply because this was the way in which one found assistance in getting jobs and getting places to live and the like.

SF: So, at that particular time, did you think that most Japanese Americans, because they had gone through this common experience, that they were more -- I don't know what you want call it -- there was a greater sense of camaraderie or obligation...

FM: Yes.

SF: ...to help people?

FM: I think there was, yes. You know, we were all in the same boat in that sense, and I think there was a sense that we had a common identity of that kind. But, there was also -- there was no sense of need to pull together as an organized body in trying to help each other out. You looked for friends and relatives and others who were of the same background, simply as a kind of -- a means, a crutch, to get over a difficult period. But it was, I don't think that there was any strong sense that this was gonna lead to, you know, permanent or long term recreation of the kind of community that we had before, anything like that. I don't think that there was that type of sentiment.

SF: So along those lines, what do you think the average person thought about what was the future of the Japanese American community? Here, they had been in Seattle's Nihonmachi, and then uprooted. And now they're in a place like Chicago. Did people think that they were going to, that that was the end of the community, now they were gonna become plain Americans out in American society, or what was going to happen to their former...?

FM: I regret to say I can't tell you what I -- I really have no clear sense of what the kind of view was. Part of it is that, during the war, given the wartime circumstance, things are so unsettled, and the world is changing so rapidly, or the world itself is unsettled, so to speak, that it was -- I don't know that people thought in terms of long term expectations so clearly. I don't have the sense that they did, and so I have no clear sense of an answer for the question you're raising.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.