<Begin Segment 16>

LH: Well, let me ask you, because they had Japanese school at Crystal City, but then, of course, they have regular elementary school. And in hindsight, you think about maybe reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Is there any irony to you in that?

MN: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, I tell audiences quite often now that I learned to pledge allegiance to the American flag while I was behind the barb wire fences of the American concentration camp. And I do really wonder, did the teachers of that time, were they aware of the irony of those statements "with liberty and justice for all" to me? I learned those words when I was in camp. Were they aware? I don't really know. I guess I'll never know if they just taught it rote or if they were aware of it or not. I know that some of the teachers were known to be kind, nice people. I have no idea whether they were aware of the political situation at the time when they were teaching us. I guess I'll never know, but after I became a teacher and became a principal and I used to go from classroom to classroom and do the morning exercise, "I pledge allegiance to the American flag," it always strikes me as a little bit ironic that here I am learning, I learned it in camp. I'm teaching it to kids, and I think we have to teach more than just rote memory of ideal words. We got to give people what that means to lose that privilege and lose that freedom, what we need to do to live up to those beautiful words. I think so. I don't know. I have no idea if the teachers were aware of it or not. I've always been curious about that, but I do share that with teachers quite often because I think teachers should understand that we got to do more than teach words, man. We got to teach the spirituality of American democracy and fair play.

LH: When did you first start to feel like an American? Was it at these grade schools at Crystal City?

MN: At first it was a defensive thing. People used to come when I was kid right out of camp saying, "Are you Japanese or Chinese?" That was a more polite thing. Sometimes it was not so polite, and I knew that if I say Chinese, I would get away okay, and if I said Japanese, it was a wrong answer. And you get tired of being wrong and then you learn how to say, "I'm American." So you say, "I'm American," with that tone. It's not acceptable. People say, "That's not what I mean." I don't know what they meant. It was just the mood of the times. And so when I first said I'm American, it was kind of a belligerent way of getting out of saying, having to admit that you were Japanese.

LH: Was there something wrong attached with being Japanese?

MN: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I don't know what, but it was wrong, yeah. And meanwhile at home your parents are telling you proud to be Japanese so you are getting kind of conflicts, confusing, kind of...

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.