<Begin Segment 17>

LH: Yeah, I guess that's a puzzle for me because here you are, you've been raised as a Japanese, essentially a Japanese child in a Japanese-speaking household for most of your childhood, although you are speaking English at camp and you're learning the Pledge of Allegiance and patriotism at elementary school. So where do you learn your sense of which country you sort of belong to or which culture you sort of belong to? I mean your parents, were they also thinking that after they get out of this camp, they were going back to Japan, no doubt?

MN: I think they came originally with the idea -- at least my father came originally with the idea of going back to Japan at one point in his life. I don't know about my mom. I kind of suspect that this was more or less going to be her home, probably. She didn't have much ties back in Japan, but it was not either/or. My father used to always talk about the beautiful way of the American white people. He had a lot of admiration for them. It was not necessarily, it was at a cost to Japanese. We used to hear about Japanese heroes and Japanese stories and history and our family stories and stuff like that, but it was never at a cost. When we went to school and came home with ideas, my father used to always say, "Yeah, American principles and democracy are really mighty fine. American's idea of equality is mighty fine. They don't always practice it, but it's always fine." [Laughs] He was much more into the mainstream society than my mom, and he had a, he had a profound respect for it. In fact, when he made his testimony for the commission, his very last two sentences in the commissioner's testimony is, "It takes a great country to admit its own mistakes and make proper restitution." And he says, "I know that America has this greatness." That was my father's cockeyed, optimistic thinking and that's, I think that reflects his confidence in America so unfortunately the two countries were at war, and he had to come down and state his loyalty to the emperor. That's his culture, that's how he grew up, that's his education. He didn't think there really was much of a breach between that and what we were. I didn't think so.

LH: So despite the fact that they pledged their allegiance to the emperor, because of that were they treated one way or the other in camp?

MN: I think that there were a lot of the conflicts of who was loyal to Americans and who was loyal to Japan and it became an issue. But my father's thinking was really that it's understandable. Some people would say that they are really for the Japanese government and yet the American soldiers would come home and make a visit and they'd dash over. And some people criticize that and if they were really so loyal to America, for Japan, how come they were welcoming this American soldier? I mean, those things are so silly. My father used to say, "They are silly. A son's a son. I don't care what uniform he's wearing." My father was kind of a philosopher in his own way, and he says, "No, no. There are more important things than country is your son." [Laughs] Apparently there was a lot of conflict among the adults on what were your loyalties lied and how you expressed it, to what extent that you were willing to do it. We had no sons in your our family so there was no 442, but my uncle now, my mother's brother was a 442 and he came to visit us in camp once, and I remember him wearing a uniform and I didn't know the difference. I didn't know whether... we welcomed him. He became a paraplegic. He lost his ability to walk for the rest of his life. He had just the one child and I think that people in different walks of life pay dearly. To me, the heroes are the people who tried to bring as much comfort and honor to as many people as possible and people did that in different ways. I think some people were called upon to make a bigger sacrifice, though. For me, the Japanese women are the most terribly unsung heroes.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.