<Begin Segment 7>

LH: And where was he taken to?

MN: The immigration center here on Dearborn. I guess we knew that. My sister tells me that she, as being the oldest one in the family now, had to do the interpreting for my mom, and she found out where he was. And my mom insisted that my sister bring the pajamas down to my father. I don't know why it was so important to have pajamas, but she says while she was waiting to try to give pajamas, she would not let them take it and give with the promise to give it to my father. She wanted to give it to my father and she said there was a lady there next to her was saying that her husband needed medication and wanted to give his medication, and she was being refused. So that was very impressive in her mind that this lady couldn't even give medication, but they allowed my sister to finally give the pajamas to my father. As a minor triumph, I did it. Yeah, she came home, yeah...

LH: Oh, in person and your sister is how old at the time?

MN: She just turned eleven. It was on my sister's eleventh birthday. That day we were supposed to celebrate her eleventh birthday when they came and took him away.

LH: Gee, what was a surprise.

MN: Well, my father thought that they would go through some questioning and then he will be home in time for birthday cake. He really thought that if you answer the question, cooperate, he will be home in time for dinner and have birthday with the kids.

LH: And in reality what happened?

MN: Well, he wasn't reunited with the family for a couple years. Apparently we went down to the immigration office a couple times to see him. And so the story goes that one of the friendly guards teased me and slammed the bar gates closed and says, "Now you're a captive. You have to stay here," and kind of threatening me, just being funny. And apparently I ran to my father, jumped in his lap, and said, "Oh, good. I get to stay with Papa." And that's when Mama started kind of crying knowing that the innocence of kids kind of thing, I guess. And Pop remembers that story real well. He was so pleased to have me happy to be a prisoner so I could be with him. But apparently we got word that they were, he was going to be taken away from the immigration office and brought to who knows where. It turned out to be Missoula, Montana, but on that day my mom and us kids were behind the fence, and my father says he comes out and he sees us, and he doesn't ask permission to come to the fence to talk to us.

LH: Because essentially it's run like maybe a jail. Is that how is it?

MN: My sister says that she remembers these big balls on the leg irons. I don't know if that's true or not 'cause I never read anything where they put those balls on the leg irons, but she says she remembers that. It could be her imagination. But they were cuffed, apparently, and then they were supposed to board the train. And then my father turns around and sees us behind the fence -- this is my father's story when I was writing his testimony for him -- and he says it occurred to him to ask permission to go to the fence to see his family, but he doesn't. He turns around and he just starts slowly walking to the fence where his family is, and all the while he's walking there, he's kind of expecting that someone is going to stop him.

LH: A guard?

MN: Yeah. And he's waiting to be stopped and he finally walks all the way to the fence and nobody stops him, and then he looks and sees his wife and his kids and he doesn't know what to say 'cause he was concentrating completely on just being stopped and so when he gets to the fence, he looks and then he's really at loss for words. What do you say? And then he looks up and my mom's crying and then he says, "bakatare," he tells her. You know, what can you say? And then so by the time they call him and say he has to get onto the train, he's almost relieved 'cause he doesn't know what to say anyway so he just says, mumbles something like take care of your mom or something like that, and he turns around and starts walking back to the train to get on. And then he says he hears the kids calling him, "Papa. Papa." They were yelling to him and forty years later when my father is so deaf that he can't hear Japanese music anymore, he's telling me that, "Oh, Mako," he said, "I could hear my kids calling me, and I could just stop and I could hear very clearly my kids calling me." And that made me really sad 'cause he's so deaf he can't hear his music. [Laughs] And so I try to write that scene into his testimony and I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it so I left that scene out, I mean as far as how he felt at that moment, but when I got to that part of the testimony, I got choked up 'cause this was my father and how could you hear a cry from your kids forty years later, but he did. 'Cause that was the first time it occurred to him that he might never see the family again.

LH: He had no idea where he was going?

MN: No, I don't think so. And he was moved around a lot after that, he went to Missoula, Montana. Then he went to Louisiana and he went to Santa Fe, and he was finally reunited with the family in Crystal City, Texas.

LH: Well let me ask you, why do you think it was that he was arrested by the FBI?

MN: Well, he was connected with the leadership of the community. Maybe his association with my uncle who probably was a shady character. I don't know. But he was pretty well respected 'cause he had this thing going with hiring a lot of young folks to go to the cannery so I think that he was probably considered a community leader, yeah.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.