<Begin Segment 36>

DG: Okay. What I'm trying to distinguish is because you had been indoctrinated pretty heavily in Japan and all your brothers, too, but what changed you to be so loyal by the time you had the loyalty question?

GF: Well, this is what, as I say, my principles. That still came to my mind. You have to be a good American citizen to be a good Japanese, so why not be a good American? That's showing that you are a good Japanese. That's what probably hit my mind all the time so I didn't say "no-no."

DG: But then, but you were pretty disappointed that they treated you so...

GF: Yeah. Well, that's something. We were, as a Japanese, as a "Jap," we were treated roughly in the United States. I'm glad everything has changed now.

DG: But maybe some of the resources you could tell... you were saying that United States was stronger, you could tell.

GF: Oh, yes. Uh-huh. United States was. Japan has no resource unless they take Manchuria or some other country where they can get the things. Where can you... Japan has nothing, just island. They don't have any place where they can get gunpowder, or whatever it is, their resource, iron. They don't have no resources, so that's the reason why. You can't figure how they could have won the war, but still in their mind, in Japanese people, I guess, they say Tennoheika, probably. I don't know what it is.

DG: Well, your parents were wanting to stay here and loyal to America, too.

GF: Yeah, that's right. I don't know how they felt, but they never... my father and mother, they were always thinking about going to Japan -- I think every Issei people thought that way -- since their children have grown up here, they have no desire to go back to Japan anymore.

<End Segment 36> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.