<Begin Segment 38>

DG: Okay. What I'm getting at is that you were very loyal by this time, by the time you answered the loyalty question, but I'm thinking you maybe understood how some of the other Kibeis that created such a problem felt.

GF: [Laughs] Well, I guess they were loyal to Japan. There's no way about it, I think. I don't know. I mean, I know this one fellow named Kawai. He went to school, he went to school with my brother, same time as my brother. And I met him once and he says, "What in the heck's the matter with you, George? You can't say... you got to say no to these questions." I says, "Well, it's up to each individual. If that's how you feel, do it that way. If you feel the other way, do it the other way." But I think he was brought up in Japan when he was a little child so the way he was brought up, I think, he would feel that he... I don't know how the Issei people felt, now. I think a lot of them felt that Japan -- they're loyal to Japan. I'm quite sure. They have to be because they've been treated roughly in the United States, but a lot of the Niseis like myself -- how they felt, I really can't say. It's each individual just like I feel the way I felt and maybe some other people feel the same way. There's a lot of Kibeis in this town, but they're all living here yet. Quite a few, some went back to the old country. But how their feeling was, I really can't say. My biggest thing is that the principal told me this, that hit me all the time, "To be a good American, showing you're a good Japanese," so don't be scared. Just like when I was district governor in Lions Club, there isn't too many -- Japanese, they don't, they like to do those kind of things. What the heck, I says. I'm going to show 'em I'm a good American citizen by being a good Japanese. I mean, a good American by Japanese. That kind of thing is embedded upon me quite a bit.

DG: Well, did you think you had to prove yourself, then?

GF: You have to prove yourself that you're a good... they didn't take me in the army... but they didn't take me. That's all. I'm married, I got a kid, I don't want to go in the army. My family comes first, but still if you had to go, you had to go.

DG: But your brothers went.

GF: My brothers went, yeah. One of them. The other one has bad eyes so he was rejected. He is the one that went to the University of Illinois. And all my kids, every one of them, I says, "Go in the army. I didn't serve so go in the army." So every one of them went except my youngest one. He says, "You know, the two brothers are damn fools serving in the army." I said, "Why?" He says, "No, they're damn fools. They don't know any better." Then he volunteered. [Laughs] That made me laugh, but that's one of best things he did. So I'm proud that at least my three kids served in the United States Army. What good they did, I don't know, but they still served and I think that's a good thing.

<End Segment 38> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.