<Begin Segment 19>

LH: But could you explain a little about -- there's a saying about the Issei men...

MS: They were, they were the heads of families, and then they found themselves not the heads of families anymore. I think that was very difficult for them to accept. So there were times when there were tension and they were fighting. All the things that occur when the leadership is being challenged in one's family. That's too bad because what it did was the self-confidence, the feeling of pride in being the head of a family, when that is taken away from you, we found some Isseis that weren't quite ever able to get back that same feeling of what it is to be the head of one's family. I felt sorry about that. You'd see some of the older gentlemen kind of sitting there. They would pick up and do things like play go or hana or whittle or make things.

LH: I've heard that, that referred to as, jokingly, as a forced retirement placed upon these Issei men.

MS: Yeah.

LH: But what do you, what's your view on that?

MS: I kind of think, I know people like to joke and say, "Well, I had more free time on my hands so I like that," and everything. But I really think if they were to be given a choice as to whether to go to camp and get that forced retirement or stay out of camp and have their freedom and have their leadership and their sense of pride and self-confidence, I'm sure they would never have said that. But I think it's a matter of, for self... what is it? It's a denial which then lets you, allows you to survive a situation and just laugh it off and say, hmmm. It's like when you get hit doing something foolish, you say, "Oh, it didn't hurt me anyway." Well, it did hurt, and you could see it in some of the ways they were not able to ever regain a sense of who they were. And that was kind of a sad situation. But as a youngster, I just noticed that there seemed to be older gentlemen that were sitting around doing not what I considered as... but they were just having games or having fun.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.