<Begin Segment 33>

LH: There's... this is a little aside but perhaps would you mind talking a little bit about what your father did? He passed away and you were going through his belongings and the reason I bring this up is because it points a little bit to perhaps how he dealt with the times.

MS: There was a card that all aliens had to have in their possession at all times during that period. And they had to show it if they were stopped on the streets, and it was called the loyal alien card. And it was a blue card that he carried around in his wallet, and I didn't realize how important that was to him until I found it still in his wallet. Now he had, in the meantime, become naturalized as a citizen, so he should feel that he's now a citizen. He had all those rights and he's safe. But in the back of his mind, I think he recalled that being a citizen didn't help because citizens and non-citizens were carted away to these camps. So there was his card. You can hardly read things on it, but I knew it was his loyal alien card that he kept with him. So he knew in his mind he had to become a citizen, but he also knew that he also had to have this other card. And that was very poignant to me, and I didn't realize the depth of that until I saw the card.

LH: So you are at the point where you're discussing, finally, your situation, your feelings with your children. And there was also another interesting incident that you mentioned that happened in front of your children with someone in your neighborhood.

MS: Oh, well, our neighbor -- we've had some arguments and things like that as sometimes neighbors do. And at one particular time, my kids were upstairs looking out the window and she was screaming at me and I must admit I was screaming back at her. And at one point, she then turned around and said to me -- I guess she didn't know what else to say -- she said, "They should have kept you in those camps." And then she turned around and walked away. She knew that would get me. I just, it just stopped me cold, and I went back into the house, and at that point I think the kids knew they couldn't ask me anything. They just knew that there was something really hurtful about what she had said there. And a lot of people know that that'll get to you because all of us did go to camp.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.