<Begin Segment 31>

DG: So let's go back. How did you get your citizenship back?

SS: My friend, Kuni Seki, who worked at the welfare department with me, somehow read somewhere I guess, or heard, and he put in his forms to get, to regain his citizenship. He came to me and he says, "Sarah, turn yours in because they're reviewing all our cases."

DG: So this was about 1949 by then?

SS: Must have been '49 because Kuni and us, we were about the first ones to get cleared. Because like lot of them went through -- who's that guy, Myers was it who... what was his name that helped lot of the renouncees in the stateside to get their citizenship back. They had the group went through that. But Kuni told me to send mine directly to the state department where he sent his.

DG: Were you excited about the possibilities?

SS: At that time I just didn't trust the U.S. government, I didn't know how it was going to be. All I knew was nowhere did I say I was disloyal. [Laughs] And so, when we got our clearance, I think it was in the fall of 1950.

DG: So did the officers and whatnot treat you as renouncees, too?

SS: No.

DG: Because they must have known.

SS: Not all of them because those were the things you were kinda' hesistant about discussing.

DG: Okay.

SS: Only among ourselves we would talk but you wouldn't go out of your way to tell people. Because even after Ken and I came to Washington when he went to UW, the Niseis around here looked down on the renouncees.

DG: Oh definitely.

SS: So how would I tell people I'm one of the renouncees who got their citizenship back, I wasn't about to... as it is, I was bitter and even if I explained to them no way did I say I was disloyal they're not going to believe because as far as those who remained here felt that everybody answered "no-no". Only after saying and then, I think it was in late '70s or early '80s when I wrote to, where was it, state department and the FBI to get our records, to show. And then I showed my kids, I said, no way do Grandpa and I say that we were disloyal. And they said, that's right. But you think the other people would believe? So, it took me a long time and then, after I got my kids I thought, you can't be bitter. But what I told them was that they have to learn to stand up for what they think is right. But don't get killed doing it because that was the foolish way. But from the time they were little we put in lot of the Japanese objects here to show them that they can still have the Japanese face but they were Americans.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.