Densho Digital Archive
Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community Collection
Title: Tats Kojima Interview
Narrator: Tats Kojima
Interviewer: Debra Grindeland
Location: Bainbridge Island, Washington
Date: October 22, 2006
Densho ID: denshovh-ktats-01-0012

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DG: And can you tell me how you were treated, you said you left, I think it was Manzanar to go work, to go farming. How were you treated as a Japanese American?

TK: We went from, oh, Manzanar, to Nakashimas', see. We went to another Japanese farm and we didn't see or feel any discrimination in Pocatello. We did in Hunt, Idaho. I heard there was some kids that were gettin'... not beaten up. Never heard of anyone gettin' beaten up, but they wanted to fight, you know. So a group of us did go to Twin Falls, but they didn't even show up anyways. But other than that, I, I didn't hear too much. Except the Twin Falls, me and Hideaki was walkin' on the road and a whole bunch of 'em, about fifteen or twenty of 'em, said, you know, "You're a Jap," and all that. And Hideaki said, "Well, I'm fighting for this country, too." He was, he had his induction papers with him, so he showed 'em. He says, "Yeah, I'm, I'm ready to go in." Then they backed off. I thought we were gonna have a fight right then. [Laughs] Him and I and fifteen... that's the only time I ever confronted anybody that had anything to say bad about us.

Other than that, I don't, I don't remember. Even in Chicago, in Chicago when we went there, I think the 442 was makin' a lot of names, and it was in the paper so a lotta the kids used to come to us, "Oh, you're a Japanese American?" They used to say, "Geez, I heard the 442 did this and they did that..." So they were in the paper. And then there was, in Chicago, we were in the Polish, I think Polish neighborhood, and they were all talking. And that's one thing that I noticed right away, was you got in a Polish neighborhood or... what other neighborhood did we go into? But they talked their own language; you couldn't understand what they were, they weren't talking English, and that's all they spoke. And the society was, you know, everything was Polish or Yugoslavian, or whatever. I can't remember what else. 'Course, I didn't get into the outskirts, you know, you were in the in the inner city where... and I didn't get into the black neighborhood, either. Well, we weren't there long enough to experience all of that either. We only had one, I think, one winter and I was working during that time, so it was only on the weekends that I would experience it. So, didn't have enough time to learn all of that. But that's the one thing that I noticed right away. Like, where at Bainbridge, you know, here, you didn't have a... well, we had a Japanese community, but you didn't have -- I guess they did have a Yugoslavian, you know, society that they, you know, the fishermens were all... [coughs] But we didn't have Italians, or German society. Whereas in Chicago they did have. I think, I don't know if they had German, but I remember, yeah, little societies all over, but they all spoke their native languages. And they don't... yeah, even if I walked in there, they didn't, they know I'm Asian, but other than that, yeah, they didn't discriminate or anything. And that's the first thing I noticed. Yeah, you're not discriminated. I didn't feel it anyway, like I did when I was leaving Bainbridge and everybody says, "Oh, you're a Jap." You didn't, I never ran across that since I went to Chicago or came back to Salt Lake. But I heard it when they came back to Washington, a lotta 'em went to eat and they wouldn't serve 'em. I never had that. Of course, let's see, I came back, oh, I came back late, that's right. I was... where was I? I was in Salt Lake for quite a while. That's why, that's why. Yeah.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.