<Begin Segment 10>

CO: Do you remember the registration period in Minidoka?

SS: Oh yes, yes. Well, in my case, I was all set to go to, go to Tule Lake. And those questions that they asked me were such that I would have had, in effect, to renounce my allegiance to Japan. I had only Japanese citizenship. If I had agreed to those statements, the desired response to those stupid questions they had, I would have been giving up my Japanese citizenship. I was all set to go. But fortunately, they changed the question one day before I had to show up and sign that thing. So by the time, the day I showed up, the only question they asked was: "If released, will you promise not to do anything to impede the American war effort?" And that I was willing to sign.

CO: So that, in Minidoka, that was the question that was asked of the Issei.

SS: Of the Issei after a certain date. The day before I went up, up to answer those questions, they changed the thing one day before. Otherwise I might have been sent to Tule Lake. Then there... see, there are some other things there that were stupid. I know, later on, after the war was, after I left camp, and I became friendly with one of the former employees of the War Relo-, WRA who worked in camp, he left camp about the time I did. He was sent out to Philadelphia; I got to know him fairly well. And he told me, he said, "You know, you're rated by the WRA as really one of the obstinate hard-heads among the Japanese in camp." And I said, "Well, I'll admit it. I am a hard-head." And he... [pauses] Oh, yes. One of the things that irritated the administration, they wanted me to agree to a system so that the Japanese who were imprisoned in those camps could be hired as household maids and servants in camp. And they said that there were a fair number of WRA people who were living in camp, inside there. And these people, they said some of them needed household help. And they were already getting this help by paying the internees for whatever work they were doing for them. But they wanted the thing... but this kind of employment was not technically covered by government rules. And they wanted the thing legal, so they wanted the co-op to establish a system whereby these people could, could get their help through the co-op. And they were going to pay the co-op the prevailing, going rate of pay for servants of that type in and around that area. And the people who did the work were going to be paid only the regular pay, like twelve dollars a month or something like that. And the difference would be a profit for the co-op that would be returned to all the people with the distribution of profits for the year. Well, that just struck me as being ridiculous and totally wrong. If these people were willing to work for doing that kind of miserable work, they were entitled to every nickel they could get. And I wasn't going to participate in reducing their income so it could be spread to other people. And even more, I felt that we were in that camp on a racial basis. And that I would not cooperate with a system which, in which they were using Japanese prisoners in that camp as personal servants. I wanted nothing to do with handling that kind of money. And so long as I was there, I remember I stopped it.

EO: When --

SS: Yes, go ahead.

EO: You said that you had an opportunity to go out to a store, that meant that you actually could have escaped.

SS: Yes, yes, I could have escaped.

EO: Why didn't you?

SS: Well, for one thing, I had a mother to take care of in camp. That was my number one responsibility. I couldn't abandon her, leaving her inside, going out. They would have found me sooner or later anyway, if I had obtained work and was, and started sending money to my mother.

EO: Did you think about it?

SS: Oh yes, I thought about it. I could have sneaked out of there, I suppose. But my main concern was that I shared my responsibility of taking care of an aging mother. If I were completely alone, single, I might have tried that. But whether that would have been successful or not, I don't know. Being Japanese, you're spotted wherever you go. I suppose if I had gone directly to a place like New York where there were people of all kinds, all races and skin colors, I might have been able to get by. But not around a place like Idaho.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.