<Begin Segment 14>

EO: I just want to step way back, because when you were talking about renunciation, I don't think that it was very clear what that was, that is, that was different from the loyalty questions. Could you just define what that was?

HK: Well, we requested that we give up our citizenship and I guess it was Congress that passed the legislation that made it so that we could. And so we signed away our citizenship and that was it. And we did it in protest, I guess, and to make our positions clear. But it was, as I said, a rather stupid thing to do, because it wasn't necessary. We had already made our point. But it was one of those things that the more militant people, you know, started, and we were the victims of that.

EO: Did this make you without any country?

HK: Yes, uh-huh. Right. But we didn't even think about those things. Yeah, I think that was due to the, that we were confined and we were kept there so long that we weren't thinking straight. We weren't even thinking, actually. And after it was done, maybe we thought, we might have started to think, and then it was kind of late. And you didn't want to change your mind. One could have changed, but I think that that was due to being in camp, yeah.

EO: So when the registration happened, how did it happen?

HK: It came in 1943. Early in 19-, I think it was latter part of '42, they started to talk about it. And then the recruiters, army recruiters, among them Nisei soldiers, came to recruit volunteers for the army. And then they wanted to open it for everyone so they started this registration. Which was a, a clearance for us to not only -- it was a way to segregate the "loyals" from the "disloyals," but also a clearance, so that they would release those who were all "loyal" Americans. And then they found a lot of resistance to it, so it became an issue. So it was a two-pronged thing.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.