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EO: So, I just wanted to follow up on the family structure in the camps, this whole Issei/Nisei thing. We never finished that. How the administration, how the power shifted.

JH: Oh yeah, well, several things happened right about the time of the war, I guess. The Issei, Isseis were still more or less in control of the communities. They were still maybe in their fifties and sixties, somewheres around there. So the normal transition from the Issei generation to the Nisei generation wouldn't have taken place until a little bit after the time. And of course, there are organizations like the JACL. I think JACL was established around 1930. And so they were beginning to come to the fore, but I think the average age of the Niseis were still under twenty at the time of the war. So that the transition of power in the communities hadn't shifted to the Nisei generation. In the first place, right subsequent to the beginning of the war, there's a sweep by the FBI to take the community leaders off into special internment camps. So they were gone. But when everyone was shifted off into the internment centers, there was an issue about who's going to be in charge of the self-governing part. I think the plan of the authorities was to try to get the camps to be operating as much as possible under a self-governing plan except that the total power, of course, was never given to the members of the internees. So that the authorities, I'm sure, felt that the threat was greater from the Japanese-speaking internees and so they wanted the power shifted to the Niseis, especially the Niseis that were cooperating with the camp authorities. So that this set up a lot of tension within camp. And, of course, the Kibeis had a role in this. We should make a distinction between the Isseis and the Kibeis, 'cause the Kibeis were educated in Japan during the military ascendency so that their attitudes would be, political attitudes would be somewhat different from the Isseis, and most certainly different from the Niseis. So that it was a kind of artificial situation in which power was changed and it had, I think, very serious consequences in the way that the community operated in the camps. And so when things like the loyalty questionnaire came up, it really drove further cleavages and sharper cleavages into the community that was already, been under severe pressure.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.