<Begin Segment 15>

EO: -- state of mind of you in the camp and everything when this questionnaire comes into the scene here. And so do you recall how you were feeling and when you heard about the questionnaire?

AH: I recall that when the questionnaire came out, there was a lot of confusion because we didn't know the purpose, really, behind the questionnaire. Was it going to be used to segregate us, was it going to be used as, as an instrument to perhaps repatriate, or expatriate members of the family? There was a lot of worry because there was a lot of confusion, and the confusion reigned even among the administrators of the various camps, I believe. The effort to get this questionnaire was actually started in Washington, D.C. in order to determine how many men would be eligible to serve in the armed forces. Actually, it sounds, it doesn't sound like a logical, logical reason, but there was an effort by the War Department to find out how many Nikkei, Nisei, and Kibei men would be available as fillers for -- not fillers -- to, to establish a combat team. And at the same time, the War Relocation Authority, the civilian agency that administered the camp, wanted to have this questionnaire in order to establish who would be qualified to leave the camps for employment or for school outside of the camps and outside of the prohibited military areas.

So, because of the nature of some of the questions in this questionnaire, people were confused. They had arguments, they had block meetings. There was antagonism from one group to another. The loyalty questionnaire asked, "Are you, do you have allegiance to the Emperor of the United States?" for one.

EO: Emperor of Japan.

AH: Emperor -- I'm sorry. How did -- my mind isn't working right. Emperor of Japan. And of course, that infuriated many of the American-born Japanese because they never had any allegiance to the Emperor of Japan to begin with and to be asked to forswear allegiance was such an insult. And for the first-generation Japanese men, of course, they, if they forswore allegiance to the Emperor they would become countryless, they would be people without a country, since this country would not allow them to become American citizens, the only tie they had was to Japan. Therefore, it was a dilemma all the way around.

And in my case, it was, I was still in Manzanar at the time, and there was no problem, actually, in the family in which I was married, to which I was married at the time. The children were all American-born and they, they had no ties at all to Japan, and so there was no question as to the fact that they would answer loyalty questions in the affirmative in terms of their loyalty to the United States. The irony of it all, though, was that if they were willing to serve in the United States army, then they were very much, the men were very much willing to forgive this country for the transgressions against them because to be drafted to serve and give your life for your country out of prison camps in which one was placed forcibly, I think it's really quite a true measure of loyalty to, to a country. And in my case, my husband at the time was drafted out of the camps to serve in the armed forces. There are many families I know that faced a lot of internal problems because a part of the family would feel one way and a part of the family would feel another way about this loyalty questionnaire. But in the case of my family and the family into which I was married, we just didn't happen to have that problem.

EO: How did you feel about your husband going off to fight?

AH: Oh, I thought it sucked. I thought it was such a travesty of justice. How can a country... at the time I didn't look at constitutional issues in detail, I just knew and I felt, a gut level feeling that it was wrong. It was wrong to place those of us simply because of the way we looked, simply because of the country from which our parents came. It was wrong of this country to put us behind barbed wires, place us in prison camps and then expect our men to serve and fight and die for the country. I felt, I was really angry and, of course, because I was young and I just had this child, it was a sad situation for me to think that it's possible he would go off to war and be killed. For -- after having had all this happen to our, to our community, the injustice of it was, was overwhelming at times. Of course, in retrospect, after I find out the historical facts, it makes me even more angry to think that it actually happened.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.