Densho Digital Archive
Emiko and Chizuko Omori Collection
Title: Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga Interview
Narrator: Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga
Interviewers: Emiko Omori (primary), Chizu Omori (secondary)
Location: San Francisco, California
Date: March 20, 1994
Densho ID: denshovh-haiko-02-0016

<Begin Segment 16>

EO: So let's get to those historical facts. How did you find out about these historical facts? What got you interested in them?

AH: Okay. So many years after the camps, we were very, very busy trying to rebuild our lives. So we didn't think too much about the past, we tried to put it behind us. Then came along the Civil Rights movement. Our children, by that, third-generation children, Japanese Americans called Sansei, they became, many became involved in the Civil Rights movement and many of these young folks started to ask about their own parents' past, about the camp life, which many Nisei parents never talked about. And there were different reasons in different families for the silence. I was living in New York City at the time. I read a book written by Michi Weglyn, called Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps. I met Michi Weglyn, inspired by her book, and inspired also by a group of other Nisei women with whom I became affiliated in an organization called Asian Americans for Action. Very progressive group, mostly Nisei women. I had never been involved in anything with political connotation to the group's activities as I was in this, this triple-A group. And they were very, very influential in my life, turned my head around, made me start to think about minorities, about injustice, about inequality and it was an eye-opening experience for me to find out more about -- and to think about the camp experience and what it meant to me personally, what it meant to our families, what it meant to our community.

EO: What was it about this book that got you inspired?

AH: The book, so meticulously researched by Michi Weglyn, came out with facts, documented facts, which she published in her book, that told the story of the internment, we call it the internment, we won't get into terminology now, but let's call it the internment of Japanese Americans in, in these camps.

[Interruption]

AH: The first time I started to think about historical reasons, historical facts behind the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, was due to the fact that I had read Michi Weglyn's book. Michi Weglyn wrote this book called Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps. In it, it was obvious that she had pulled out from the National Archives papers that proved certain theories that she had. But I subscribed to some of her theories about why this happened, after having seen not only the one, the documents that she dug out, but those that my husband Jack and I have seen subsequently after we started our research in the National Archives.

EO: What are those theories?

AH: One of the theories that she put forth is the hostage/reprisals theory. Once in the war, it was quite apparent, I think, to the War Department and to the leaders of this country, that they were fighting an enemy, Japanese soldiers, who would never give up. They would rather commit suicide than to be taken prisoners or surrender, which meant America would not have many prisoners of war, American -- Japanese prisoners of war, soldiers or sailors. Whereas Japan already had quite a pool of American citizens who were interned by Imperial Japan. Now, international conventions call for the exchange of prisoners. Here Japan had this huge pool of American citizens, America would not have any prisoners, Japanese prisoners. So if Issei and Nisei -- from the West Coast primarily, because that's where most of the Japanese American community was congregated -- were placed in a holding situation where they could easily be exchanged, picked up and exchanged for American prisoners, that made the situation easier for the State Department to deal with if we were all already in one area. And there are documents in the archives that imply the fact that now this government does have a population of Japanese, ethnic Japanese, on whom reprisals can be taken if Imperial Japan mistreats American soldiers, or American civilians who were interned. There are these documents and Michi Weglyn had discovered them. So it makes a lot of sense to me. So we were hostages. Hostages for exchange purposes or possible, at least threatened, reprisals. That is one of the main premises, I think, of Michi Weglyn's book.

Of course, the other reasons that this actually happened to the Japanese Americans was political: men who were trying to reach certain offices, elective offices and playing on the emotions and the war hysteria against persons of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast. And then there was the economic picture. Japanese farmers were able to turn what was thought to be un-arable land, into wonderful, arable, fruit- and vegetable-producing acreages, and of course, they were envied by other non-Japanese farmers who would like, who would like to get their hands on all this business and all the property. There was economic reason, there was political reason on the state/local level and then there was this national reason for carrying out the forced removal of the Japanese population from the West Coast.

[Interruption]

AH: You know, my husband and I had been doing research in the archives on this subject for many years. During the course of this research, I had come across, in the military records, papers that indicated that General DeWitt had issued a book called, we call it, the Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942. And that was his way of explaining to, not only to the War Department, to the government, to the public, why he did what he did, which was to forcibly remove Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Okay. Now, in the course of my research I found papers that showed that the War Department in Washington, D.C., was very unhappy with the report that General DeWitt had issued. General DeWitt and his assistant, Colonel Bendetson, assured the War Department that, "Oh, we only printed ten copies of these, so don't worry. If you're not happy with it, we'll make changes."

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.