<Begin Segment 14>

SY: So at some point, then, your parents decided that they, well, I guess when the "loyalty questionnaire" came up, did he get, was that...

BW: Yeah, see, if I had the presence of mind back then, like, "Tell me about how you came to this decision." But I just didn't do it, so I missed that opportunity. I don't know how they came to the decision, so I can speculate kind of what I think might have happened, but bits and pieces that I heard from, like my parents and from what my brothers heard... they made a decision to go back to Japan. And I don't know why. I think everyone's pondering, what's the future gonna be like. Here we are, sitting in camp, our rights have been taken away, lost property, lost everything. Do we stay or do we go somewhere else? And my mother mentioned one time that they had entertained the possibility of once the war is over, maybe they should move to South America. There are Japanese farmers down there. Then she mentioned that my father had looked into possibly moving to the Philippines because there were Japanese farmers there, but eventually, at any rate, leaving America. So I don't know if it was the "loyalty questionnaire" that prompted them to have to say "no-no," or whether they had already made up their minds, but I presume they said "no-no" to the "loyalty questionnaire." And then my mother had to renounce her citizenship, so all of that kind of came together, I think must've been around the latter part of 1943. And so my uncles, Densaku and Jiukichi, were pro Japan, so they must've said "no-no." And then my other uncle, my youngest uncle, Tomio, was drafted into the 442nd around that time. So our whole family and the Furuyamas went to Tule Lake. Tomiji was living in Arizona, so I don't know if he was a "no-no" or not, but I don't know too much about what his family did. And then Tomio was, went to camp, I mean army camp somewhere.

SY: And he was ultimately sent overseas, Tomio?

BW: Well, he would've been. He, I think he might've been in MIS eventually 'cause he, I think he was part of the translation thing. But he, during basic training he got hurt. He was, fell out of a tree or something, smashed his ankle, irreparably crushed his ankle somehow, and so he limped the rest of his life and he never served beyond that.

SY: And as far as you know, he was released and came back to rejoin the family at some point?

BW: Yeah, so after the war ended... he must've left the army and then rejoined the family, and then got married.

SY: So when they made this decision, when your parents made this decision, however it came about, did they have any idea what was going to happen to them? Did they know that they were, that was the ultimate goal, was to go back to Japan?

BW: Right. So I presume they knew that eventually they would go to Tule Lake, I guess.

SY: So Tule Lake was something that people were aware there was a camp where people were sent?

BW: I'm sure they must've heard through the grapevine that that's what would happen, yeah.

SY: And they were prepared to take all of, all of you at that point to...

BW: Right. So my mother gave me a very graphic picture 'cause she said they left Manzanar around, she said I was only like a month or two old, so it must've been around like March of '44. And she said -- it was a dark and stormy night kind of thing. [Laughs] They left Manzanar and went to Independence, and then they caught a train, and she said it was, like, snowing so heavily. And so they boarded the train, and because she had me as an infant, they let her sleep in a Pullman room that had the fold-down bed, and so she said, "Yeah, I was kind of lucky because I was nursing you, and so I had my own room, I had my own bed," whereas all the guys, which would've been my father and my two older brothers, essentially had to sleep where they're sitting kind of thing. They're sitting in the regular chair. And so she's kind of laughing to herself, "Yeah, I had a nice, nice and warm, nice bed." But she said it snowed all the way to Tule Lake, and then they got off the train at Tule Lake and checked in there.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.