Densho Digital Archive - Shigeya Kihara Interview (denshovh-kshigeya-01-0006)

<Begin Segment 6>

gky: Can you tell me first, how did this make you feel? Here you are training people for the United States Army and your family's gonna be evacuated. Your father and mother are gonna go to camp.

SK: As I said before, when I was in Tokyo, residing there from October 1940 until July of 1941, I suddenly realized that a war would eventually break out between Japan and the United States, and I was born, raised and educated in the United States. At that time I made up my mind I'd prefer to come back to the United States and take my chances in America. When the army asked me to teach I swore to Colonel Weckerling that I would defend the United States and the Constitution. I had sworn to serve the United States, so when war broke out, that didn't change the situation at all. I realized that my job as an instructor of Japanese for the United States army was really important, and so it didn't make any difference at all in my own personal attitude towards the United States, towards Japan and the fact that war had broken out.

gky: I guess, I guess though, I mean, on the one hand, you've sworn to defend the Constitution, on the other hand, your constitutional rights are being taken away.

SK: At that time the evacuation -- this is in February 1942 -- the evacuation was going to take place, I was working for the army. I knew that my family would be evacuated, but I had a job to do and I had no intention of quitting the job and quitting my service to the United States. So at our humble home in Oakland the notices went up that the people in that part of California would be moved to a temporary assembly center at the Tanforan racetrack in San Bruno, so my family, my father, mother, brother, and sister, began to negotiate with people who might buy the small the grocery business. We were able to sell our business to a Chinese couple. And preparations were being made to move, my wife and myself, from the Bay Area to Minnesota where the new school is going to start. So we had our, the army movers came and took all of our furniture except for one mattress that was left behind, and we slept on that mattress until we actually moved in June of 1942.

gky: What was the feeling at the school, you all are gonna, of having to be uprooted after you had spent so much time and energy to make it into a school?

SK: Well, the teachers had all sworn to serve the United States. The men had sworn, when they were inducted into the army, to fight for the United States and to defend the Constitution regardless of whatever happened, so they had made their choice and it was a matter of just living up to what you promised to do. There's no question but that we would continue to serve the United States as instructors and as soldier students of the school.

gky: But I mean was there any confusion or fear, uncertainty?

SK: No. The confusion was in the community, including my parents. "What's gonna happen to us?" So the Japanese American populace began to sell their farms, their businesses, and their household possessions. We were permitted to bring only what we could carry in one or two suitcases. Everything else had to be left behind or destroyed, and scavengers scoured the Japanese American communities, buying up automobiles that were worth a thousand dollars for a hundred dollars, refrigerators, stoves, tractors, everything that the Japanese American community had labored for over fifty years to accumulate. It was all gone in one day. That was total confusion, but this was the United States Army ordering all of this, General DeWitt's orders. There was nothing we could do, so my parents reported to an assembly center, moved to Tanforan, and my wife and I slept on one mattress in our home until the orders came for us to move to Minnesota.

gky: So when you, when Pearl Harbor happened, is that what precipitated you, you and your wife getting married?

SK: Yes. Pearl Harbor happened on December the 7th. There was much talk of the evacuation of Japanese, and my wife and I, who had been close friends for a couple of years, decided that we had better get married or we might get separated and never get married, so on December the 24th, in the second floor of our small home in Oakland, we were married by a Judge Kennedy, for whom my father had previously worked as a gardener. Judge Kennedy was a judge in Oakland. He was very glad to come down, perform the ceremonies, and we were married on Christmas Eve, December the 24th, 1941.