<Begin Segment 9>

gky: How did you feel, being a Nisei, sitting across a table interpreting for an interrogation? You're Japanese American. Here you are facing the Japanese. Do you have strong feelings of being American or did you have strong feelings of your Japanese-ness?

WT: Well, my feelings was from the very beginning, that right or wrong, this country, though they violated, you know, the Constitution, and incarcerated my family, and they discriminated against me, we Nisei experienced discrimination from way back in the time we were school days. And my dad experienced discrimination from the time when he came to this country in 1900 when he was seventeen years old and lived all his days until he died, he lived in the United States. And my dad, here's what my dad said, although he was in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he was held in internment, and then he finally joined the rest of the family in Poston, Arizona. But my dad wrote to me when I was in Australia, and he said that he plans to go back to Japan. He lost everything with the evacuation and we had nothing. We were poor and there was nothing for him here and he couldn't own land and he couldn't become a naturalized citizen of the United States because of the laws, and all that. So he says that, well, he was at a relocation camp. He finally resolved that he was gonna go back to Japan. Actually, he had nothing to go back to Japan, and yet he said he's gonna go back to Japan. However, he wrote to me that he says, "You are an American citizen," that, "Your loyalty is with the United States." And he said that, "Don't do anything cowardly while you're overseas and serving in the army that -- serve your country. America is your country." That's his attitude. But he felt that his place was to go back to Japan where he had nothing, really.

gky: That's funny, because he would split up the family because of -- I mean it's just so hard to conceive.

WT: Well, you know what I did?

gky: What?

WT: I went to the Judge Advocate's section in the army and I asked, "What can I do? I don't want my father or my family to go back to Japan." Like some people went to Tule Lake and did go back to Japan. "What can I do to prevent them from going back?" And the Judge Advocate General section said, "Well, why don't you talk to the American consul in Brisbane?" So I went over to the American consul in Brisbane, Australia, and I told them all about my family and the situation. And so the American consul told me, he says, "Well, what you do is you go back to your unit," and he says, "Write me a letter describing all the things that you have told me, and mail the letter to me." And he says he'll send it to Washington. So that's what I did. I went back and I wrote a letter to the consul and mailed it, and he sent the letter to Washington, D.C., to the State Department who, in turn, sent it to a welfare representative at Poston, Arizona. And the welfare representative went to talk to my dad. And also, I wrote to friends of my dad, and asked them to help, begged them to help me to change my father's mind. And everything seemed to do no good. My dad was a, you know, pretty, you know, friendly sort of guy, but once he made up his mind, he was like a samurai, you know. He was really determined then. And so I wasn't getting anywhere. I finally resolved that there's nothing that I could do, that my dad was going back to Japan. And in his final letter to me when I was in New Guinea, my dad said, "There's a Japanese proverb, and this proverb says that 'Tora wa shinnde kawa wa nokosu. Hito wa shinnde namae wo nokosu,'" which translates in that 'when a tiger dies, he leaves his skin.' In other words, a valuable skin. 'When a human being dies, that his name, he leaves his name, he leaves his honor.' And therefore, my dad says, "Never do something dishonorable." He told me to serve my country, America, and just forget about them. This is the end. This is the last letter he's going to write to me.

Unfortunately, as the war got close to the end, my dad talked to some influential people. Particularly, there was an assistant professor from the University of California. My dad always admired educated people, and if he could have, he would have let me go to college, but there was no chance at that. But, anyway, he said he was going to go back to Japan and for me to serve my country. One person that really supported me all through my army career during the war was my civics teacher in the San Louis Obispo High School. And he was the one person that wrote to me, not that frequently but from time to time, he wrote to me. And he, you know, sympathized with me. He said that what they did to the Japanese was wrong, that he certainly thought that it was wrong and that they should have never placed the Japanese Americans in the internment camps. And he eventually, from San Luis Obispo, where he didn't become the principal of the school because, after the war ended, the coach was popular and became the principal. But this Fred L. Petersen, my civics teacher, he became the principal of the Laguna Beach High School and subsequently became the superintendent of schools of Laguna Beach. And after the war, and when I was on my way to Korea, I got to Korea after the conflict was over, after the fighting was over, but I served a year in Korea. And on my way to Korea, I stopped in Laguna Beach at the Rotary Club. Fred L. Petersen, a Rotary Club member, and another person there who happened to be the commanding officer of the ATIS, Allied Translating Interpreter Section, and his name was Colonel Sidney Mashbir; he was there. And, surprisingly, I met him. And I met Fred L. Petersen and both of them placed me in the middle between them. At that time I was a captain in the army and I was down there in my uniform and they really got up and gave me a pat on the back and said nice things about the fact that I was in the service and served the United States. And thereafter, I went to Korea which was my last service before I discharged from the army after twenty years.

gky: But, okay, you were successful in keeping your father from returning to Japan, weren't you?

WT: Yes.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2000 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.