Densho Digital Archive - Janice Sakamoto - Beth Shironaka Interview (denshovh-sjanice

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Q: Janice, can you tell Jane how you sort of perceive this issue in terms of people starting to be comfortable with it?

JS: Well, I know for myself, I first learned about the camps when I was in high school. I had to, my history class, my teacher asked us all to do a paper and in particular, he asked me to do one on Japanese American history, which I knew nothing about. And so I went to the library and did intensive research, and in one book, I came across this one small paragraph on the concentration camps. I was shocked; I had not heard anything about the camps. My mom had prior to that time said nothing, and I was shocked and I was hurt and angry, and I remember going home and confronting my mom. And she kind of, at that time, she kind of tried to ignore the discussion and say, "Well, it was no big thing, I was very young, actually. I had a lot of fun because I was a kid." But it really bothered me because even though I didn't know that much about the camps, I knew that it was wrong. I knew that the Japanese were not disloyal like the article was saying. So I did more research and I pulled together a report and prepared to give my report in my history class. I did all this planning, and that day, I went in front of the class and I just broke down and cried. I couldn't even talk about it. That was the first time that that really provoked a lot of interest for me in my family and the experiences that they went through as well as other Japanese Americans.

I went to school at San Francisco State and seized on the opportunity of taking a lot of Asian Studies courses that were taught at that time, in the early '70s and I began to learn more about Japanese history and the experience of the camps. And I would continue to talk to my mom and other Niseis about it, and there was still a lot of very mixed feelings. People didn't want to talk about it and I remember for myself as a Sansei, at first, I became very impatient, you know, I said, "Well, this thing was wrong, we should do something about it." You know, there was, the government hadn't even made any kind of apology or restitution to the Japanese people. And I think what hurt me most is that I could still see the bitterness and the feeling of guilt and shame with these Niseis and my parents. But later, I grew to understand that that feeling was so ingrained that people just wanted to forget about it. So... but for Sanseis, because we didn't, we weren't directly in the camps, though we felt a lot of the effects, the impact that it had on our parents, affected how we were brought up. You know, feeling, not knowing our history, our culture and feeling that we had to be ashamed of it. And so many of us felt that we needed to really seek out what our Asian identity is and to learn about our culture and our history, at the same time to continue to talk to our parents and stuff.

I would say during the early... well, beginning, at the end of I guess the '70s, I think more of the Sansei, I mean, the Nisei began to speak out. I think the Japanese community felt stronger, and began to organize different activities and events and to be able to discuss about people's experiences. And for myself, just learning and just being able to hear about those stories, really helped me understand the tragedy and the trauma of that whole episode in the lives of our parents. And now, for my... with the movement for redress and reparations, my mom has become much more vocal about saying what, you know, what really happened. She's no longer saying, yeah, it was funny because I was a kid. But she's now saying the U.S. government is responsible for her family losing all their possessions, for her not being able to continue her education, she lost her mother, you know. The hardships of having to grow up without a mother... and for my father, he lost all his land and as well as his possessions. He, had to discontinue his education and was drafted into the army.