<Begin Segment 11>

Q: Can you describe some your most vivid memories of prison life?

GH: My prison life was sort of a microcosm of life outside. There were people there. Life goes on. We had our going to sleep, getting up, and in-between activities just like outside. It's an artificial community, only men, and more restrictions than life outside, but not all that different. And so I followed basically the same principles in prison as I did outside. And when I was confronted with situations that I could not accept, I had to refuse it in prison, too. So I did make one conscientious effort in prison. I tried to distinguish between the acts that I... or the orders that I could not accept from those who were forced to issue those orders, and I tried to stay as friendly as possible with the officials, even if I refused the order. That wasn't always understood by them.

Q: You met your father in prison? Do remember words you exchanged with him?

GH: Yeah. Actually --

Q: Would your preface this?

GH: Actually, during the time I was waiting for my first trial, I had been in about five months. At the time, I was mayor of my tank by then. All the details of placing people on, in particular cells and other kinds of living arrangements and decisions behind the bars were in my hands. And the jailers would just throw people in and leave it up to my organization to take care of it. Now, shortly before the trial, one evening, the night jailer came up and said, "Hey, where do I put this guy?" The lights were already out, it must have been about 10:30. And so I was just pulling his leg, and I said, "Why don't you bring these guys in during the daytime when we got plenty of time and we can see what we're doing?" And he says, "Well, I got to bring 'em when they come." And then I looked in the shadows at this little fellow about half the size of this huge sergeant, and I said, "Hey, that's Dad!" And I happened to have an empty bunk in my cell, so I said, "Put him in here." So the jailer went out and opened my cell door and Dad came in. And he said -- he's very quiet, you know. All this time I'm kidding the jailer he's not saying a word, he's just standing in the shadows there. And he said, after he got in, that they drove up from Tule Lake, he was subpoenaed to be a witness for the government, he and Mother, and she was put in the city women's tank. Later I found that my backers, when they heard that my parents were being brought in as witnesses, they offered their homes. In fact, they proposed three of the most convenient homes for billeting them. And when the judge expressed concern about possible mob action or something, when they heard that a Japanese was in town, they said, well, they didn't think that'll happen, but, "Why don't you deputize us so it'll be official action?" He was afraid to do that, so eventually they tossed him into the jail tanks. But while that was objectionable and unfair in many ways, personally it was a good thing because I had a very nice, about a four or five day visit before the trial, and another four or five days afterwards before he was taken back.

Q: Remember any of the words you exchanged?

GH: Well, the... my exchanges with Dad were largely personal, picking up on each other's activities during our several months of absence, and the kinds of concerns that they had before they came, and so on. And so it was just like a briefing. It wasn't as though -- you know, he came from camp, he didn't come from freedom, and I'm in jail. So he comes in, and it's almost like somebody coming from a trip, and, "Oh, gee, I haven't seen you for five months," and catching up on a variety of details. We didn't discuss any issues of principles or anything like that, since there wasn't any dispute there.

Q: How did the camp experience affect your mother and father?

GH: Those people can take a lot of things under restriction. And so I think they just coped quite well.

[Interruption]

Q: Gordon, can you talk about the letter?

GH: Yeah. I received a letter from my mother shortly after she was moved to Tule Lake. And she wrote about two ladies from one of the California cities who was billeted someplace a mile and a half away, who walked all the way looking her up. And what they wanted to say was that they had heard that someone was living here whose son was in jail fighting this thing. And they said that in this frustration of this kind of treatment, it was inspiring to them that someone was battling this, and they wanted to come to express appreciation to the mother for what her son is doing. And my mother said she just had such a lift from this visit. That from that moment on, I felt that nothing I could have done being with her could have matched that kind of a lift. And so I never worried about being absent in camp after that visit, you know, on the parental grounds.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1983, 2010 Densho and Steven Okazaki. All Rights Reserved.