<Begin Segment 8>

CI: Yeah, okay, I think one of the reasons, certainly, is that after the war, life was very difficult for the Japanese American. It meant, for example, that most of us had nothing, absolutely nothing, and many of them had young families of children who were just beginning to grow. And so many people held two or three jobs in order to make it, in order to make enough money so that they can get enough of a down payment for a house and to try to build up a family home. And also busy getting their parents out from camp and taking care of the older people who by that time were really, had a real difficult time. The Issei were about fifty at the time of evacuation and by the time they left, they must've been fifty-four, fifty-five, very hard for them to find jobs. And so the Nisei, then, had to take care of not only their growing families, but the Issei, their parents and all. And so as a result, I mean, there was little time for anything because they were so busy working at, as I said, two or three jobs. There was also the other factor of... let me just explain, at the time that I left camp, I was going out to go to school, and I was given very explicit directions at the time we were leaving, we were one of the first people to leave camp, and I was told at that time, "Be sure that you don't congregate in groups of more than three, be sure that you don't speak Japanese outside," in other words, don't call any attention to yourself. And that was made very clear to us when we were leaving so that we remembered this very strongly and did not want to cause any problems because we were afraid that all of the Japanese would be hurt if we did anything that called attention to ourselves. And therefore it was again that very strong feeling that you really had to kind of like make it in the American society by working hard and not complaining and doing any of these things. So that was part of the problem, I think, that we had. And I guess the third problem that I could see is that there's a whole thing that, I mean, some people, we didn't feel that way, but some people felt that it was, it was a shame, that it was, that we were considered not quite American citizens by the way we were treated and therefore, it was something that was rather shameful that happened to us. And there's a whole thing in Japanese culture that has something to do with, again, leaving all that behind and kind of shikata ga nai and, you know, looking forward all the time to doing something. And so we kind of like pulled all of that together and were in a sense, a quiet generation. Very busy, trying to make ends meet and trying to develop a life for our children that we didn't have. And as a result, I think that there was a lot of quietness about it. We weren't particularly affected that way because we worked in other organizations and we were not quite as restrained about those kinds of things. So our children, we told our children about camp life, we told... I did speak too groups and told people about camp life and all. But not with the same kind of feelings that we have now about... you know, as we get older, we look back and see what happened. I guess part of it is a reflective thing as an older person and seeing what was really wrong and trying to seek redress now.

EI: Yeah, I think Chiz touched on it, but I think there was a history of discrimination against the Japanese before the war, and because of this, I think there was a feeling that there was no use fighting back. Because we're not going to get anyplace anyway. I think that's partly the thing, and of course the administration stressed that too as Chiz said, in not congregating together in too big of a group and not showing your Japanese profile so much, you know. And I think that's one of the reasons. And the other one, I think probably is because people didn't want to talk about it for various reasons. And she mentioned one of them, that our cultural background, you know, prohibited this because they thought it was a shame to talk about being in a camp. And I think even today, there are a lot of Nisei who don't want to talk about it to their children even. And I think it's probably difficult for them to talk about the camp life. I know when I first started to talk about it, we didn't talk about it for years in the open, we talked about it among ourselves. But when I first went public and talked about it, I know this anger came out, which I didn't realize, and it got very emotional. And I think that's probably the kind of feeling that most people would get when they start talking about this.

CI: Yeah, I think you saw that when they had the redress hearings, and a lot of the feelings people had just repressed because at that time we couldn't deal with it, came out. And that was really fascinating to see and I was glad that it expressed itself that way. The other thing was that we didn't have any models. We had no models before of any minority group that did anything to right wrongs, and I think it was the black Civil Rights Movement and this whole concept of really standing up and ensuring equality of some kind. I think that was the first time that we really saw a group doing something, and that, Ernie and I had tremendous admiration for the black movement, And then it was wonderful to see it spread into other groups. I can remember the Third World Strike at San Francisco State and feeling very positive and warm about the fact that there were Asian groups as well, willing to, to stand up and demand the rights of citizenship and the rights of students all over. I think it was part of that, too, is that our American history never had, or at least we were not aware of groups of people being able to stand up and make changes like that.

EI: Yeah, I think it's true that the whole Civil Rights Movement encouraged us too in a way. And I know that I speak out a lot more than I used to, you know, if I feel that I'm being discriminated against and a Caucasian is doing it, I'd tell him off, you know. [Laughs] And you're not afraid to do that anymore whereas before, you sort of kept quiet and took it. And I think, as she said, this whole Civil Rights Movement, I think encouraged a lot of us to come out and do these things and that's why it's probably come out so late.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1983, 2010 Densho and Steven Okazaki. All Rights Reserved.