<Begin Segment 11>

MA: So can you talk about meeting your husband and a little bit about him, his background? 'Cause he has an interesting story.

CY: Well, my husband, I knew right away what kind of education he had and his background, because I'm the one who gets the report from one place, when he transferred from Kooskia, Idaho. You heard of Kooskia, Idaho?

MA: Yes, it was an internment camp, but they had people work, right, on the railroads?

CY: They, they built the railroad, and there, he was a truck driver. He drove a truck backwards, he says, because there was no streets, no way to turn the truck if you went forward, then to come back out of there, you had to drive it backwards.

MA: And your husband was in Kooskia, well, he was a Japanese national, is that right? He was born in Japan?

CY: Uh-huh.

MA: But educated in the United States, right?

CY: Yes, and Japan.

MA: And Japan. And was he then picked up right after Pearl Harbor?

CY: Yes, right after Pearl Harbor.

MA: And where was he sent? 'Cause he was in, you said, in Texas.

CY: He was... Texas, uh-huh. He was working for the Japanese government ever since he graduated from USC, because they needed someone who spoke Japanese and wrote Japanese as well as English. So, so that's where...

MA: And he was sent to Kooskia from Texas?

CY: I think he went to several Justice Department camps. I think he was... I know when the FBI picked him up, he was sent to San Antonio, Texas, or someplace.

MA: Like a prison?

CY: Prison. And then they transferred him to... because in those days, in Texas, they didn't have that many Japanese to evacuate. And then so, then he, he was sent from there to a prison, but then when he was there as a prisoner, but later on he was transferred to a Justice Department holding place, and would have been someplace like Missouri, Montana. I know he was in Missouri, Montana.

MA: Oh, Missoula, Montana.

CY: Missoula, uh-huh. And there's another one, was it in Idaho?

MA: I'm not sure. I know Kooskia was in Idaho.

CY: Kooskia was in Idaho. But he, he was in several. He wasn't in just one. I don't know why they transferred the inmates here and there from time to time.

MA: But the last, sort of, Department of Justice camp he was in was at Kooskia, right?

CY: Kooskia, uh-huh, that was the last place. And every place he went, he was always recruited as the translator to the judge or whoever. And he asked for release, but every time it was denied because they thought that he knew too much, but they couldn't pinpoint what he did wrong. And so finally they said, "Well, he must be okay, he probably won't be a, do anything against the United States, so we'll let him go, release him to his family in Topaz." Because he didn't have, his parents were living in Japan, so they would either have to send him back to Japan or keep him in the United States.

MA: And did he have any relatives in Topaz?

CY: Yes, see, his brother was farming in Yuba City, and so he, they were evacuated to Tule Lake. And so from Tule Lake they came, segregation camp, and so he was sent to Topaz when they decided, when his family didn't want to go. So he came to Topaz.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.