Densho Digital Archive - Chiyoko Yano Interview (denshovh-ychiyoko

<Begin Segment 15>

MA: And what was it like working at the WRA headquarters there?

CY: Oh, it was, I, it was no different than any other time that I worked. And after the war, I did work for the U.S. Treasury in San Francisco, but it was no different.

MA: And people there were mostly Caucasians?

CY: We had, I had two Japanese men, Tsuchiya, something Tsuchiya, I can't remember his first name, and another Japanese man that I had seen in camp. And they were all someone who knew Fern French, the head, so they, it was someone that she knew. They came from a different camp, I think.

MA: And why did they have you leave camp and come to D.C.? Was there a specific reason?

CY: Well, yes, so that I was in charge of the Topaz report, and those other people came from different camps, so they were in charge of another camp, and that's what they did. I can't exactly remember what I did, but it was very similar. And I remember we had to make statistical reports like how many males and how many females and things, and what their age brackets were. And so we had no way of sorting them, so we used to have a, punch a hole in a certain place and we used to slide a long rod through these holes, and then lift the cards up. And then we knew that those were the cards that had birthdates within certain... that's how we made our report. And then we alphabetized -- well, they were pretty much in alphabetical order, so we knew exactly who was in that category and this and that. So we devised all kinds of ways of figuring out statistical reports.

MA: So that time in D.C., you were sort of analyzing the data that you'd gathered in Topaz.

CY: In Topaz.

MA: What did the WRA do with this information? Was there, like, a final report that they had to make?

CY: Yes, there was a final report, and I have the final report. It's, they didn't publish that many, but they published enough to give to the persons connected with it, and that would have any interest, so they gave me a copy. They told me that it wasn't for, given to everybody, but they wanted me to have one. But that copy, it's at my daughter's home in Davis. My son-in-law is a librarian, and he worked for U.C. Davis for approximately thirty-eight years after he graduated from library science at U.C. Berkeley. He has a master's degree in library science, so he got a job right away, too, right after graduation. And he, that was his first and only job, and so he's a retiree from there. So... and he was very interested in the relocation, his family was in, was from Oregon, he's a Caucasian and he's from Oregon. He said that his community was very, very.. what do you call... prejudiced in Oregon. They didn't like different nationalities living in their community. But he didn't feel that way, he came, he was a more liberal type of person. But he told me about his mother's friends and things, they were very prejudiced. And the mother told me, his mother told me that, "Oh, Chiyoko, did you know that they only found one person that was a traitor to the United States in Oregon?" And so I told, I said, "That I could hardly believe," 'cause it's been reported that there has been no cases of sabotage or anything among the Japanese Americans. And so I said, "It's hard to believe," but she mentioned that to me several times. So I told my son-in-law that, "Your mother thinks that there was one sabotage," and he says, "Oh, my mother is always talking about that." And he says, "She doesn't know what she's talking about." [Laughs]

MA: So going back to D.C., where were you living during those three months you were there?

CY: Oh, I was living in a Jewish family named the Fitzchandlers. And Mr. and Mrs. Fitzchandlers were from the White Russia, and so they were, they had a revolution and they were chased out of country if you were White Russian. And so he, they came to the United States, and he was a musician and his goal, his goal in life was to be able to conduct at the Constitution Hall once in his lifetime, and he was able to accomplish that. So he was a orchestra conductor.

MA: So you were living with them while you were working at the WRA.

CY: Yeah, and I was, WRA found that space for me. And there was, she had another Japanese person, his name was Noda. I don't know what happened to him, but I understand he married Dr. Kiyasu's daughter, I'm not quite sure. And my daughter has a very good friend from the Noda family, but evidently they're not the same Noda family.

MA: So your husband at that time was in Virginia, you said?

CY: Yes.

MA: Did you see him?

CY: No, he came to see me at... well, and I stayed for a few days at the WRA home. They had a little place where they set up so that the people who came to relocate to different places had a place to stay right away, instead of going to a hotel.