<Begin Segment 10>

FS: To be perfectly frank, I've never talked about the war to my family. Never talked to the kids about it. Lily is amazed, my wife Lily is amazed when she hears these stories when I get together with my friends in Hawaii and we talk war, or maybe we lie about war. But anyway, we talk about it, so she hears stuff that she has never heard about us, and about what had happened. I guess it's a revelation to her, that her real mild-mannered husband is, was involved in all of this stuff.

[Interruption]

FS: You know, we talk about freedom and wars, but I guess first of all, we have to consider why we fought the war, why the United States fought the war in Europe and Asia. And, and for that, that period in the '20s and '30s and into the '40s, there were these totalitarian, totalitarian forces who took the liberty, took the freedom away from any number of people. And I think of all the wars, I guess this is more justified than, I think, any that we fought any other time. But on a, on a personal basis, on the basis of the Japanese Americans, it represented, first of all, our civil rights were completey abrogated. Our people were placed in concentration camps, our rights were taken away, and I think that as a result of sacrifices of the guys who died, were grievously wounded as a result of the war, fighting in the 442nd, that it shows that freedom is not something that you, that you're given. You earn those things; you work for them. And that's what, what the Japanese American community has to recognize, that this stuff, the sacrifices of our parents, the sacrifices of the men of the 442nd, were our way of earning that freedom, the right to be called an American, not a hyphenated American. And that's, I guess that's my message to all of, everybody, is that you don't, this stuff doesn't get given to you, isn't given to you, you've earned it. And every generation earns it in some way or another.

[Interruption]

FS: Well, anyway, what I see right now in the contemporary world, is that it appears that the Arab American community is going through, in probably a smaller way, the things that occurred to the Japanese American community at the beginning of World War II. People, people are frightened by what has taken place, and as a result, I think they're striking out. The vast, vast majority of Arab Americans are loyal Americans. It scares me to see that there have been incidents of abuse, of vandalism and so on, against the community.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.