<Begin Segment 13>

FA: Okay, let me ask you this, Michi. There was a meeting -- as Frank says. What do you, what did that meeting lead to at Manzanar?

MW: Well, unfortunately, word got out that, I think it was Fred Tayama had very vehemently demanded that the selective service be restored to Japanese Americans within the camps. And the reaction in Manzanar and other camps was, "What? They want to raid a concentration... you know, concentration camps for bodies, I mean, to be shot at?" I mean, it didn't make sense to the average young person of nineteen, twenty, and to the parents certainly. After all, these were, you know, these were gently-reared young sons on whom they depended for their future. And to end up in a camp like that, in a God-forsaken place, and then they want to come raid our...

FC: Describe your camp.

MW: Yeah, the three camp. Pardon?

FC: Describe your camp, Gila.

FA: Yeah, what was the reaction in Gila to...

FC: What was your reaction, I mean, your reaction to life in Gila?

MW: I was too young. No, because I told Frank that was... I was a hard-working farm girl and I was liberated and I didn't have to work that hard in camp.

FC: So you were used to the rough life.

MW: Yeah, I was a child slave labor. [Smiles] So I had it easy in camp.

FC: How old were you in camp?

MW: I was fifteen when I went in.

FA: Michi, what, how did the word of the JACL, Fred Tayama, calling for the draft, hit the Issei? You began to talk about that.

MW: You know, that's too hard a question because it's too complex. I have to cite one after the other because each family was different.

[Interruption]

FA: What was the reaction in Heart Mountain from what you've seen in the documents? What was the reaction at Heart Mountain?

MW: I think I told you earlier that they refused to go to these meetings sponsored by the army team. They stood them up, and they held their own private meetings here and there. And they couldn't make heads or tails of this questionnaire. And so eventually when they did meet with the, when they did go to the larger meeting, they asked very hard questions which the, these army... the teams were in no position to answer such questions as, "Can you restore our constitutional rights first? We'll be happy to go. Will you allow our parents to go back to their homes first? In which case we will be very happy to go. We would serve happily if we could be dispersed into various units like other U.S. citizens. We do not want to be treated in an apartheid fashion where we would end up as blacks." You know, the Jim Crow units.

FA: It would be a "Jap Crow" unit.

MW: "Jap Crow."

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 1998, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.