<Begin Segment 2>

FA: How did... in the book you also talk about how the, how the questionnaire, coming after evacuation, coming after the round-up of the Issei was just insult upon insult. Can you, can you elaborate on that?

FC: What was the first insult?

MW: Huh?

FC: What was the first insult?

MW: The first insult, of course, was to become instantly impoverished. Because you had to give up your home, give up your possessions, give up your long-term relationship with friends and neighbors and carry a couple of suitcases and wander into the desert and live under the most extreme conditions. Of course, the army did take care that the "Japs" would be made to suffer. They chose the worst places, the hellholes that are to be found in this beautiful United States.

Secondly, they were settled. I mean, they did their best. They felt that perhaps because of their Japanese upbringing they felt that we must atone for what the Japanese did, the sneak attack. There was so much propaganda that was anti-Japanese. And the Japanese people as a community were made to feel as though they were every bit as guilty for having a Japanese face as the enemy. So that of course those of us who were inculcated with the Japanese way of thinking felt that well, this is the least we can do to show our patriotism by obeying the government. Perhaps they have a good reason. They had their reason: military necessity, as though the coast were about to be attacked. Well, how do we know? They said only those who had the facts, who know exactly what is happening know what is best for us. So, that was another factor.

Then, of course, they find out that it wasn't the community that they were promised. They had initially been promised that they were going to be moved inland and they could form their own community and live in a democratic fashion. They were shocked to see that they were surrounded by barbed wires and guard towers. And at that point they realized that they weren't trusted at all. That they had used very... they had actually lied to them. And it was a matter of their becoming akin to prisoners of war. They were colonized in a sense and they were deprived of all their constitutionally promised freedoms. But many of them took it philosophically and they decided to make the best of it. They tried to make their living conditions more comfortable by building furniture, chairs, tables, beds. Making partitions in barracks, but out of nothing. They tried to scrounge for cut off lumbers. You know, leftover lumbers and scraps and they, egg boxes and whatever. And it was quite extraordinary what people were able to create out of nothing. But they became aware of the fact that their overseers were really not having their best interests at heart. That the food, for instance, the meat, the eggs, the sugar, which were supposed to go to the mess halls, were being diverted to the black market. There were some of the administrators who were exploiting their position to haul away what was rightfully the evacuees'. And they were selling the sugar and meat, whatever they could, on the black market. And that, of course, became very apparent when there was a crash. This automobile owned by one of the officials, I believe, in Manzanar, was in an accident and there it became apparent that his truck was loaded with this material that he was trying to deliver to the black market.

And of course people like Harry Ueno, the Manzanar martyr who worked in the mess hall, was quite aware of what was going on for quite some time. He wasn't able to prove it, but he made a big thing of it. This was beginning to be more than suspicious. And he organized a union, and to make a long story short, this union monitored what was coming in. And they noticed that in certain mess halls they -- especially the ones which were used by some of the bigwigs within the Japanese American communities, some of the JACL leaders who were not very popular, had made themselves even more unpopular by making sure that to please their mess halls -- were getting the sugar and the eggs and the meat. And Harry Ueno made a big stink and of course the administration, which was a part of this overall scheme, struck back at Harry Ueno. Especially when this mob decided to do something about the fact that the administration had picked up Harry on a trumped-up charge that he had beaten or killed... somebody had been killed. And of course the administration immediately decided that it must be Harry Ueno because he's a "troublemaker."

FC: You're saying the administration, the WRA camp directors, were corrupt and involved in profiteering, black market profiteering?

MW: Oh yes, some of them, indeed. I don't know, would you like names? [Laughs]

FA: Sure.

MW: Well, I can only name one or two, so I don't think it's...

FA: So in this, in this climate -- well, let's finish the Manzanar. Fred Tayama was beaten up at Manzanar, Harry Ueno was arrested. How did the community respond to the arrest of Harry Ueno for the beating of Fred Tayama?

MW: Well, there was a huge meeting. I think Joe Kurihara had a great deal to, to say about the fact that it's not fair that Harry Ueno should have been taken away to the county jail. And they had a mass meeting. A huge assemblage of Manzanar people just made a big demonstration saying that Harry should be brought back into camp, that he should have a fair trial by his peers. And so Harry was brought into camp, brought back into camp, and he was placed in jail. But the public was not satisfied that he should be left in jail, they wanted him free. And as a result there was one evening this demonstration... to tell you the truth, I cannot remember the facts, you know.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1998, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.