<Begin Segment 19>

AM: And over the years you experienced some discrimination. Could you describe those situations? We'll talk about before camp, you told me about that.

JS: Well, when they led us, marched us down the, from the camp to the train, all the way around, I remember the white people along the sidewalk, "Damn Japs," and everything else going to the train. And funny thing, though, when we got to the camps, and when I got released to Little Rock, I went to the toilet, and I didn't know it was "black" and "white," but I went to the "black" toilet and I came out and the policeman, he gave me holy heck because I wasn't supposed to go in the "black" toilet. Here I just got out of camp, and then, then we got to the train, and a black lady got on our same car. And they put a curtain between us and her, because all of a sudden we're "white." And it was, that part there was a little, little odd.

AM: And then during the war, there were things about jobs...

JS: Yeah, I went to, when I got to Denver, I went to Railway Express, and they says, "You Japanese or Chinese?" I said, "Japanese." Says, "Nope." And then in the theater in Longmont, Colorado, we went, went to a movie and we had to go to the top, to the upstairs balcony. They won't let us sit in the bottom, and it was, it was... that's the kind of discrimination at that time.

AM: And in Cleveland, you saw some signs in the barbershops?

JS: Yeah, oh yeah. There's shops says, "Free shaves to Japs."

AM: And you had to explain that to me. What did that mean?

JS: Yeah, there were signs like that all over.

AM: And that meant what?

JS: [Laughs] I don't know, but that's, it was pretty odd that... it was kind of sad, but at that time, that's still the way that people felt, huh?

AM: Yeah, and, see, I didn't, I still, I hadn't, didn't understand what that meant. You told me that meant they were gonna cut your throat. Is that...

JS: [Laughs] "Free shave," that's what they wanted.

AM: Oh, okay. And then outside of camp, you talked about the curtain, and when you, in some ways you were considered white, and in other ways you were considered black.

JS: Yeah, well, that's the thing. In the South, when we were in Arkansas after camp, we were considered white. And here we just left the camps and we're, all of a sudden we're white people.

AM: Okay.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2004 Densho and The Japanese American Museum of San Jose. All Rights Reserved.