<Begin Segment 10>

SF: What are your recollections of when your dad volunteered for the 442 or what the feeling was and how people would react?

JG: I cannot say that I know what the feeling was. All I know is that afterwards it was articulated to me what the feelings were. We talked about it and there was a lot of feelings one way or another. Some people were supportive and other people were angry. And today having read some of their feelings and why they came to them, I truly can understand how they felt that way because I mean if you're young and impressionable and someone, and you're a citizen of that country, like the United States, citizens of the United States and they put you in a relocation camp, you could be pretty angry. But then my parents took it more stoically and said, "This is the way it is, this is what's happening, we're going to take it and work our way through it," even though it is was awful.

SF: How did your dad come to the decision to volunteer for the 442?

JG: He said, "I'm an American," you know, that's what it is. "I am not Japanese, I'm not a Japanese national, I am an American. This is what's happening; I will serve my country." That's the way he was.

TI: What was the reaction of your mother? That your dad would volunteer while --

JG: She was supportive, she was very, very... I read some wonderful letters between the two of them on my father's side back, my mother's letters, I don't know if he kept them but I have little photocopies, you know how they send you photocopies, I have those photocopies today of my father's letters to my mother.

TI: And when you say they're really wonderful, I mean do you recall anything in particular?

JG: Oh, yeah, he would say that things are really rough now, not going into to detail because they would be scratched out anyway. When he was in Italy he was part of that group that went up that side of the hill to get out the German nest, you know. I can't even remember the name of that.

TI: Maybe the breaking of the Gothic Line towards the end of the war?

JG: Yes.

TI: Okay.

JG: So anyway they were very loving letters. She was very supportive of him and so to say that when Mrs. Duveneck, the woman who supported the rights of Japanese Americans to have... that she said that this is wrong and she supported them and tried to make their life more comfortable. And by the invitation to go to her home, our life was a lot better. She did so in that when I started school as a six year old, 'cause I just turned six.

TI: Yeah, before I'm going to ask you more about that. But before we go there, going back to your father, do you recall any conversation between your father and you before he left for training?

JG: No, not at all, I don't. All I know is that he made that decision. I have this wonderful picture of him and all the men at that time.

SF: Who left camp?

JG: Who left camp and who volunteered at the same period of time and my uncle is in there and there's just maybe no more than twenty men.

TI: You also mentioned earlier your mother got sick with asthma and had to go to the hospital. When that happened, who took care of you?

JG: Probably my grandmother because they lived next door. See, there was my mother and me in this one little place and then there was my grandmother, grandfather and my Aunt Ruth and my Aunt Mary. My uncle was working somewhere, I don't know why he wasn't in camp but he left early and he was working on the railroad.

SF: Do you remember any feelings about the "loyalty questionnaire"?

JG: No, I don't, all I know I got the residual of it which means that my father said "yes-yes," I'm supportive. Because I don't think a five year old or a four year old -- I understood it later and I could understand both sides.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.