<Begin Segment 18>

TI: I'm going to now make a big leap here, because I want to kind of tie up a kind of, to find out what happened to your family back in the United States. Because when you're fifteen, right before the war started, or a couple years before the war started, you came to Japan. And during all this period, you never saw your parents and your siblings. So during the war, what happened to your family in the United States?

IS: My father was active in the Methodist church, and they had what they called the Nihonjinkai. It's a Japanese Association type, and all... they had liaison with the Buddhist temple and the Christian churches. And anytime they wanted to have some kind of a all-Japanese affair, this Nihonjinkai would plan it and they would get the word out to the Buddhist, through the Buddhist temple, through the Christian church. That pretty much covered all the Japanese. Well, my father was always a representative from the Christian church to this Nihonjinkai. So his name was on the "bad" list. Plus the fact he had a son in Japan, plus, he had a son-in-law, that's my sister's husband, who was military age, and right after the Executive Order came out, the FBIs came out to the ranch and they pick him up. And they go through, we had our little storage shed, and they went through there, and I think they took some pictures and stuff from there. But, so they, early on, he's taken to Bismarck. That's not the ten camps, that's what they call the...

TI: Department of Justice.

IS: Yeah, Department of Justice camp, they're like that, and Crystal City, I guess. But he goes there and then I mentioned about it, about my picture in a school uniform, the guy questioned him, tells him that, "You have a son in the military," and he says, "No, he's too young yet." But they pull out this picture and said, "Now can you deny it?" And then, but he was active in the church --

TI: And just to follow up, the picture was you in a school uniform.

IS: Yes.

TI: Not a military uniform.

IS: No. But then there was this Dr. Smith who used to be, they called him the superintendent of the, in the Methodist church, he's like a Bishop, I guess. And those days, they call it provisional conference, they were segregated. The Methodist church had a branch for the Japanese church within their, the whole body. And Dr. Smith used to head that because he spoke perfect Japanese and everything. But, and my father knew him real well. And he came to visit Bismarck, and he was there. And my father told him about me and the problem he's having about having a son in the military. And so I think he said, "I can't meet with the guy now, but soon as I get back, I'll write a letter and see what we can do." And I think, because of that kind of thing, he helped him out. And he was able to leave that camp after a few months and join the rest of the family in Poston.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.