<Begin Segment 19>

TI: So meanwhile, your mother and your other siblings went to...

IS: Poston, yes. And Pat did, too, although he left camp and went to, by coincidence, the University of Nebraska. [Laughs] But you know, in Brawley, the next farmer was Kikuchi. They had two daughters, then three boys. And the two daughters were the oldest, and then three boys. Three boys, two of them younger than me and one was older than me. But they were murdered in December of '45 -- yeah, '41, the month the war, Pearl Harbor. And they think the Filipinos, they said, they're in the paper, at that time would say what the Japanese were doing in the Philippines, I guess. And they were next-door neighbors. So my father and mother had to go with buckets, and they were murdered right in their house. And the children were there -- or the oldest daughter was at Berkeley, I guess, and they never resolved that. But why I bring that up is I think my mother almost welcomed being taken to camp or something. Because here she was, my father not there, they were living, he was there when the murder happened, but after, they took him away, just with three younger ones, that would have been scary for her.

TI: Because your mother...

IS: She never said that, but when I think about what happened, I think.

TI: When you came back and heard about what happened to your family, any thoughts about that? What did you think when you came back and heard that your father went to a Department of Justice camp, that your family went to Poston?

IS: Well, my... I heard more from my sister. And I mentioned that, she mentioned that Dad used to say how lucky you are to be born in this country when you have all the opportunity and everything. But she said that, "He never said how lucky you are or anything," anything positive. She said, "He didn't say anything negative, but he never said that again, that you were lucky you were born in this country."

TI: Oh, interesting. So he did change.

IS: Yeah. And the Isseis were able to get citizenship. I don't know, I never asked them, but my father and mother never applied for that. I don't know -- you know, like you're a kid and you want, you want a cookie, and you ask and ask and ask, and you never get it. So finally they said, "Okay, here's some," and they said, "No, I don't want it now." [Laughs]

TI: How did they feel about you getting your U.S. citizenship? So here you were Japanese, did they ever talk to you about being a U.S. citizen?

IS: No. I think they were happy that I came back. I never really talked to them, but according to my brother, what he writes, too. I guess they really felt sorry to go through that kind of a deal, giving me up for a youshi.

SF: Going back a bit, in terms of your relationship with your Japanese mom and dad and your uncles, how did that relationship develop up to the end where you left Japan?

IS: Oh. According to my mother, my sister in Japan, she said, "I think when they came to visit you when you were leaving," he came up from Yokohama -- he was very successful in his business. Although he did it all on his own. In fact, when I went to Japan, they still had two people working in the house. But when they were in Osaka, they had five people working, two men, to take care of the outside yard, and three maids in the house. And there were only two adults, but they had three maids in the house. So that way he was real successful. But I think, you know, one is I blame myself, because he was real Japanese. I mean, he would never show a tear, or he would never say... he was the man of the house, and that was... boy, my spouse is really against that. She said, "I don't know how people can live in Japan." [Laughs] But I guess I never lived with them that much, really. And when I did I was so busy studying before I went to Tokyo. Then once I went to Tokyo, I did come back for vacation. But the teacher said, "This summer vacation, you should really catch up, I mean, do your study." And he said, "Go back just for a week at the most, and come back to Tokyo and study." So I really never lived with them, so I never got that kind of close relationship.

TI: But in your book, you did seem to have some regret that you, before you came back to the United States, that you didn't go to visit him, I guess, personally. That you just came back to the United States and...

IS: Yes, I did, but, well, not that incident. It's just that I'm sorry that I couldn't talk to them more about how I felt, and my... since I got married, I met my, my Japanese father had died, but my Japanese mother was still around and I visited her three times in Tokyo. But it was a real, just a formal greetings. We didn't talk about anything, really. It wasn't a good relationship at all.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.