Densho Digital Archive - John Nakada Interview (denshovh-njohn-01-0009)

<Begin Segment 9>

RP: This is tape two of a continuing interview with John Nakada and John, we were just talking about some of the experiences you had with prejudice and discrimination before or just after the war and before the war broke out. What do you remember about your life after Pearl Harbor and before you went to camp? Were there any changes that you were aware of restrictions towards Japanese in the Azusa community?

JN: Well, in the beginning it took a long time after Pearl Harbor, and when they decided that we're... we couldn't be trusted, we were put on curfew and so we had to be in our house before dark. And you had to be there until in the morning so didn't like the idea of being in curfew, you couldn't do anything. So I think that was kind of bad and then of course the President signed 9066 and they put us in the camp and went to Pomona. But even at that time they took, in grammar school the teachers said, you know, "Treat him like you did before," so the teachers were okay but some of the students still had prejudice against the Japanese, against me, you know. So it took a while before that kind of wore off. And the thing that really shocked me is I grew up in basically a white community and all my friends were white, see. And then when we went to camp I'd never seen so many Japanese in all my life. Even the picnics were Japanese but then this was huge, thousands, you know, hundreds and thousands of Japanese. And the white culture and the Japanese culture is very different. So now I had to get used to a Japanese culture, so to me that was kind of a shock. Does that make any sense? [Laughs]

RP: Yes. And do you recall what your feelings were when you learned of the news that you would be removed from your home? Any emotions that you recall seeing with your parents or some of your other brothers and sisters when it dawned on you that you would have to leave?

JN: Yeah my... well, I was eleven years old so I just did what everybody told me. But my brothers, they said, "This isn't right, this is wrong, according to the law this shouldn't be done." And my parents were... they came from a Japanese culture and you just do what the government says because in Japan they brought this mentality back from Japan to America that, you obey the Emperor, you obey the police, you obey everybody in authority and you do what they say. And so that's the thing that they said and so my dad always said that you just kind of do what you have to do. And they have a word for that, you probably heard it maybe, shigata ga nai. Anyway, that can't be helped, you just kind of do it. And I grew up with that word, my parents used that to me all the time. So when I read that in books and things, you know, I knew what it meant. It can't be helped. And I know this one woman, she wrote some books on the camp and I forgot what her name was but she said that shigata ga nai, to define that, it's like a woman getting raped, she had no control, see, couldn't be happening so they said shigata ga nai. So that's a pretty good definition I think. Can't be helped, you have no control over it, just happens. Anyway, that's kind of the situation there.