Densho Digital Archive - Kan Yagi Interview (denshovh-ykan-01-0011)

<Begin Segment 11>

RP: During the war years and later on when you were in the military and you met other Japanese Americans, did you come in contact with Japanese Americans who had been in some of the camps?

KY: Yes, I was in contact with some, but not for long. The ones that I was in together with for most of my military service, they were... one was from Nevada and the other one was from Washington but he moved away from Washington before the evacuation. So we, three of us didn't experience that kind of removal and camp.

RP: Were you aware of the evacuation and the camps when you were living in Utah? Did you know that were camps like that and people were being excluded off the West Coast because of their ethnicity?

KY: Yes, we became aware of that. In fact, Mother invited a relative in Portland to come to Utah and we would help them find housing and whatnot but they wanted to keep their whole family together so they went to camp. Yeah, we didn't know why but anyway, but Mother made the offer.

RP: Were there families who were relocating to the area that you lived in? Farmers? Out of the camps?

KY: Yeah, a lot of them came to work in the fields and the canneries and whatnot. Kind of like everybody helped win the war. Yeah, there were a lot of students who came and enrolled in the high school, they were from California, a lot of them came from California. I don't know if many came from... yeah, some came from Oregon. Yeah, we had some people who didn't go to camp but they came to the Corinne area to live from Washington.

RP: So they came before the exclusion orders?

KY: Pardon?

Off Camera: They never went to camp?

RP: They never went to camp?

KY: Yeah, they didn't go to camp. Yeah, there were a few of those who somehow had relatives in the area and I guess they helped them move out there. Or they knew people or something.

RP: So you knew about this removal and you heard some of the stories about the camps. What did you think about your situation in relationship to what happened to most Japanese Americans?

KY: When I learned they were going to go to camp, I thought, gee, wonder what they're going to do with so many people together like that in what appeared to be tar paper shacks. I did hear about having to go to horse barns and places like that for assembly centers they called them. I thought, gee whiz that... it must be war. It was harsh treatment but it's like you probably heard the shigata ga nai... can't be helped. I think that attitude was pretty pervasive.