Densho Digital Archive - George Yoshinaga Interview (denshovh-ygeorge

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AL: So this is tape two of an oral history interview with George Yoshinaga on the 10th of August, 2010, and we were talking about your mother and her health at Santa Anita. What are some of the things you remember about Santa Anita? Did they have, for instance, searchlights, were you there during any of the unrest?

GY: I was a spectator when we had that riot.

AL: What can you tell us about it?

GY: Well, the thing was since they were trying to keep everything under control, they would push us back and they came in, the MPs came in but it was such a mess that they couldn't do too much to control. I think if it was someplace else they probably would have taken out the weapons and start shooting but --

AL: What led to that riot?

GY: There was so many rumors, but one of the most prominent rumor was that the government had sent some people in to spy on us. And I don't know how accurate that was, but from what I was told is that they cornered this one person in the barrack and then it generated a lot of... the word started getting around, we got this guy trapped and actually, there was only a handful of guys that started the trouble. And they were shipped out early. After the riot was over they put 'em in military vehicles and I don't know where they sent them.

AL: How many people were involved in that riot?

GY: Oh, the whole camp, as far as the physical part, I would say a couple of thousand people. But the rest of us were spectators, we lined up on the side to watch them.

AL: What were they doing?

GY: Well, mostly yelling and screaming and that's the first time I really sensed that the resentment people had of being in camp. Although we felt that way, it wasn't really brought out physically.

AL: How did the government deal with it? Like who did they send in and how did they deal with it?

GY: Well, the twenty people that were supposed to be the ones that agitated everybody were thrown... I remember we went down to see when they were thrown in the trucks and nobody knew where they were being sent. That was the whole thing and even today I don't think many people knew where they went to. They didn't go to prison or anything but someone said they had sent them to another camp, to a relocation camp that was already established. And I don't know if that was Manzanar or whatever.

AL: How many soldiers were there?

GY: I would say two truckloads, so probably about fifty.

AL: And how were they armed?

GY: Well, they had machine guns mounted on the top of the trucks but most of them had rifles, M-1 rifles, although at that time not being in the military myself I didn't know an M-1 from a bb gun you know. [Laughs]

AL: How did it... I mean they took the guys away but what happened with the other 2,000 people?

GY: Well, after they came in on the trucks, people really kind of settled down. They realized that what are we doing, you know.

AL: Did you take your two by four to the riot?

GY: [Laughs] I would have hit some other Japanese Americans if I did that.