Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: George Yoshinaga Interview
Narrator: George Yoshinaga
Interviewer: Alisa Lynch
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Date: August 10, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-ygeorge_5-01-0007

<Begin Segment 7>

AL: How did you find out that you were going to be sent away?

GY: About I guess a week before. We didn't have that much notice, you know. I don't know why I developed this type of thinking but as far as the evacuation and camp and everything, I don't share the same feelings that most Japanese American do. And yet nobody ever asks me why.

AL: So tell me why?

GY: Well, I guess growing up with as far as school was concerned, I never considered myself any differently. And then when we went to camp I'm sure you may recall that I never referred to camp as a concentration camp. And the thing that kind of bothers me is that today, people that write books or are interviewed or whatever, there's no one of my age group. Most of them were three of four -- even like Norman Mineta, he was what, five years old and yet they ask him for his thinking on camp. And I said, I can't even remember when I was five years old what I did, and yet because of his stature and everybody asks him about camp and so when he gives his point of view, I kind of really object to some of things he says.

AL: And I definitely wanted to talk to you about terminology as we... and sort of how we look back at camp or whatever we call it today. But getting to like the actual experience that you had before you knew what to call it, when you first found out something was going to happen, was that from a poster on a wall? Was that from the radio or the newspaper?

GY: Well, they posted those signs on telephone poles in the Japanese owned business stores, that we were going to be rounded up and taken to camp. And that kind of, as I said because of my growing up experiences, that stunned me because I never considered myself, you know, being a threat to the U.S. just because I was of Japanese heritage.

AL: So how did you deal with that emotionally? I mean had to be, like you said, a shock?

GY: Well, I was really... at that age, it was like an adventure too, you know, that we were all rounded up and given three days' notice to pack our whatever we were allowed to carry. And the thing that really stayed in my mind is we were all taken to the train station in Mountain View and there was only two people that came to see us off, all my friends and that kind of started me thinking, what is this?

AL: Who were those friends who came to see you off?

GY: They were my classmates. Well, one was a classmate and one was my teammate on the football team.

AL: Did they say anything to you as you were leaving?

GY: Well, they were against this, that's why they came, and they told me that... they apologized to me, "Geez, I'm sorry they're doing this to you."

AL: What did you carry, what did you pack to take with you?

GY: I just had my clothing basically. That was about it.

AL: What was the hardest thing to leave behind?

GY: All my personal things like my bicycles and my sporting equipment.

AL: What did you do with that stuff?

GY: I gave it to one of the friends. When we found out I just asked him what do you guys want, come over and get it.

AL: Did you ever get any of it back?

GY: No, 'cause the thing was I didn't go back to Mountain View because when I was in camp I made friends with the people from Los Angeles. They were the majority of the population. So when I came back from the army, my mother was gone, my sister got married, so I had no family. So I decided, well, I'll move to Los Angeles.

AL: What happened to your farm? Did you own the farm you were living on at that time?

GY: Yeah.

AL: What happened to it?

GY: As I recall, a group of people came to Heart Mountain and to make a transaction on buying the property. And I remember that because I sat down when my brother was talking to the people that... and he decided to sell it.

AL: Do you know who the people were?

GY: No.

AL: Or what they paid?

GY: Yeah, at that time I thought it was a lot of money but they had to pay 20,000 dollars.

AL: For how many acres?

GY: It must have been about fifty acres but that area there was really a nothing land. If you didn't farm on it, it was really worthless. Now today if we sold it today it probably would be millions of dollars you know.

AL: Did you get additional scrutiny because you were next to Moffett Field? You said the military used to come out.

GY: Well as I said that there was a lot of talk about that field next to it is owned by a bunch of "Japs." That's the first time I heard somebody use that in reference to us.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright &copy; 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.