Densho Digital Archive - George Yoshinaga Interview (denshovh-ygeorge

<Begin Segment 9>

AL: When you were at Santa Anita did you live in a barracks or a stable?

GY: Stable, no, I lived in the barracks and that's why I... my memory of Santa Anita is not that harsh, so when, six years ago, when they started putting up different I guess you call them monuments at different assembly centers, Santa Anita was the largest one and yet they wouldn't put anything up. So I went to racetrack and talked to the people there. They said, no, says, "Racetrack is a fun place and we don't want to put anything up that will remind people of it." So I said, "It's part of your history, that we lived on your property," but they continued to refuse. So one of my close friends is a supervisor in Los Angeles County and Arcadia was within his territory so his name is Mike Antonovich. So I went to him and I said, "Mike, I'm trying to get this so people will know that this was part of..." so he got on the case and we went to talk to the mayor of Arcadia and so finally the racetrack said, "Okay. Compose the words that you want on the plaque and we'll put it up." So it's there now. [Laughs]

AL: Do you know what the plaque says? Did you write it?

GY: Yeah, it simply just says during the war the Santa Anita race track was used as a housing, they didn't call it a evacuation assembly center, as housing for Japanese Americans. They gave it, "18,000 resided here until they were permanently moved inland." That's all it says but at least now people that go there to visit always stand in front and have pictures taken of it.

AL: Did you have any role in writing that text?

GY: Yeah, I wrote it and I presented it to them and they didn't change anything.

AL: Did you have any... I know like, I should back up, the plaque at Manzanar which was put in, it was cast in 1972 and installed in 1973, extremely controversial.

GY: Oh, really?

AL: The wording on there. Did you have other people who had opinions about what should go on that plaque at Santa Anita?

GY: No, I didn't want to make it too harsh, I just wanted to let people know that that was indeed the assembly center for Japanese Americans who were evacuated. So I chose my words more with a lot of thought. I could've put in a lot of other things but then I figured they wouldn't put it up if I did that.

AL: Why do you want people to know about Santa Anita?

GY: Well, I thought just a part of... I went to a couple of other dedications at different assembly centers, I said how come they don't do this for Santa Anita? But because other assembly centers were not permanent, you know, they had fair grounds, where Santa Anita was more of a established...

AL: So what was your emotional response to the guys who said, I mean I know that you went ahead and talked to Mr. Antovich?

GY: Antonovich, yeah.

AL: When they said, "You know what, people come here for fun, let's not talk about it." What comes to your mind when people say that?

GY: Well, the first thing that came to my mind was that they didn't realize the impact of the evacuation and in fact at one point I told one of the officers at the track, I said that, "Do you know that a large majority of the people that come to your track can bet on horses are Japanese Americans?" [Laughs] And he told me, "What does that have to do with this?" I says, "Well, I think that they would be very appreciative if you did something like this," but that didn't move them. It took politics to get it done.

AL: So I know other people who were at Santa Anita who were very politically active like for instance, Rose Ochi, of course she was a small child there, she's been very involved with Manzanar but obviously has a lot of strong feelings about the whole experience and it's interesting just to me that you're the one that did the plaque for Santa Anita because I know there's so many people who are very politically active.

GY: Yeah, that's the thing is that a lot of these things are political.

[Interruption]

GY: Didn't they have a special reception room at the Cal for the last year?

AL: They used to have that same room that we're in though. So we were talking a little bit about the plaque in Santa Anita but I'd like to actually go back again to the 1942 and the trip down you said that your mother was in bad --

GY: Yeah, her health was very poor and if it was today she probably would have survived a few more years but they didn't have medication, the type of medication for... she had diabetes, you know. And then when we went to camp, Heart Mountain, they didn't have any special diet so since we all eat rice they cooked rice and that's the worst thing a diabetic could eat, you know.

AL: What was your family number, do you recall?

GY: My what?

AL: Your family number going to camp?

GY: My sister and my mother went to Heart Mountain and my two other sisters went to Tule Lake.

AL: And did your brother go to --

GY: My brother, yeah, he was... but he was married so we didn't have the same family number, you know. They issued us family numbers.

AL: What was yours? Do you remember the number they issued you?

GY: Yeah, 3772 or something or like that. That's another funny thing is that no matter how old we get we remember our army serial number and our camp number. If somebody asked me what's your social security number, I got to look at my card. [Laughs]

AL: Do you recall your address at Santa Anita?

GY: Yeah, 24-10-A.

AL: 24-10-A.

GY: Yeah, twenty-four, Block 24, Barrack 10, Unit A. They had A B C D E, four different units. A is for people, families of three or less and then the others were for larger families so I can sympathize with some of these families that had six kids all living in one unit.

AL: How big was your unit?

GY: Gee, it was about this size.

AL: So this is like maybe twenty by --

GY: So we had two cots and they had me against this wall.