<Begin Segment 15>

KL: You showed me a membership certificate from when your mom joined the Japanese American Citizens League.

YI: Uh-huh.

KL: Do you know anything about her decision to join, or had she been a member before 1942?

KM: I don't know, but I think she joined because her cousin or somebody must have told her, "It'd be a good idea if you signed up for this."

YI: Uncle Roy?

KM: I don't know who would tell her. I don't think he would, because he went home to Japan during the war. But I'm sure somebody... maybe one of the guys that were proselytizing and encouraging membership, saying, "Why don't you join this group, 'cause they're pro-America," or whatever.

KL: So you think she was... do you think she was affiliated with the group before 1942?

KM: No.

YI: She just was a member. I don't think she was active.

KM: Yeah, she never went to meetings or anything.

YI: She did it because she thought it was the right thing to do, I think the cousin or whoever it was probably talked her into it, I mean, telling her that it would be a good thing to do.

KM: She wasn't a joiner.

YI: Well, she went to ikebana, flower arranging.

KM: Arranging flowers is not the same as volunteering.

YI: Those kind of things, but she didn't do political things. But she said that this was the safest place for us to be in Manzanar, because had we stayed on the outside, she felt that we might be in danger. So this was, even though the guns were pointed inward, she felt it was safer for us to be there.

KL: Do you have a sense for where those feelings came from, any particular experiences?

YI: I don't think there was an experience, I just think she felt that. Because she told me, she said it would not be safe for us to be out.

KL: Well, you had that sense that she took you out of school.

KM: Yeah, because she didn't know what the reaction would be. She didn't want harm to come to the kids, just for insurance, keep them out and safe. That's my only sense of the whole thing, was safety of children. Because they didn't do anything that I can recall that was in any way political. So I have to think the generation that promoted the redress, they took it on themselves to help the Issei cause.

YI: And my father did not live to see that day; he passed before they did the redress. Kind of would have wished he could have seen that, that it was recognized as a mistake. But he was never bitter, do you remember?

KM: No. He should have been bitter, he had four kids...

YI: One in the basket...

KL: How did he reconcile that, do you think?

YI: I don't know.

KL: Being forced out of his home.

KM: Because it had to be traumatic for the younger people, adults. Here you are, a bona fide citizen of these United States...

KL: But he didn't really express anything about it?

YI: But he was never bitter about it, it was just an experience we had to live through. And so consequently we don't feel it either. I mean, you know, if I'd have heard it in the house, I'm sure I might have some feelings about it, but we didn't.

KL: How did... you've talked about a couple ways your parents spent their time in camp, your dad with the wood shop. Would you tell us more about the classes they enrolled in or what they did with their time there?

KM: Yeah, they did go to classes. My mother went to craft classes, and my dad went to English class.

KL: How was their English before coming into Manzanar?

KM: My mother had been voluntarily "ghettoized." She chose to not learn... she did go to English classes, but my father had to learn because he was in business, but he wasn't that proficient.

YI: But he read a lot. He just... I think a lot of them were English, Japanese translated ones, I mean, that he could read English books, do you know what I mean? And it would be in Japanese...

KL: So he read English?

YI: No, he would read it in Japanese, because I know some of the...

KM: Translated.

YI: Yeah. And, but unfortunately, we didn't really get to know him until after he passed. It's sad to say that...

KL: What do you mean by that?

YI: Well, because he was very literate, and we didn't communicate then. And I would see him in there doing his calligraphy, and I'd just walk by the room, I'm a kid, I don't... I have a life with friends and so forth. And now, I'm doing calligraphy, and it's a struggle. It's not easy, you know. And he could do the... what do you call that real small one? They're like prayers, and you do the calligraphy really small. And it would just be page and page. Not only that, though she picked only some sketches she did, I have a couple of framed pictures that he made postwar as he got older. And I'm thinking, "This was all still in this man?" I mean, we had no appreciation of his abilities. She said, yeah, he made furniture, my mother bought a table, he made the end tables to match at night school at the high school, with beautiful walnut...

KM: Yeah, he didn't have the tools.

YI: ...wood to match that table, because they couldn't afford...

KM: The wood shop teacher knew him.

YI: Yeah. And art, and just so many things. And ashamed that... I think some of my brothers maybe had his artistic thing.

KM: At this point our cousin says, "And did he walk on water next?"

YI: [Laughs] Well, you know why? Because we didn't appreciate him.

KL: When did he die?

KM: 1986.

YI: Yeah, it's too bad, because he was doing all that, and then every year at New Year's, he would braid the bamboo and make... for the door.

KM: Not bamboo, it was rice, the rice that he grew.

YI: Anyway, and make a wreath, and then have the orange and green, whatever they were. And we didn't even save any one of those, we just threw 'em out. I mean, I'd love to have one right now.

[Interruption]

KM: He would gather rice and plant it, but these were sterile plants, because it didn't have any meat on the branch. So he would grow it and harvest it and makes one of these wreaths. [Shows wreath] So it's got a fern, pine.

YI: His was a little more ornate and bigger.

KM: And he would grow it. He carved a lion head, you know like they do in the Chinese parade.

YI: Yes, he did walk on water. [Laughs]

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.