<Begin Segment 15>

Off camera: Do you recall anything about the "loyalty questionnaire" and your family discussing it or talking about it?

JO: That's an interesting question. I didn't hear about it directly, but when my parents went to request permission to leave, because they had to request permission to leave the camp, I think part of it was signing that "loyalty questionnaire." My father was approved, fine, he could go, but my mother wasn't. And the reason was that her father was arrested, because she was loyal, there was no question about her being loyal, she was also a citizen. But they would not approve of her permission to leave until she went through further interrogation, so they asked her more questions, talked to her, I guess, I don't know. And then finally she got approved. But until she was approved, my father would not leave. She had to be approved to leave before he would leave. So once she got approved to leave, then he went first, he went and got a trip to New York, a one-way ticket to New York and twenty-five dollars, and he went to New York and found a job that would take him to Chicago. So the job then took him to Chicago and he went and settled there in Chicago and called for us, and then we went after school was out. So we went in July, in July of '44, I think it was July of '44, because we were there when August, you know, the VJ Day, August 6th.

KL: In '45?

JO: Yeah.

KL: But you went to Chicago in '44?

JO: Yeah. There was something that happened in August of '44, and I think it was called VJ Day. It was something to do with the attacking of Japan, just like VE Day was attacking of Europe.

KL: Did your dad have some sponsorship or some organization that helped him get to New York?

JO: This friend of his that worked at the Public Works, I guess he had gone earlier to New York, and he sponsored him, but he didn't really need the sponsor because he stayed at the Y and then I think that's what it was, I was reading his records. And he moved to Chicago, got a job on his own, but that was the only thing about the questionnaire and being questioned about your loyalty and whether they could leave camp. Because actually, that loyalty questionnaire was supposedly a questionnaire to, for the application to leave camp.

KL: Right, that's what the intended purpose was. It's interesting because I found this quote in Born Free and Equal attributed to your mom, saying, "I'm glad my faith in America is strong enough to stand the test of evacuation." And I'm curious, we'll wrap up this tape with this question about what do you think was responsible for her faith in this country?

JO: Well, she lived a comfortable life in this country, because her father was wealthy, she went to SC, graduated in 1931, and she just... she had a car to drive when she was young. She didn't have it anymore when she got married, but she just had a very nice life, I think. If you talked to somebody else, maybe a farmer's wife or even like Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's mother, they had a completely different life than our family.

[Interruption]

KL: So you guys had determined to... this is tape three of a December 2, 2013, interview with Joyce Okazaki. And we left you kind of in Chicago, where you guys had just relocated, and I wonder what you found when you arrived there. Where did you go in Chicago and what did you think of it?

JO: Well, my first impression, my father had rented a one-room above a bar on Clark and Division for us to live there, because there was a housing shortage. So we stayed there for a month while they looked for other places, and because there was a housing shortage, Chicago, the city of Chicago I guess opened up this tenement type place and had it, it was sort of condemned, but they repainted the inside. And one of the units was still available, so my parents took it and we moved there. This was 1007 Oakley Boulevard, Chicago. It's no longer there. University of Illinois, Chicago, took over that whole area, I guess. But we lived there and we went to elementary school, my sister and I. And because the school system, the public school system in Chicago was very poor, we went to parochial schools. My mother, I don't know if she knew the reputation of the public schools, but just from talking to the other parents, because actually, this tenement building was also filled with friends and relatives from Manzanar, so go figure. I never did figure that out. But anyway...

KL: What was the rest of the neighborhood surrounding?

JO: The rest was Italian, mostly Italian, and some Polish and Irish at school, but it was mostly an Italian neighborhood. Italian stores, pizza stores, grocery stores with the cheese hanging, and things like that, typical Italian. And the women, mothers hanging out the door, windows, and yelling at their kids, swearing, it's fun. Anyway, we went to parochial school because my mother always was concerned with our education even though I don't really think she was aware of it, but she was, because we also went to, I went to a private high school, Catholic high school there. The public high school in my neighborhood was like the Blackboard Jungle high school, you know, Up the Down Staircase. I don't know if you saw any of those old movies, but it's with the students throwing tomatoes at the teachers and at the walls, kids talking back.

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