Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Saburo Masada Interview
Narrator: Saburo Masada
Interviewer: Kristen Luetkemeier
Location: Fresno, California
Date: September 11, 2014
Densho ID: denshovh-msaburo-01-0023

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KL: You've mentioned George Aki, and I wanted to ask you to tell me about the Nisei Christian Oral History Project and what that was, who was involved, why you were involved.

SM: My colleague, Reverend Hei Takurabe, wanted to do a project of Issei oral history project, and his colleagues, other ministers, they all said, "You don't need to do that. They're still alive and well." But they all opposed him, but I thought it was a good thing, and I know that he was interviewing people already and that he was really getting his whole understanding of Japanese Americans. Turned around from being treated, being criticized so much by his church members for being, like an activist. So I joined the board and we finished the Issei oral history project, and we said, let's --

KL: Why did he want to document the Issei?

SM: Well, because the stories that he was learning from them were just so inspiring and unique for here, being here in America, that he thought it was really important. But unfortunately, the other Nisei leaders didn't think it was necessary. But by the time he finished, most of the Isseis had died, so that's how important it was that we had started. And then, so the natural thing was to start interviewing the Niseis, and again, we were hearing the Niseis saying, "We're not ready to die yet." But by the time we finished, most of 'em were gone, many of them were gone. It took a number of years. And for that oral history project I was privileged to interview George Aki, the chaplain. So we went to Claremont to interview him, and one of the things that meant a lot to me was his, when I asked him what does he remember about 1942, and he's from Fresno and he was going to theological school in Berkeley and was in his last year before graduation, and the rumors were going around, which we all heard, "Put 'em in concentration camp, round them all up." And I remember hearing that and reading that, and he said, "I was telling everybody that'll never happen in America. This is America. America wouldn't do anything like that. We're Americans. That will never happen." And then he said he and his young bride was put into Tanforan detention center, and he said, "When the gate closed behind me, my faith in America died, my faith in God died, and I died." And when I heard him express that, it really rang a bell for me that that's how we all felt, though we couldn't put it into words like that. But that's, that was the kind of shock and trauma of the experience. And I was only in sixth grade, but I identified with that kind of feeling, and so I've been using that to try to describe to people who don't understand how we might've felt, that that's the kind of trauma we all felt even though we couldn't verbalize it like that. So that was, meant a lot to me.

And George, when he was in, at the end of the war, when he was shipped to Europe, to... France? Well, general told him, "Chaplain, you know how we win war?" He said, "No, tell me." Said, "Well, this is how we win war. Eisenhower had his whole staff of generals and officers, and we, he told us how we're going to invade Normandy. He said we're going to send these crack trained soldiers to secure the beach, and that's how we're going to invade." And then night before he called an emergency meeting, said, "We've changed our plans. We're going to send some fifty, sixty-thousand recruits who know nothing about securing a beach, we're going to send them first and then we're going to send the crack team in." Which meant he was going to sacrifice all those soldiers, and George said, "When I heard that, I decided I'm against war. I'm against war." So when he came back after being discharged, the word got around because he was opposing war, among the university students that here was a person who was, who would help them and counsel them to become conscientious objectors. And so he would meet with these students and talk to their parents to make sure that they weren't draft dodgers but that they sincerely was against the war, and he went to bat for them and became real well liked and popular among the draft opponents.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.