<Begin Segment 15>

KL: Did your family ever talk to you about their experience with the questionnaire that the government issued in 1943?

KN: No, I didn't even know they even answered it. They never talked about it. I don't even know how they answered, but I suspect how they answered.

KL: What are your suspicions?

KN: They probably answered "no-no."

KL: Oh, really? We'll talk after we finish up about a way you can request records about them. It'd be really interesting to see that, it might answer some questions for you.

KN: I'll tell you why, if they were logical, they had to answer "no-no." They'd be a person without a country. You see, they were Japanese nationals.

[Interruption]

KL: Yeah, the administration actually reworded that question, the question that dealt with the emperor, with Japanese loyalty, at Manzanar a couple of times because it was so problematic for Issei. So a lot of Issei were given that question multiple times, and sometimes told not to answer it, and then it was reworded and then it was reworded again.

KN: Yeah, the way they handled it was, if they answered even, "Yes, if you let my parents out," or whatever it is, that was a "no." Anything except an, just a clean yes, it was a "no," and they got segregated.

KL: Did you guys have family members or friends who were sent to Tule Lake?

KN: Hmm?

KL: Do you have family members or friends who were sent to Tule Lake?

KN: Of course. My wife went to Tule Lake from Rohwer.

KL: Do you have any, I mean, there is still, I think, that divide still affects people's lives. Do you have any thoughts about the questionnaire and about Tule Lake and kind of the legacy of it?

KN: Not myself. I really admire the guys who fought in the 442. They made a tremendous sacrifice, but when you look at the other side of this thing, it took a lot of guts to say no, too, because they went to Leavenworth, dishonor, right? And so, but there was a lot of hard feelings between Niseis that were older than me, because you had to take one stand or another, right? I mean, in one extreme, their buddies died in the war, right next to them, and how can you do that, right? So I can understand the thing, and I'm one of the youngest Niseis probably because of that, ten years younger than the average Nisei. So I look at it as a tragic period, I think, where people were forced to take a stand, and everybody paid dearly for it, unfortunately.

KL: Yeah, thanks for that, I think it's an important thing to get people's take on.

KN: Of course, I know people on both sides. One of my friends got exonerated in the Shasta court, county court, you know him. You're going to interview his wife today, tomorrow or so. They actually held a ceremony for them, oh, maybe about five, ten years ago. And they honored him and the judge's son that exonerated him. I thought that was neat.

KL: Yeah. So for those who were watching this, we're talking about Jimi Yamaichi.

KN: Yeah. Jimi is only a few blocks away from me, he always stops by and sees me. Jimi's a very close friend of mine.

KL: He's done a lot for the museum here and for Tule Lake.

KN: Quite a lot. I get a big kick out of him. And when I went to Tule Lake, people joke about, they were pretty mad at him. Jimi was a very young man, about eighteen years old, and they paid him to build the jail. Well, if you knew Jimi, he's a perfectionist, he built a very sturdy jail. So one of the guys that was up there said, "Damn, Jimi, you should have messed up." He said, "Look, I got paid to do a good job, so I did a good job." [Laughs] They started arguing from there again, said, "We couldn't bust out of there." He said, "Well, jails are supposed to be made so you can't bust out, so I built the jail the way I was supposed to." Workmanship, right? And so I'm listening to this conversation that's something that happened seventy years ago. And Jimi's serious, he says, "They paid me for this, I had to do a good job." He says, "But goddang, we couldn't break out." He said, "You're not supposed to be able to break out of jail." You could see this conversation, I thought, Jimi, time out. But it's sort of fun to watch. But the strong sense of values these two man had, they were both honorable men. Here's the eighteen year old kid that built this jail, and he got this onus and he built this thing, it's so small and they couldn't break out of it and they were mad at him. [Laughs]

KL: I know the answer because you told me before we turned on the camera, but where did this conversation occur?

KN: Tule Lake.

KL: It was at the pilgrimage, is that right?

KN: Yeah, we went to one of the pilgrimages, all my cousins, and they all went to Tule Lake, so I took them with me. I took my mother-in-law with me, she went to Tule Lake. So it was a real nostalgic trip, and my cousin Shuji was born in Tule Lake. And as we were going by the old city sign, he says, "I thought I was born in Tule Lake, how come my birth certificate says Newell?" We're in the bus, okay, and we're going by the Tule Lake city limits, the Newell sign, I said, "What does it say, Shuji?" "Oh, is Tule Lake in Newell?" I said, "Yes." "Oh, I always wondered why it said Newell."

KL: What did you think of the Tule Lake pilgrimage?

KN: I think they do a fantastic job of putting it on. I didn't believe the emotion this thing carried, where guys who, little trip I made, they held emotions to that trip, and all of a sudden a bunch of them broke down. That's pretty tough, I said, pretty heavy baggage to carry, burden to carry. Hopefully that did it for 'em, but even their families didn't know that. So you realize the magnitude of stuff like some of these people went through. That's unwritten, must have been a terrible trauma. I tried to take one of my relatives with me, and she wouldn't go. Something happened, she's not willing to talk about it, something happened there. I said, "Why don't you go with us?" "No," just a flat no. Didn't even want to talk about it. So it's going to die with her. So it's tough, it's tougher than most people are willing to admit. Not for people like me because I was pretty young, some of the people it affected, the older ones.

KL: What year did you go to the pilgrimage, do you remember?

KN: Must have been...

KL: It's every other year now and it's the even years, 2002, '04.

KN: I think that was the year they had it two years in a row.

KL: Oh, okay.

KN: It was about 2010 or something like that.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.