Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Eiko Yamaichi Interview
Narrator: Eiko Yamaichi
Interviewers: Larisa Proulx, Kristen Luetkemeier
Location: San Jose, California
Date: July 15, 2015
Densho ID: denshovh-yeiko-01-0017

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LP: Yeah, and I have, actually, questions about just your brothers and that whole dynamic. What were they doing in Tule Lake? They were, it sounds like, probably elementary school age, or maybe even getting into middle school age? So what was life like for them at Tule Lake?

EY: You know, I never had any communication with them because that's when the family structure broke up, right, in camp. So then I don't remember that my brother, especially the one next to me, whether he ate with us or not. And my younger brother, I more or less was able to say, okay, you have to be, and eat with us in our block, not go elsewhere and eat. Once in a while he would go with this friends and go eat some other block, but more or less he was pretty good about it. But my next brother, I have no idea.

LP: Was the extent of your family at Tule Lake, that was it? It was your mom, your dad, and your brothers? Was there anybody else that was in your family at Tule Lake or moving around with you?

EY: Yeah, there was just us. Because my uncle was from L.A. formerly, see, and so he was evacuated to, I think, Santa Anita assembly center. Then from there, I think, they were shipped directly to Rohwer. So I was given liberty to visit my auntie, because I told my father I'm going to go see my Auntie Mary. So they said, "Okay, you go ahead." So then I went to the office and I got a permission, that's when I found out what real discrimination was, the South. I was just totally... how would I say it? That people could be so callous and so discriminating, just because they were black over there. And my only experience, and I have to tell you, I got on the bus, which was fun, and we got to the bus depot, that's when I found out they had a drinking faucet for the blacks, drinking faucet for the whites. I didn't know where I belonged, so I figure, okay, I must be dark, so I started to do the faucet. And somebody, "Hey, you." And I looked, I was the only one happened to be at that time, so I looked around, and I went like this, and he said, "Yeah, what are you doing?" I said, "I'm drinking water." He said, "No, not there, over here." So he told me to drink out of the faucet. Okay, fine.

So then in order for me to get to Rohwer from the depot, I had to take another bus. So I paid for the ticket and I got on, and I was the first one on there, and in the bus it says, "blacks sit in the back, whites sit in the front," it says. I didn't know where I belonged, so I just paid my ticket to the driver, and I was the first one on, no one's there. And I could see the driver looking at the mirror, and eventually he says, "Where are you going?" and I'm looking around. And I turned around, I went like this again, and he said, "Yeah, you." So I pointed to the sign, and I said, "I'm going back here." He said, "No, you sit behind me." "You want me to sit behind you?" He says, "Yeah." Okay, so I sat behind the driver. So a few more got on and the black people sat back and the white people sat there. Then he started driving, we were in the highway, not a freeway, highway. And there's a family about five, parents and three kids, so the father gets out there and he's going like this to stop the bus. So he stops and he lets them on and they sit in the back, and we went on. And there were more blacks that got on than white. By the time, about the fourth stop or so, he's muttering to himself, he said, "These goddamn blacks," he says. And I heard him and I said, "How could he say that?" but that's what he must be doing every day. He passed them up, he wouldn't let them on. And I thought, "How cruel," and I thought, "Discrimination of me? That's worse." And it just stayed with me, and I think today, then I look at the Muslims and all this, so I says, "Hey, they're just the same as I am, there's no need to discriminate. And it just struck me and stayed with me, it still does. And people in the South lived like that, and I just thought, "How could they?" But that's the way of life for them, they don't think nothing of it. And when the couple of workers from the outside, white people came in to adjust our doors because our doors were not fitting correctly in the camp, in a barracks. The workers were discriminating among their own self, there were some dark carpenters and white carpenters. And I could hear the white, the cussing is saying bad things about the black carpenters, and I'm going... it's terrible. And to think that they put up with that all these years. Of course, we put up with our kind of discrimination, but to be like that and live like that, it just struck me. So when I compare that and then to myself, we were much more fortunate. Even if we had to sit way up on high, we'd go to the theater, and we want to sit down with the rest of the people, at that time, they said, "No, you have to go upstairs," where the film machine is and it's real hot," you had to sit there and watch the movie. That's discrimination, too. But they put up with it, because that's the only way we could see a film.

LP: Where was that? Where did that take place with the film?

EY: The film thing? I think Jimi was talking about being treated that way here in San Jose at that time, way back before the war. And how he was discriminated, he paid the same price as the next person, but because of his face and color, he had to sit upstairs. And so he says, "Don't tell me about discrimination, I know what it feels like." [Laughs] But I think about those people, it must hurt.

LP: Within Rohwer, was that also noticeable, the attitude of African Americans at the time and I'm just curious, even though the camp is in a setting of the outside community dealing with those things, did that permeate into the camp at all? Or did people within the camp see, like, your being observant and having this experience of recognizing discrimination just happening to another group of people? Was there any attitude at Rohwer that you noticed about African Americans?

EY: I never spoke about it. But if others did, I have no idea. I think if I was more extroverted and more sharing with people, maybe it might have been different, but I never did find out. But boy, that just hit me smack in the face, and I'll never forget it. And how they could tolerate... that's why when I read the papers today and then, you know, this so-called picking on dark people and shooting them and all that, that's so uneducated and not tolerable and understanding. In fact, a couple of years ago, down here... technology center something, and they had a showing of our bodies, anatomy and all that, and mostly it was Oriental faces, but they had the same anatomy. And when I was there, there was a grandmother and a grandson and this little boy, must be about eight years old, maybe ten, and he looked at her and he said, "You know, Grandma, if you take the skin off, we're all the same, aren't we?" And I heard that and I said, "Gee, this guy is really smart," you know? And the grandma said, "That's right." And I just, I had tears in my eyes then, I still do. But if people stop to think that, we're all the same. We shouldn't treat each other that way.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.