Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Susumu Yenokida Interview
Narrator: Susumu Yenokida
Interviewer: Richard Potashin
Location: Denver, Colorado
Date: July 5, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-ysusumu-01-0016

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RP: Sus, over the years there's always been a schism in the Japanese American community regarding the people who went to war and the people who resisted the draft. And have you been a target of criticism or, excluded in any way from the community regarding your position and your stance? I mean, I saw, I saw a whole line of 442nd guys yesterday waiting to go into the main ballroom and I just thought of you. And, so how, how are things now? I mean, are you, do you have conversations with these 442nd guys?

SY: Oh yeah, oh yeah.

RP: I mean do they...

SY: I have a good friend that is, was in, not in the 442, but he had become a good friend in Sacramento and I visit him quite often. But he was a regular army man and he was drafted into the army before the war and he become... he came out as a major, out of the army. So he did real well. And I explained to them, I explained to him that, "Hey, I'm not hiding behind anybody's skirt. I'm gonna tell you the exact story as to what happened to me." And I told him my story. He says, "Well, if it was a situation where... if I were to have that situation I probably would have done the same thing." And a lot of the people I know would also say that. However, there is a very few that has nothing to do with us. It's still today. They cannot let go of that feeling that we were a coward, we were a dog, and we didn't go to the army. They have, they still have this in their minds. It's not a very big number, but it's still there. We had an apology thing in... before this apology thing in San Francisco we're at this meeting where they were gonna... the Florin JACL was a sponsor and, and they were talking about this particular thing. Andy Noguchi was, was the narrator and he was talking about it and quite a... not a great number, but then a few of the people was really objecting to the fact that we were being honored as a resister. So no matter what you do, no matter what you say, our past is still the same to some people.

RP: And some people have changed their attitudes too, so...

SY: I had... I befriended a real, real good friend. And this guy was a, was with the MacArthur office in Tokyo. And I didn't know this. But one day he says, "Sus," he says, "I want to talk to you. And I know I've read about your exploits, that you had resisted from the army and you had spent some time in prison." And this guy was a, was a noted interpreter. And he told me this: "No matter what anybody says, you did the right thing and don't you forget that." He... whenever I think about him, my tears come to my eyes. He was a reporter for the Hokubei Mainichi out of Stockton. And he knew... he read extensively. And he was able to write Japanese just like English. And he was, he was a college graduate out of Japan, spent whole life in Japan. His father was a successful beans farmer in Sutter Basin, California. And he went in, mentioned Sutter Basin, I says, "Hey, I've been there. I farmed there many, many years." He says, "What?" "Yeah." So we became good friends through all that. And he was telling me that first of all, one day he gets a call from, from a junk dealer in San Diego. And they had found a, what do you call it... temple bell that came from Japan. And it had bullet marks on it and they, they recognized that it came from a certain temple in, where is that... the southern island below Iwo Jima. And then he was telling me about the incident where a lot of times, he was able to write to people but never got a call from people because of the fact that communication was not that good at that time. And one day he says he... he got a letter from his friend from an army camp and he says, "I've got something interesting to show you. And if you can have time enough to come visit me, I want to show you something." Okay, so he goes to this army camp and he's in the military, dressed in his uniform. He goes to the military there. And come to find out that a lot of the people that was in this particular island, they, lot of 'em jumped into the sea because of the fact that the Americans were invading them. However, there were something like 2,500 people that was there that was civilians that was, the army had brought back to United States and they were housed there. And he says, "You know," he says, "It's amazing how humane the United States government could be." So, I often think about that and tears always come to my eyes.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.