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-01-0017

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RP: Sus, your brothers, did any of them serve in the military during the, during World War II? Were they drafted?

SY: My brother Min was the eldest in the family. Nineteen... I think somewhere around 1940 he was supposed to go to the army. But due to that fact that he was the head of the family, that he couldn't, he couldn't go to the army. He asked his younger brother, Ben, to go instead of his place. So that was arranged and everything was in, in good order. But it was just that the timing was not right. And soon after, there was the Pearl Harbor and they, they never got into the army.

RP: Oh. Even, even later on they never got in. And how, how did they react to your decision to...

SY: Well, they all made that decision that they were not gonna enter the armed forces. So they, they served the same kind of thing that I did. And we sent, same... at the same prison camp.

RP: So all your brothers were in on this?

SY: Right.

RP: This was the whole...

SY: Except my brother Sam. I don't know how come he was ever persuaded to renounce his citizenship and, and he was sent to, what is that, New Mexico. What's that camp in New Mexico?

RP: Oh, Santa Fe?

SY: Santa Fe, New Mexico. My brother... my adopted brother, Joe, his brother was the same thing. Yeah. He, had renounced his citizenship. And we got a note, a call saying that they're gonna send them to Japan because of the exchange. Well, he didn't want him to go do that so somehow or another we, we was able to avoid that. But it's strange, you know, my... one night we get a call, he gets a call and I get a call a day later. And I went to Santa Fe and we couldn't find any... I couldn't find any housing. There was no hotel rooms open or nothing. And I went to this one hotel and he says, "There's a guy named Joe over here. He... the bed's open." You know, "Joe... I don't know name of Joe." And all of a sudden I thought, it might be my friend Joe. It was. So we, we bunked together there. Isn't that amazing? [Laughs] Yeah.

RP: Did you ever get a chance to talk to Sam about what led him to renounce his citizenship?

SY: I don't know. I really don't know. Because of the fact that my, my brother was not the type of person to really make any conversation, see. But, very stubborn, sometimes the fact that maybe he had influence from somebody else. I can't say.

RP: Wow.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.