<Begin Segment 8>

JA: What can you tell me about the event that was called the "riot?"

GI: Riot? Well, that's another thing, too. I was right in the middle of that riot, 'cause we found out, a group of us found out there's gonna to be, not a riot, but you know, some kind of a gathering down at the police station because they were trying to get this one fellow that was in that out of jail. And all the radical people, they, they were all down there trying to incite everybody else to get behind them so they can really create a riot. And I remember I was right in the middle of it and, before the shooting -- I was there when the shooting happened -- but when the shooting started, I took off because I wasn't gonna, I wasn't about to get shot. So a bunch of us, we just, we just spread out and we just left. But that was the extent of it. But then I'd like to bring out another point about the riot, too, I understand there was two people killed there and they, they couldn't understand why the shooting took place. But that's easy to understand, because you, you take a group of people that started to surge against the, the GIs, and remember I told you that these GIs, GIs were only eighteen-, nineteen-year-old kids. They've never been away from home, they, they never shot anybody, but can you imagine a group of Japanese Americans surging against them, against these GIs? And what else, what other choice did they have? But they had to hold them back; they had to shoot.

JA: Did you know the people who were shot?

GI: No, but I know the people that they were after. [Laughs] They were, they were... the people that they were after were the older Niseis that tried to, tried to create a better government in, in the camp of Manzanar. They were -- just like the JACL, the tried to do what was, they didn't have any spokesmen at that time, the JACL was our spokesman. So we just, we just followed what they asked us to do. We didn't have any leaders at that time.

JA: So what led up to that riot?

GI: Well, they wanted to release that one, one fellow from jail. A bunch of radical people, they, they just wanted everybody released from the jail that was in jail.

JA: Why was he in jail?

GI: Well, he had something to do with the, I guess they must have, they must have thought he was a inu, which means he was a "dog" that informed the, the Manzanar committee of all the wrongdoings in camp. I don't know whether I should use that term or not, or "wrongdoing," but they didn't, they didn't believe what they were doing to the people in Manzanar, and they were dead-set against that.

JA: Did things -- had there been a lot of tension in the camp before that?

GI: Well, only, there was only tension among the radicals. But there was a group of us and I know I was in Block 15, there was no such thing as a radical in our group. We all got along. We played, you know, played pinochle every day and this-and-that, and built our garden in there and played basketball. Really, I didn't have any time to be a radical or, or their way of thinking about trying to get back at the government. I really think they were trying to get back at the government for what they did to us. But I don't think that's right, but then to each his own.

JA: Everybody has their opinion.

GI: Yeah.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2002 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.