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RP: Fumie, you mentioned the tragic story of this gentleman, I think his last name was Yata, the gentleman who pulled up the stakes?

FS: Oh, I'm not familiar with his name.

RP: How about your own personal story regarding your father and his, his desire to end his life? Did you share that story with the ORA folks, and how difficult was that for you to kind of confront that?

FS: I grew up afraid of my father my entire life, and I didn't know why. And I think as I was writing all the papers for reparations -- we went to a meeting that ORA had in Sacramento, because somebody had told my sister, "You should check into it to see if you qualify." And we said, "We don't qualify because we weren't interned." And they said, "Well, go to the meeting and talk to the people." So Bob Bratt was in charge at the time, and he told us it was a unique story and that we should pursue it. And we thought, "Oh, this is going to be easy, we just fill out papers and we'll get our reparations and our apology." It wasn't that easy. It was an eight-and-a-half year ongoing battle for us to get reparations. Every time we sent in some kind of requirement, they would ask for more, and we'd have to keep digging and keep digging. And I realized during this, it was repressed memory because I had forgotten about the suicide. I think it was something I had just wiped out of my memory. But as I was typing all this paperwork for ORA, I broke down and started crying, and I realized why I was afraid of my father. Because he did threaten to kill me during the war. But he was very, very close to my husband, and I think it was after we were married that I resumed a normal relationship with my father. But I never knew why I was afraid of him all my life. But it, it did a little bit to everybody. I think we all are scarred by the internment, by the firing, by the hysteria. Now, living in Sparks, I did not see too much prejudice 'cause I was only three and a half at the time. And the people we connected with were close friends of my father, and Sparks is a very small town. So we did get called "Japs" and different things by people who didn't know us. But the general public was very, very kind to us during that time.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.