Densho Visual History Interview
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Fusako Yamamoto Interview
Narrator: Fusako Yamamoto
Interviewer: Richard Potashin
Location: Sacramento, California
Date: October 19, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-yfusako-01-0007

<Begin Segment 7>

RP: You mentioned that you felt very safe in Japantown.

FY: Oh, yes.

RP: Did you personally encounter instances of prejudice directed at Japanese in Sacramento?

FY: Yes, uh-huh, I should say so.

RP: What was the atmosphere like?

FY: We just knew that there was prejudice. But we did not encounter any bad incidents until the war. And then there were some nasty things going on.

RP: Can you give us a specific example of that?

FY: Yes. I think there was someone who was shot, and there was a curfew, we went through a curfew, we couldn't walk around after a certain hour.

KP: I have a question. So before the war, you said that you were aware that there was this racial dividing line.

FY: Yes.

KP: But it was more like there were places that you knew you couldn't go. How did that -- you said you didn't see any exact, anything targeted at you, but you just knew.

FY: Yes.

KP: How did you know?

FY: Because there was a Japanese, we call it Japanese town where we were all concentrated in one area.

RP: Were you supposed to stay in that area?

FY: We could go out of that area, but we just grew up there.

KP: [Inaudible] the boundaries, that made you realize it was Japanese --

FY: Yes.

RP: Some Niseis talk about living in Japantown in Los Angeles, and trying to go to other places and being restricted, places where you could live, certain theaters or swimming pools that were off limits.

FY: Yes, uh-huh.

RP: That was very real in the time you were growing up.

FY: Yes, that's right. In fact, we built our own swimming pool. Because there was a place to go swimming, but it was very private, and we could not go there to swim. They did have a city swimming pool that you could go to.

RP: Sometimes the days or the hours might be restricted.

FY: But the private pools, they were not for the Japanese. So that's why we dug our own pool.

RP: Built your own pool?

FY: Yes, uh-huh.

RP: How about another area of racial restrictions, was hospitals, medical care.

FY: Oh, that's... no, we were able to, there was a Japanese hospital.

RP: So you had your own hospital?

FY: Yes. It was called Agnes Hospital.

RP: So the community was extremely self contained.

FY: Yes, that's right.

RP: You had everything you needed.

FY: Yes. But a lot of us went to hospitals that were not Japanese hospitals.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.