<Begin Segment 13>

KP: Any other stories about the early time in Tule Lake? Any other stories about Tule Lake you'd like to share?

TT: No, not really. They had the, you heard about the segregation? That's all I know, is before the segregation, we had these Kibeis, and they used to raise all kinds of ruckus, that's all I remember.

KP: And that was before the segregation?

TT: Yeah. You know, the word came out they're going to separate, "Will you be loyal to the United States or Japan?" and they had quite a ruckus. Then after the segregation, I heard there were, those radicals more or less took over. [Laughs] I guess you probably heard about that. I wasn't there at that time, but I heard stories of that.

KP: So did you graduate from high school while you were in...

TT: No, I goofed off. I went over, I went to Topaz, (Utah), I got drafted, then I came back and finished my high school in Oakland.

KP: So when the "loyalty questionnaire" came out, that didn't affect you, then. You were too young for the "loyalty questionnaire"?

TT: I had no problem with, we didn't have no problem with that. (I was seventeen years old and answered yes-yes.)

KP: But did you have to fill it out?

TT: Oh, yeah.

KP: Because you were seventeen? What was the age on that?

TT: I think it was seventeen and older. But like us, it's all American citizen, we didn't have no problem. And my grandmother was the only one that was, you know. So she said, well, the way she put it, "This is your country." Like us, we spoke very little Japanese. As far as being in Japan, never been there. So it's like she said, "This is your country, you stick with it."

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.