<Begin Segment 13>

RP: You heard about Pearl Harbor over the radio?

HN: Yes. I did. Some, one Sunday we heard that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, that we were at war. And that was my first inklings. I went to school on Monday and it wasn't very pretty, people, the way they looked at me. They didn't treat me very well on the Monday after Pearl Harbor.

RP: And you said also that between December and March you had a number of...

HN: Altercations with...

RP: Altercations.

HN: With the students, yes I did. But I guess it was just understandable. It wasn't their fault. It was just... they didn't know.

RP: They were just ignorant about...

HN: Probably, yes.

RP: So what did they call you, names? Or...

HN: Yes, call you "Jap," which is a bad thing that we were taught, you know, not to ever use.

RP: So you actually got in fights with some of these Caucasians or...

HN: About three of 'em I think I just had fights with.

RP: You had other students who were Japanese American, too, that you could kind of stick with?

HN: Oh, yeah. There were a few but there weren't too many. Maybe five of us in the whole school that I could remember anyway.

RP: And you told me earlier that you, you didn't want to get into a large altercation because there was...

HN: No, I didn't want to because the, just bring down the whole... we'd get in trouble for it and then...

RP: Uh-huh.

HN: So I never really got into a big one. It's just kinda one on one.

RP: And there was never any...

HN: Rioting?

RP: Not rioting, but there was no intervention by teachers or administrators to, you know...

HN: One time there was. One time they broke us up. But the other two times they didn't.

KP: Can I ask a question here? You said that, that they used the expression "Jap" with you and you said you, you learned that that was not a term that was to be used. Where did you learn that? What sort of context was that...

HN: Oh, it's just that when we're growing up, when the person called you a "Jap," that was like calling a "nigger," Negro a "nigger." It's the same kind of connotations, which is a bad connotations for Japanese Americans. And so it's not that we were taught that. It was just that all our lives when we heard the word it was bad, so...

KP: Right. A denigrating term that you grew up with. Okay.

HN: Yeah.

KP: Thank you.

RP: And you, you know, you felt violated and you took after...

HN: Those were fighting words.

RP: Fighting words.

HN: So...

RP: Uh-huh.

[Interruption]

RP: So students were looking at you differently after Pearl Harbor. You mentioned how difficult it was. You felt like... and they were looking at you like you were responsible for...

HN: I know.

RP: ...Pearl Harbor.

HN: Yes, that's what they thought. You know, responsible for it. But then, you know after camp and when I got back to UCLA, everything was different. They didn't look at me as, you know, Japanese American or a "Jap" or anything. They just accepted me as a student. And so I was happy about that when I went to UCLA. And so it was easy to integrate.

RP: It was satisfying for you to see that things had changed.

HN: Yeah. I guess the more educated you are, you're more tolerant.

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