<Begin Segment 26>

RP: Isao, can you, just after the riot -- I think it was maybe two months or so, in early February -- the army came looking to recruit young men for a special segregated unit.

IK: That was a laugh. An insulation, insult. Oh, boy.

RP: The "loyalty questionnaire" was something that everyone over seventeen had to fill out. Tell us about your experience with the "loyalty questionnaire."

IK: I was well aware of it because everybody was talking about it that went in. They told us what happened and so on. By the time I went in I knew I was gonna be insulted like that, and I asked him to explain again and he just explained the same thing. I said, and I know I'm not gonna get anything out of him. I says, "You mean if I say 'yes' to this one, I'm in the army?" He says yes. And I said, and I told him a few things. So I did not... I think, I don't remember the exact quotes of the questions, but one was, as I recall one of them was "if," or "would you protect the American shores?" or somethin' like that. If an enemy came, something like that. And if you said "yes" to that, you were in. You would have joined the army. And I told him he's insulting. I said... that didn't go anywhere. I heard the word, words over and over and over. So I said "no" to whichever question it was and stomped out, but they still called me loyal. They let me out of camp.

RP: Did you feel, at that time, that... any bitterness or anger and this was a chance to --

IK: At the moment, yes. It, that's insulting. And I guess I just refused to talk with him. That's really the way it comes out, 'cause you can't do anything with it. You can't hit him. That's the only thing I could do, so it's just dumb and... nowhere. And it was an insult, thinking that we were that ignorant that we didn't understand English, and put in a tricky little way that I would, if I said "yes" I'm in the army. How can they, how can we say that? But I wouldn't get an answer for him, from him, because he's had 'em a million times before.

KP: So what were the circumstances for doing the questionnaire? You'd go into an office or a room, and...

IK: Yes, in one of the apartments. He was just sitting, just sitting behind a table, very nonchalantly, very impersonal, just nothing except the words.

RP: And this was an army...

IK: He wasn't army dressed, as I recall it. I think he was just dressed civilian.

KP: And it was one person at a time?

IK: Yes.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.