Densho Digital Archive - Misako Shigekawa Interview (denshovh-smisako-01-0022)

<Begin Segment 22>

RP: I wanted to talk a little bit more about this, this suit that your husband filed.

MS: Yeah, I wish... you know what? My daughter's coming down this weekend. Maybe she could bring some of that down with her, then you could, you gonna be in this area?

RP: Probably not. Probably be back at Manzanar.

MS: Oh, when are you going back?

RP: Tonight.

MS: Huh?

RP: Tonight.

MS: Oh, you are?

RP: But I can --

MS: She has slides of, she made, my son made slides of the pictures and she, it's too bad because she has a whole suitcase of material from all over. I collected a lot of it and some of it a lot of people don't have. The one, there's picture of him on the front page of the L.A. Times and the Examiner.

RP: Of your husband's --

MS: Trial, his trial, his picture and our article.

RP: So were there other men that were involved in this trial?

MS: Well originally, I think there were ten that got together, were gonna sue the Western Defense, because they were, we were interned without due process of law. That's why the ACLU came, wanted it carried through. They were the ones that paid for all that. And so, and anyway, so I don't know, I guess the government paid, so the government, I guess the government financed the other end of it, but anyway, he sued them, and at the end everybody got scared. They backed out, but three were left. A dentist and a lawyer and my husband, three that finally ended up suing.

RP: And from what I've also read about that is that they were excluded from coming back to the West Coast.

MS: Yeah. So the last man that, I guess he was a major, whoever was in, he was in San Francisco, I guess. Toru was in L.A., but they were stationed in San Francisco, I believe, those, army officer. He was the head man, I guess. Anyway, he told 'em, well, he says he, I guess they didn't know what to do because they lost the, to back 'em up. It's not in the Constitution; they had nothing, so finally said, he said, "Well, you guys should've been fighting for" his side. They didn't have any choice. They were made for 'em. It wasn't their choice, but he says, "You guys go back home and we'll see what we could do." And that, I think it ended in, two or three months later they decide all of a sudden that California was open. See, there was nothing they could do. So that's why we came back in '45. We were the first ones that came back to Anaheim, soon as we could, 'cause we had a place we could come to. So we, my husband came to California before that, he bought a car, we didn't have a car, so we drove a car back and we had a truck, all, few of the possessions from camp, and then a friend of ours had a truck and we brought what we could back to Anaheim. So we were lucky we had a place to come back. Some of the people were still hostile about different things, so it was kinda hard at first. And like lot of, I think there were two, three families in Anaheim and the doctors won't even take care of them, but we had this German, he was German, he's a doctor that I had known before the war, so when I had my third child I went to him and I said, "You gonna take care of me?" He says, "What do you mean?" 'Cause I knew some doctors wouldn't take the Japanese people, but he was real good and to this day his sons and my son are close friends and we're, we've been close friends ever since, more than a family doctor. We got real close to them. But that's when they couldn't get doctors to treat them. They didn't want to bother, so a lot of people had a rough time, I think.

And then like groceries, too, this old Alpha Beta store, one of the stores where I shopped, the manager went to school with my husband, so he, he was very nice to us, and after the war, when we came back, they were still rationing food. We had to get in line to buy meat, different things, but he treated us just like the rest of them and he didn't pick any bones about it. He, they went through grammar school and high school together, the manager, so he didn't care and he helped, he helped us, so I didn't have any trouble, but food was rationed. You probably don't know those days, but you had to wait in line to certain... that didn't last too long, though, rationing, but when we first came back you had to, like meat, we had to get in line and buy meat. I'd go and stand in line. Yeah. But we've been, we had a lot of old Caucasian friends that really stood by us. We were fortunate about that, too. Yeah, so it's been a long time.