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KP: Just kind of refresh my memory, I know that all the Japanese were put into a single camp that had been previously enlisted? Or was that, or did they go to a couple different camps right after the outbreak of war, when they were taken, when they were segregated?

JW: Well, you know, I've talked to people... I know that, for instance, the 100th Battalion was, after the war started, they actually wanted volunteers and they had many, many volunteers, and I think of the 10,000 they took 1,500 people. And they sent them from Hawaii over to the United States separately. And then the men who were already in the military like my father, they put many of them in Camp Crowder, Missouri, but I think, from what I've been told, there were other camps that men were in. Camp Blanding in Florida, because Yuki Iguchi was acombat medic assigned F Company. He was drafted before the war. And he was actually in Camp Blanding, Florida. So, I think that there were many Japanese Americans that were in other camps, military camps.

KP: Well, I remember there was one story that I've actually heard a couple different directions about some visiting dignitary to one of the camps where there was segregated troops and the troops were actually held in a hangar at gunpoint because they were afraid they might do something against the vice president or whoever was visiting.

RP: It was Roosevelt who, he came to speak at one of the...

KP: I don't know if it was Roosevelt or the vice president, I'm not really sure.

JW: Yeah, I heard, I actually heard that story that they were actually, they were actually held at gunpoint and they were not allowed to see the dignitaries because they thought they were a threat. My father was saying that, for instance, when he came back to the United, Los Angeles, because he actually was involved in taking his parents and putting over, putting them into the assembly center which, to ship them to Manzanar. He told me that, I guess he got a leave and they came to Los Angeles and he said that he took, went down to the area where they were being assembled and I believe they were sent by bus, I believe, to Manzanar from Los Angeles. Like Auntie, Auntie Uta said they went the Venice police station or city hall and they sent them. But my dad told me that after he had did that he saw this lieutenant and the lieutenant looked at my dad wearing a uniform putting his parents in the assembly center, and that guy didn't feel very good about it and so they were just following orders. My dad said he came home and he's sitting inside the old farmhouse, he said, "That's really a low period in your time when your, when your family's being sent to internment camp or to some destination unknown and now you're going to be, you're sitting there and you're just trying to figure out what to do."

My dad said that, and I know that Auntie Uta said that, "Well, we took the sewing machine," but they had a pickup truck because they were in the farming business. And my dad said they took a refrigerator and maybe he took something else, but he told me he put it in the back of the pickup truck, took it to Manzanar, and when he went into Manzanar he asked the administrator, "Is it okay to go through the gate?" and the guy, and the fellow said, "We're only taking care of the civilians but the army is taking care of the camp." So the administrator said, "There's no problem, you can do what you want to do." So my father went inside the camp and he dropped off the refrigerator, he went into Lone Pine, bought milk and things like that. But he said it was kind of interesting because the administrator asked him, "Well, do you want to stay with the soldiers or do you want to stay with your family members?" Well, of course you have to stay with your family. But walking around Manzanar with a U.S. army uniform on is a rather strange experience. 'Cause he could leave but his parents couldn't leave. So his parents are considered a risk and yet he's in the military. So, it doesn't make any sense to my dad. But he told me that he trained some of the soldiers that were guarding Manzanar at Fort Ord. So he told them that if they could be nice to his parents and his family. So, you can imagine how they felt. My dad says that as he left Manzanar he turned around and looked at the gate and he said, "This is not good." And then he drove back to Los Angeles and he said it was a pretty lousy experience. He went to Little Tokyo also, and he looked around and all the Japanese people had already been evacuated. He felt really terrible because there's nobody there. And he's walking around in that Little Tokyo with his army uniform on my dad felt very depressed. And he said, "Oh, this is not good."

Then I guess he went back and he came back to Manzanar twice. 'Cause the second time he came, they were trying to take all their heavy farm equipment, they had already paid storage, and so he got, apparently he got some kind of heavy trucks because it was, he had a Caterpillar tractor and some heavy farm gear. And they're trying to sell it off, and I guess since they had serial numbers and other things my father shipped all of that to Blackfoot, Idaho. But he was, that's why he came back a second time. And so, he wasn't very happy about that either. And he said that, "What are you gonna do?" You pay somebody to store your stuff and they're gonna sell it, so. But Grandfather had been smart enough to buy an actual Caterpillar tractor with a track and so he didn't, we didn't use a mule to plough with. In fact, they used to lease land and they had a much larger area for growing celery. They had this gun club in area. They had 350 acres and Grandpa leased part of that. But they wouldn't sell the land to the Japanese Americans. But at one time my dad said they farmed approximately a thousand acres. And so my father would be, basically they have, some of the farmers asked my father to use the Caterpillar tractor and so he can plough. Because tractor is much better than plowing by horse or by mule. So my father said... I saw that Caterpillar tractor when I was a small kid back in the middle '50s, so yeah, it was a real tractor. So Grandpa at least had one of those things. But the idea is that, what a thing, you pay money and there gonna sell it. So, he sent it to Blackfoot, Idaho. So, my father told me that and obviously, Auntie said that they were living there also and, and so that's the reason why they, they went up there to make sure. They were doing subsistence farming. In fact, I believe that they lived, neighbors of, the Eisenhower family were some of their neighbors. My dad was mentioning to us, I think that's in his book. But, when the land they were living on in Blackfoot, Idaho, they had some relative that was related to Eisenhower. So, it was kind of interesting.

So all I can say is that, my father did see discrimination, let's face it. People in the U.S. Army... when my father got to Camp Shelby, Mississippi, you'd be amazed at how many people had college degrees, had lots of experience, and were private first class. Yoshinawa Nakata was one of the men that he took from Camp Crowder to Camp Shelby, Mississippi. He was an M.I.T. graduate in engineering, ao, and he was a private. And he was taken to military intelligence and he was upset. But he became, he worked for Hughes Aircraft after the war and the airborne navigation system. So he was a very smart fellow. So how many people go to Cal Tech M.I.T. and are, are a private in the army? There were many. He said one other fellow went to Harvard University and also went to Tokyo University and they took him and put him in Military Intelligence. But you had people of this capacity because he had their I.Q. scores and their, their education because he being a first sergeant. So my father said it's kind of amazing how many men had lots of education but you couldn't get a job before the war. I don't care what school you went to. And so I feel that it was very institutionalized.

Grandparents couldn't become citizens, grandparents could not buy land because they weren't citizens, people couldn't work for many companies, people couldn't live in many areas. In fact the reason why we live in this area is because Isao Oka who was a realtor and part of MIS and like I said, there were five brothers in Military Intelligence. He said that there were areas that you could not buy land. Even up to, up until probably the, what do you call it, the Fair Housing Act? Because I knew that we could not live in other areas. My mother said we couldn't live north of National Boulevard in West Los Angeles. They wouldn't sell you the house. And I remember even being in my mother... my father worked for Aerospace Corporation and worked for Rimrule Ridge and he also designed cars for Ford Motor Company after World War II and we tried to buy a house in Orange County and they said no, the houses there are not even finished, and they said they're all sold. My mother said, well, probably they don't want us to live there so it's just, it was just institutionalized. And the reason why, it's kind of obvious. We all live in the same area and you wonder why. But it's because they wanted, they said no, the houses were not for sale. And they were being nice about it, but it was obviously discrimination.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.