Densho Digital Archive - Osamu Mori Interview (denshovh-mosamu-01-0014)

<Begin Segment 14>

RP: Tell us, how did your family respond to the "loyalty questionnaire" that came around I think around February, March of 1943?

OM: I think, you know, I don't know if... our family is not very communicative to anybody, even among ourselves we don't hardly talk. But, you know, that really wasn't a question... you know, I was maybe fifteen, fourteen or fifteen at that time. And there was no question, we're going to do whatever my dad said, you know. And so he never said anything about, you know, philosophical reason why it's this or why it should be "yes" or "no" or whatever. And I really don't know even today why we went to Tule Lake, you know. There's really no good reason to go. My brother had already left camp, he went to Chicago. But for some reason, he wanted to go, he answered "no-no" for the whole family. Well, that could be, that's the only thing I could think about. They had left their equipment with the neighbor down below, they wanted to get back do whatever they have to do because he was in contact with these people in Salt Lake. But we came back to California, maybe that was the reason, I don't know. He never said one way or another but when you think about after we left camp, and how quickly these people, you know, picked us up and we went to Fresno and became a... it tells me that he had some correspondence with them about what we're going to do in the future. So if we had planned to go to Japan, I mean, conviction wise, going to Japan, I don't think he would've done any of that stuff, you know, correspondence. But because I don't remember him being pro-Japan or, you know, like some families I know. They went back and regretted it from the day they got there. I really don't know what the true feeling was on my dad's part because I had no conviction one way or another. We just did what my dad said and that was it, you know.

RP: Now the entire family answered "no-no"?

OM: Yeah it was supposed to be for people who were seventeen and over, I think it was seventeen and over. And I was probably around fifteen or sixteen, my brother, younger brother was even less than that but yet I still remember signing it "no-no," even though I was underage, you know. It didn't bother me one way or another, "no-no," or what. Some people take it as, you know, really take it seriously that maybe you should have but being the age I was, it didn't bother me one way or another. I'd come out of camp, I went in the service, I did my duty, you know, like nothing happened.