Densho Digital Archive - Homer Yasui Interview I (denshovh-yhomer-01-0012)

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MR: I was just going to ask you about Franklin Roosevelt. In the light of the War Department and even the FBI advising him that internment wasn't really necessary, why do you think he went ahead and did it?

HY: Well, I think it's because Roosevelt was prejudice. I think that from the time he was the Secretary of the Navy, he had ideas that the Japanese are not to be trusted because there are several books now written about Roosevelt's prior, I can't remember, Stimmet's one of them. But anyway, from about 1921, Roosevelt had ideas that the Japanese were not to be trusted. And one of his notions was that I think that when he was still Secretary of the Navy, that the Japanese in Hawaii who went to visit the naval, Japanese naval training ship, their names should all be taken down and put on a roster of dangerous people to be picked up in event of war hostility. So this is many years before World War II. So Roosevelt had already in my view and after reading all these books, is that he'd already made up his mind that the Japs were dangerous and not to be trusted. I mean it didn't matter whether they were citizens or alien to him. In his mind, we were the same thing. Aliens or residents, it didn't matter, Japs were Japs just like DeWitt said. Now Roosevelt doesn't come true that way popularly because he's considered a great liberal, and I think generally he was. But at the same time, a great liberal can also be highly prejudiced, and that was Roosevelt.

MR: And what was the feeling towards Roosevelt among the Japanese community?

HY: Oh, at that time, generally, generally, he was almost like a saint, a god, you know. This guy pulled us out of the Depression, I mean practically single handedly. The Depression of 1929, Roosevelt comes in '33, and he starts the NRA, and he starts the WPA, and all these projects and so on, and he's helping the Issei. He starts Social Security, all these social programs. So to the Issei who had been mostly working class, blue-collar workers, he was like a godsend, so he was like a savior. So to most Japanese Americans and Japanese Issei, he was like a savior, a god almost, so nobody really wanted to criticize Roosevelt. And it wasn't just the Japanese Americans. This man was highly, highly popular. Consider the only President who won four terms, that's amazing.

MR: And so in camp, was the feeling toward him still benevolent?

HY: Oh, yeah, very much so. Margaret, it's incredible how much the Nikkei told the government, I mean, hey, today is nothing. You know, we got people marching against Bush and so on. In those days, nobody did that, nobody did that. If you did, they'd be put in the slammer.

MR: Speaking of that, slammer, you were sent to Tule Lake, which eventually did become a prison camp among prison camps.

HY: Yeah.

MR: How was your experience at Tule Lake?

HY: Well, my experience actually was very brief, Margaret, because I was only there, as I say, from the middle of July to about the middle of September, and the reason, therefore, is because I got out on a student leave in September of, I forgot the date there, 12th, the 13th of September. This is 1942. So I wasn't there when they had the infamous questionnaire, the one that caused so much trouble, because that didn't come up until 1943, and I wasn't there, so I don't know how it was after that. The only period when I was there was summer vacation. I played a lot of baseball and went to a lot of dances. That was my experience. Oh, I did work as an orderly in the camp there too.

MR: Okay.