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MR: So, and what about the rest of your family? Did they remain in camp for long?

HY: Not very long. My brother Chop and his wife... well, let me back up. Joan was their first child. She was born on July 29th just a week or so after we got to Tule Lake, and by that time, I was working as an orderly at Tule Lake. And then after she got a little bit older, he applied for a leave, work leave, seasonal work leave clearance, and he got out, and I forgot where he went, Montana or Idaho, somewhere. Then he came back from that, and he decided well that wasn't so bad, so I'll take my family out. So I think sometime in, yeah, I think it was in late 1943, he applied for work leave clearance, and he went to, moved to a place called Great Falls, Montana, with his wife and his newborn baby, himself, and he worked for a guy named, I forgot his name right offhand. But anyway, he went to work on the farm. Then my mother eventually got a leave to visit him, just to visit to that camp. And then in 1943, around February or March, my sister Yuka, the fifteen-year old, applied to go to Denver too, and she got permission to do that. So she left in March or so of '43, and my mother left I think in about April or so. So by the summer of 1943, only my Uncle Renichi and Matsuyo were in camp. The rest of us were out except my father.

MR: Except your father. So here's the, really the whole Yasui family is not in camp?

HY: Except for, well, you got to remember Min, he's in jail.

MR: Okay. So your father and your brother are in jail. But this family has removed themselves from camp in one way or another. What made your family, I mean, different? Most, it seems most families just stayed in camp and waited it out; whereas, the Yasuis, except for the two who are incarcerated, pretty much left.

HY: Why?

MR: Yeah.

HY: Well one factor, big factor, maybe the over winning factor, is we had money, could afford it. But I don't think that's the only thing. I think the other factor is because we were always taught to be independent, ambitious, and try to better yourself at all times, whatever the situation. So that weighed on us a little bit. But still in all when you stop to think about it, if you got money, you can do lots of things, you know. And we weren't wealthy, but we had enough money to buy our necessities a little bit more than that. So I think that's probably... money gives you security, right? So we had the security at least in that sense.

MR: Still, here's your father in prison. What kind of communication did you have with him?

HY: Mail. I think, I'm not positive. I'm just thinking back, but I think that they were allowed two outgoing, the internees were allowed two outgoing letters a week, and of course, they were censored. But incoming, I think they could have any amount of incoming they wanted, but outgoing was only two. And then when my father was transferred to the Santa Fe Alien Detention Center and we were living in Denver, then we visited him, not all the time, but we, well, I visited at least twice. And so many members of my family, they would visit, not for long periods of time, but that was it. But we never had any telephone conversation, but it was almost exclusively through mail.

MR: And your brother Min, what sort of communication, how did you support him as he was trying to prove his point in the court system?

HY: Well, Min had a support system that was built up of Nisei friends that he made while he was in camp, Pinedale camp and the Minidoka camp. One of them was an optometrist named Doctor George Tani who became the chairman of the Min Defense Committee, something like that. And one of the purposes, of course, is to gather moral support, but more than that monetary support, so they started taking up contributions. And Milton Maeda of Portland, he's long since deceased, was one of, I think he was the treasurer of that outfit. Another very important person was a guy named Ron Shiozaki who was also from Portland. And that core group started raising money for Min. See, the fine for Min's offense was $5,000. It was never, didn't have to be paid, but there was attorney's fees that had to be paid. But over and above that, as I say, our family was not poor. They were not millionaires but not poor, so we could afford Min's lawyer fees, so that was a big help. But I don't know how much money the Min's Defense Committee raised, but they did raise some, quite a bit I think.

MR: Did he spend the duration of the war in prison?

HY: Oh, no. He was in prison just a little bit short of nine months in the Multnomah County jail which is interesting because you see, the Multnomah County jail is in the Western Defense Command. That's interesting because the Western Defense Command kicked out all of the Japanese, but here he is stuck in the Western Defense Command. He spent nine months there in the Multnomah County Jail. So once when he went down there, "Hey, that's my old home."

MR: Now back to your mother. She's out of camp, she's with you and your sister in Denver, really on her own.

HY: Yes.

MR: Did you see any kind of change in your mother in her attitudes, and she's really having to run things now that your father's in jail.

HY: Well, she did. She had a terrible burden thrust upon her because she had, we had three Yasui kids in college. That takes a lot of money. Three because, not only tuition, but board and room and wartime financial situation as it is, so she had to have money to keep the, her kids in college. But my mother was a very strong woman. She's not flamboyant or anything like that, but she was very, very strong, and so she kept things mostly to herself. But she made the decision with the advice and consent probably of my, well, with advice and consent of my father, but particularly advice of my oldest brother Ray who helped sell the farm. So we lost... I shouldn't say lost. We sold most of the farm property during the war, so that's why we don't have much anymore as compared to before the war. So my mother did have to make these tough, tough, tough decisions, and I know it must have been excruciating for her because she wasn't used to doing this unilaterally, but it was thrust upon her, so she took hold, and she did what had to come. So it's like I told you, she'd handle what came to her, but she didn't go out looking for trouble. My father sometimes did that. I do that sometimes, but not my mother. So she was a real good person.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.