Densho Digital Archive - Henry Sakamoto Interview (denshovh-shenry

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HS: In the categories of requesting leave, the first year I think was the first fall that we were there in 1942. It was, for most of us, it was the first experience with kinds of leaves available and we found about it because many of the agricultural interests in the area needed help for the harvests. And in that area, Idaho, they grow a lot of potatoes and sugar beets, and they were in dire need of help for the harvest which was in the fall. And so I don't know how it all came about, but they probably, the farmers probably asked the government and the government then would ask the War Relocation Authority and the War Relocation Authority did whatever to recruit people. So I recall, we, some of us guys from Block 32 decided to get together and go out and help the harvesters, good way to leave camp. And it's short-term leave, and we had, got together six guys, not all from our block, but some mostly our, our friends. And so the, one of the more influential members of our group says, "Let's pick a place as far away from Minidoka as we can get." So we signed up with farmers from Rexford, Idaho, and they came down to pick us up. It was a pickup truck, two farmers that were going to share our labor, and I'm just trying to recall... Minor Azuma, George Suzuki, Ace Suyamura, Tommy Onishi, Kay Ito, and myself. I was the youngest. I don't know why it is, but a lot of these groups, I was always the youngest. So it was a pickup truck and I was the youngest, so they took sympathy on me and let me ride in the cab with the two farmers, and so all the other guys stayed in the back in the bed of the truck. I don't know how many, how long it took to get to Rexford, Idaho, but it's really not really far north. It's, where the upward panhandle of Idaho comes down. It's right about where it turns off to the east, but it's, it was far enough away and small town, and they showed us our cabin where we lived, and we batched it ourselves, and they came, took us to work and whatever. But it was, turns out that particularly in the sugar beets, we, far away from the camp, had little money making opportunity because the yields of sugar beets in that area were very, very small while the guys that went to harvest the sugar beets around camp made all kinds of money because the yields were just tremendous. And I recall, I think I netted enough money to buy a sport coat after paying all the other expenses and so forth. But it was an experience, but it's, you're getting away from camp.

Then other than that, the longer term leaves I guess, if you had a medical reason or whatever, you could get leave for that or someone in your family was ill. Then the longer term leaves were likely to resettle in another city where you could find a job or resettle away from camp to go to college, and that was another category of leave that I took advantage of after I graduated from high school. I left camp to go to Cleveland, Ohio, for the summer of 1944 and then later on in the fall to attend Ohio Wesleyan University. But these categories of leave, they needed to screen all the applicants for leave. And in 1943, they devised a questionnaire which would assist, I guess, the authorities in screening people. However, this led to large conflict because two questions in the questionnaire, questions 27 and 28, were regarded as loaded questions and created a lot of, oh, discussion and arguments within the camp and within the families within the camp, and I'm trying to recall, I don't know the exact wordage. Question 27 said in so many words, would you be willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States to wherever they sent you and, defend the country against all enemies and that kind of thing. And so the argument on that particular question among a lot of the internees was, "Why the hell should I serve my country when they took away my constitutional rights and put me behind barbed wire? My government did that to me and they want me to fight for them? How can they ask me to do that?" But, there were others that thought, "Well, it's a chance to prove my loyalty again and go out and fight for my country," yes and no.

Question number 28 dealt a little bit more with allegiance to the country, and it was a loaded question particularly for the Issei. The question said in so many words, would you foreswear allegiance to the Emperor of Japan and swear your allegiance to the United States and, forsaking da, da, da. Well, it's a loaded question particularly for the Issei because by law, they could not become naturalized citizens of the United States, and technically they were still citizens of Japan. So if they foreswore allegiance to the Emperor of Japan, they would be people without a country, so how can the government, the United States government ask the Issei to do that, be people without a country? By law, the United States government won't let you become a citizen of Japan, I mean a citizen of the United States. So that was a tremendously loaded question. But you know, some people answered yes to show their loyalty to the United States. But this created a situation, particularly those who protested the incarceration and denial of civil liberties by responding to the questionnaire "no-no," questions 27, 28. So then that created the "no-no" situation, and it was a, there were deep divisions like I said within families and between friends in the manner of answering that questionnaire. And to this day, there still are divisions that are there. In either case, whether you answer "yes-yes" or "no-no" took a lot of courage.