Densho Digital Archive - Dorothy H. Sato Interview (denshovh-sdorothy-01-0016)

<Begin Segment 16>

LT: So how did you feel about the redress movement from Japanese Americans?

DS: I thought that was great. I thought that, finally, the government is doing something to say, "Hey, we're sorry." But you know, that $20,000 a person, I mean like me, I had nothing when I left. I mean compared to people who had acreage and lost a lot. To me, I mean, I had nothing. What I mean is we didn't have a business, we just had a house. And I thought, "Wow." But to a lot of people, that doesn't pay for anything. It was just... oh, I can't think of the term now. It was not exchanging value for value, it was just... I can't think of the term now. But anyway, to me, I thought, well, great. But then a lot of people lost a lot during the war, which I don't think you can ever get back or even think about. But I thought redress, I thought it was necessary for the government to say, maybe, "I'm sorry it happened." Maybe that was their way of saying, maybe, "I'm sorry." I don't know.

LT: You have a son and two daughters. What do you tell them about your experiences facing prejudice and your experiences during the war?

DS: Of course, listening to me tell about, they can't imagine how it could have happened in the United States. Because they've studied a lot, and they can't imagine, how would that happen to citizens residing in the United States? That's their thoughts. But what happened and how I tell it, they don't like to hear about it. But they don't know... my kids never spoke Japanese. I don't know, did you, Linda?

LT: Not until I was an adult.

DS: Yeah. My daughter took evening classes at, I don't know, somewhere in Portland, but they never, we never talked to them in Japanese. Mainly because I think after we came back from the war, we were told, "Assimilate in the Caucasian society. Don't stand out as Japanese." I think that's what we were told. I remember talking to Dr. Carter about that once and he said, "Well, you're probably right." He said, "Well, you should have taught your kids Japanese." I think he was Danish or something, and his parents taught him how to speak in Denmark, wherever he was from. But we never taught our kids how to speak Japanese, which I think today, I should have. They knew how to count, 'cause Ray told them how to count in Japanese, and they also knew all the bad words, but I think right now, I think, yeah, I should have taught them how to speak Japanese, which we didn't, and I regret that. But their thoughts about what we went through was just like reading it in the books or hearing it from your folks, and wow, just ugly.

LT: So it sounds like you're saying that your goal as you were raising your kids was to assimilate and not to integrate as much about Japan and Japanese American culture?

DS: Right. My granddaughter, like I say, the second granddaughter, is a senior at U of O. And she was just aghast at what happened. Ray has a scrapbook of what happened, like I said, and one summer she was up, and she found that scrapbook, and she went through, and she couldn't hardly believe. She couldn't hardly believe, and she wrote a paper on that, which she's a very good journalist, and she wrote a paper on there that just, what she got from the scrapbook and put into words herself was just amazing, what she found in those scrapbooks. It was just amazing. She said she could not hardly believe, and I couldn't hardly believe it, too, when I heard it. But I think you live with it.