<Begin Segment 1>

HH: Today is August 27th, the time now is 11:47, and I'm doing an interview. What is your full name?

YO: My full name is Yoneko Watanabe Okamoto.

HH: What is your occupation?

YO: My occupation? Right now I am retired, but I was formerly a medical record librarian and then a school secretary for fifteen years.

HH: And your parents' name?

YO: My parents' name, my father's name was Isaburo Watanabe. My mother's name was Hama Takeuchi.

HH: Where were they born?

YO: Both of them were born in Tokyo, Japan.

HH: I see. Do you remember the approximate year of their birth?

YO: I do not know, I cannot figure that out, I'm sorry.

HH: Where were you born, what year?

YO: I was born in Tokyo, Japan, 1918.

HH: And where did you grow up?

YO: I grew up in Hollywood, California.

HH: Hollywood? How old were you when you arrived in Hollywood?

YO: When I arrived in Hollywood, I was five years old.

HH: How would you describe the Hollywood, California, that you knew when you were five?

YO: Oh, Hollywood was just beginning to become a movie center. I remember going to different places to watch them film the "Our Gang" comedy outdoors. I remember the star Nancy Carroll, who used to have football pictures, and it used to be filmed in the high school grandstand. And they paid people three dollars a day to sit in the grandstand, and I often wanted to go, got my friends to try to go with me, but we were too young and they would not let us in, therefore we could not make the three dollars a day. [Laughs]

HH: What grades did you attend at school in Hollywood, California?

YO: I attended Fairfax High School up to the twelfth grade. From there, I went to, actually, it was Los Angeles junior college later they renamed it Los Angeles community college, and I went there for two and a half years. So I do not have a college degree. I do have what they call a civic health, it's an associate degree.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 2>

HH: Do you remember what you were doing when the war broke out December 7th?

YO: Yes, I remember that very clearly. I did not have a job at that time. I had graduated. My mother had a vegetable/fruit store. At that time there was a butcher that sold meat, then there was the groceryman on the other side, that sold groceries. So we sold mainly fruits and vegetables. And I remember when I got the news, that I was at home. And immediately told my brother who was making Christmas tree stands because it was December 7th, and during the time between the 7th and the 25th, we sold Christmas trees at our store. And remember very clearly the day became very frightened. When all the family came home that evening, we gathered around and discussed what would happen to us. I had a brother who was three years older than I was, and he was already drafted and serving in the U.S. Army.

HH: What kinds of crises or problems did you encounter when you had to close up your home in Hollywood?

YO: Well, we had our store that had to be sold. We could not sell it, therefore we left it and gave it to the man who took care of the grocery store. He said he will take care of it, he will hire somebody to run the store. The home, of course, we had to get rid of our furniture within the period of about two weeks. We saw signs on telephone poles everywhere, giving us a deadline as to when we will have to move where we will be picked up, and the amount of household goods that we can carry with us. At that time we were told that we will be going to Pomona Assembly Center. From there, we had no idea at that time that we were to be shipped to Wyoming.

HH: I see. So from Pomona you went to Wyoming? Is that Heart Mountain?

YO: Heart Mountain, Wyoming, yes. We were in Pomona about three months.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 3>

HH: All told, how many months were you in both camps?

YO: Both camps? I would say a year and three months. I was among the earliest in Heart Mountain to leave and come to Philadelphia.

HH: Why would you pick Philadelphia as a place to move to?

YO: Actually, I had a friend by the name of Fuji Fujikawa, her maiden name was Fukasawa. She passed away about three years ago. She had already obtained a job as an artist in a silkscreen business here in Philadelphia, and she was anxious to leave, but her mother would not let her leave by herself. She was a very dear friend of mine who lived across the street, and came to the hospital where I was working as a medical secretary, asking me to go with her. I did not want to leave. I knew no one in Philadelphia, and neither did she. It just so happened that a strike took place at the hospital. I lost my job, and the very next day I went over to my dear friend and said, "I'm ready to go to Philadelphia." [Laughs] And this was in August of 1943, and there were still very few people leaving. I was screened by the FBI, told them my background, and they said, "You have a medical background, they are crying for workers to work in the hospitals in Philadelphia." It was quite a large medical center or a medical city. And they promised that I would have no trouble finding a job here, and we left together.

HH: If you could speculate for a moment what your life would have been like had the war not come. What would your life have been like if you remained in California as opposed to what it became by moving to Philadelphia?

YO: I had talked to a Japanese dentist at that particular time, and I can't even remember his name. He thought perhaps he would be able to use me. There was a woman who was working for him who was planning to leave her job, and therefore he thought, well, I will give you a call when she leaves. And with that, I continued to work in my family business with the hopes of working as a kind of an assistant and medical secretary to a dentist. And perhaps I would have continued to do that.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 4>

HH: If I understand correctly, then, when you came to Philadelphia, you came with a friend?

YO: Yes.

HH: And I saw, your contacts happened to be one person.

YO: Absolutely.

HH: What other resources did you have like money? How much did you have in your pocket when you hit the streets of Philadelphia?

YO: Oh. My arrival to Philadelphia was a big disaster. My friend arrived... by the way, being, I can tell the story now, being an alien at that time, I was born in Tokyo. I did not have my citizenship. The eastern coast was still closed, and not having my citizenship, I was not allowed to come to Philadelphia. The government... although the people that interviewed me at the camp knew I was going to Philadelphia, but they said, "I cannot give you a ticket, train ticket all the way to Philadelphia, but I can give it to you to Cleveland. From there, you can do whatever you want to do." So I was given a ticket to Cleveland. It just so happened that Max Franzen, who later came to Philadelphia, was managing the hostel in Cleveland. And he also told me he knew I was going to Philadelphia, but I did not tell him I was going to Philadelphia, and he's so thankful that I did not tell him, because then he may have advised me not to go. Anyway, I had a brother at Fort Snelling, told him that I was going to visit him and then perhaps settle in Chicago. Well, that was not really a true story. I left, and from Cleveland, I bought my own tickets and came to Philadelphia. So I arrived one day later, than my friend Fuji. When I arrived, a man by the name of Kikushima, who owned a restaurant and had offered to rent us an apartment on the third floor, came to pick us up. I don't know how they obtained him, but it may have been through American Friends Service Committee. At that time, the office of the War Relocation Authority was not opened, came after me, and I said, "Well, you know, I have other luggage that I must pick up." Actually, it was my world possession. And he said, "Well, we have plenty of time, let's pick it up tomorrow morning." And so therefore I said, "Fine." The next morning, I see black smoke. We were located at 1620 Spruce. Everything I had other than the two small suitcases that I brought with me, burned in that fire, Broad Street fire. And I went to the railroad company. The amount that they gave me, I had it insured for a hundred dollars. It was automatically -- by the way, it was automatically insured for a hundred. And by some unknown reason, I took out another two hundred dollars insurance when I boarded in Cleveland to come to Philadelphia. So I was given a total of three hundred dollars, which was quite an amount at that time, and I was able to replace my wardrobe. And although when I mentioned this to the American Friends Service Committee, they said that I should not have done that, that perhaps I could have done more. But I was grateful to have gotten three hundred dollars. That was my entrance into Philadelphia.

HH: Did you have any difficulty... or what kind of difficulty did you have locating a job in Philadelphia?

YO: There was no trouble at all. The Service Committee found a job for me almost immediately. I had wanted to work in the hospital as a medical secretary, and Women's Homeopathic Hospital on Twentieth and Susquehanna had an opening, wanted me almost immediately. So I went to work there the first week.

HH: Did you encounter any kind of racial or ethnic prejudice at that time?

YO: None at all. They were very surprised when I told them that I had come. And I called it at that time a "concentration camp." And when I told him what had happened to me, people could not believe that this was going on to people on the West Coast, in California. But absolutely no prejudice of any kind, they were glad to get me. And I felt wonderful.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 5>

HH: I had this from another source, but I want to hear it from you. How did you meet Alan?

YO: Oh, it's kind of a long story. [Laughs] I came here, I had no friends. I had met this well-known artist, Neil Fujita, in camp. He had given me a picture. I happened to get to a art show, and he was in the service the same time Alan was, and I don't think he was in the same company. But they were very close together, and when he learned that I was coming to Philadelphia, he wrote to Alan, "This is my husband's mother." He was living in Willow Grove, which is a suburb of Philadelphia. And she came to visit me at 1620 Spruce where I was living, and found out that I was from Tokyo, Japan. She was from Yokohama, which is practically right next door to Tokyo, and invited me over for dinner. I went to the dinner, she liked me, and promised, asked me to correspond with Alan, write a letter. Well, I was not in the mood to write to strange men that I had never met. I did promise her, and I had intended to write to him, but never got around to writing to him. Japanese American Citizens League ran a Christmas dance at the YWCA, and I was part of the committee that helped decorate the place, and found out that there were quite a few men who had returned to the U.S., and part of them were the 442nd group, and they were to be our guests of honor. I thought, well, gee, I wonder if this person that I was supposed to write to by the name of Alan Okamoto was going to be there. I dated another person, went to the dance, saw him across the hall, and someone pointed out to me, "That's Alan Okamoto," because I had asked around to see if he was here at the dance. When I saw him, I said, "Oh, he's too short for me." [Laughs] And actually, we did not meet at the dance. This was close to Christmas. A week later, I attended a New Year's Eve party at a friend's, Shio Coriwye, this was the first time I had a chance to meet Alan Okamoto. This is how we met, we talked, I liked him, we started dating. That's how I met my husband.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 6>

HH: Earlier, you mentioned that you were born in Tokyo, which means that you're not a citizen. You were, at that time, at least, not a citizen.

YO: No, I was not a citizen of this country.

HH: Are you a citizen now?

YO: Yes, I am a citizen now, and I received my citizenship with them, my inlaws and my mother, at the time the Walter-McCarran immigration bill was passed, it was very soon after that that we applied received our citizenship. In fact, my husband stood up for all of us when we went to get our citizenships.

HH: I see. Okay. I have a few miscellaneous questions that I ask at this point. Do you identify with the term a "quiet American"?

YO: In a way, yes. I kind of consider myself as a "quiet American." I do not demonstrate, I go about doing my ordinary things. If people ask me or ask me to talk about my experience, I am more than happy to relate my experience. But I don't go around advertising what I had to go through.

HH: Okay, how about this one? Do you do identify with the term "model minority"?

YO: I like to think of myself as a "model minority," I really do. I'm proud of my background, proud of what my parents went through, proud of their willingness to leave a very strange country and come to a strange land. And all the things that I have learned from them mean a lot to me.

HH: Do what extent do you find yourself identifying with the plight of Latinos, Native Americans, African Americans?

YO: I strongly sympathize with them. They're going through some of the experience that we went through very early in my parents' life. Economically, our parents were among the lowest in the country, therefore there was a lot of prejudices. And now that we can speak the language, are educated so much better, we have been really very fortunate. We have been given opportunities that our Issei parents did not have. And I do sympathize with those people who have recently come to this country and are going through very similar problems.

HH: Have you seen the nature of racial prejudice, change in respect to Asian Americans over the course of your lifetime.

YO: Oh, the prejudice of Asians, yes, I have seen a great change, really. I think Asian Americans are accepted a lot more than they were from the time that I was growing up. And I don't know whether it's because we are living on the East Coast, that to me, it's almost an advantage to be an Asian American, especially a Japanese American, although many people cannot specify whether I am a Chinese, Korean, or Japanese, but I definitely see a change in the attitude toward Asians.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 7>

HH: Do you wonder sometimes if your children ever felt angry that they were Asian Americans?

YO: You know, I have never discussed the fact that they had an Asian background. We have always lived among Caucasians. They had very little contact with the Japanese other than our personal friends, and their association was all Caucasians, and they were accepted like any other Caucasian. So therefore, actually, to this day, they feel more comfortable with Caucasians than they do with Japanese.

HH: To what extent do you suspect your values and practices have their roots in your Japanese-ness?

YO: Will you repeat that again?

HH: To what extent do you feel that your values...

YO: My values, uh-huh.

HH: And your cultural practices, daily living, as their roots in your Japanese-ness, being Japanese.

YO: Being Japanese?

HH: Or being Asian.

YO: You know, I think it has a lot to do with it. From all the experience that I have had from the time of going through a lot of prejudices when I was much younger as a child, going through the relocation experiences, I think my sense of value, the fact that we have relocated into the suburban part of Philadelphia, that we are accepted by any other Caucasians, anyone living in that area. The fact that this has happened to me really has done a lot for me. My attitude of appreciation for many, many things, I think, is deeper because of that fact, that I have gone through so much prejudices.

HH: This is going to be... I'm through all my questions, but I want to ask you this. If there's one event, or it doesn't have to be one event, at least some memorable event in your life that you always remember or cherish, will have some kind of significance in your life, what might that be?

YO: [Laughs] You know, I cannot answer that question. There are a series of events that have affected my life. I can't think of one specific thing that has affected my life, I'm sorry. [Laughs] I can't answer that question. There are a series of things. Coming to Philadelphia is one which certainly has affected my life. Found that people were friendly, I loved Philadelphia. That would be the one, perhaps my one single choice that I made that I'm grateful.

HH: Thank you very much.

YO: Thank you.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.