Interviews
Grandparents were incarcerated in Jerome, Arkansas
So when he came back to Honolulu, my grandmother applied to voluntarily evacuate with her husband. So you had 1300 people from Hawaii who were actually tapped by the government to go to the concentration camps. You had another 1000 people who voluntarily joined them, the families. All in all it was 2300 people who went. Anyway, at the end of December, my grandfather went on a separate ship, my grandmother and the children went on another ship and they met in San Francisco. This is where it gets fuzzy because when I checked the records downstairs in the museum that says where he went to camp, they showed him in Tule Lake, but I’ve never found anything that said he was in Tule Lake.
So now my aunt tells this story about them having to go by train to Jerome, Arkansas. Because all of the train were coming from east coast to the west, every time a westbound train came they had to get off the track and wait for it to pass by. So a trip that would have taken like three days normally took a week. And she said she had never seen her father cry but he was literally in tears the whole time. But he was telling the kids that Japan is stupid, that there was no way they would beat the US in war, and that the kids needed to believe that the US was still the greatest country in the world. That’s the story that kills me.
Date: April 25, 2018
Location: California, US
Interviewer: John Esaki
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
Explore More Videos
Sugar beet and potato farming in Idaho
(b. 1921) Nisei veteran who served in the occupation of Japan
Recalling Pinedale and Tule Lake concentration camps
Judge, only Japanese American to serve on CWRIC.
Being called out of Reserves
(b. 1921) Nisei veteran who served in the occupation of Japan
Fort Snelling
(b. 1921) Nisei veteran who served in the occupation of Japan
Traveling from Manila to Tokyo
(b. 1921) Nisei veteran who served in the occupation of Japan
Camp stories impact on her career
Sansei judge on the Superior Court of Los Angeles County in California
Concentration camp from a Japanese mother’s point of view (Japanese)
Shin-Issei from Gifu. Recently received U.S. citizenship
The multicultural perspective
(b.1960) Third-generation taiko drummer, leader of Maui Taiko
Arrested in camp for trying to leave
(1916-2010) draft resister, helped form the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee
Dusty Weather at Topaz, Utah
(b. 1934) Award-winning Disney animation artist who was incarcerated at Topaz during WWII
Mother in Camp
(b. 1934) Award-winning Disney animation artist who was incarcerated at Topaz during WWII
Makegumi - Movement to regognize the defeat of Japan (Japanese)
A central figure for the “Makegumi” (defeatists)