Interviews
Talking to children about decision to resist the draft during World War II
And I just called them together and says, “Well, it's about time I tell you about what had happened, what I have done. You may not have heard about it.” And he says, “Oh yeah, we read about it in the paper, I mean, in the textbook.” I says, “How much did you have in there?” And they says, “Oh, just a little paragraph about the evacuation.” So I says, “Well, I'll tell you what happened and what had happened to me, what I have done.” And so I explained to the kids what I did and so that the kids won't get secondhand news from somebody else and find out that his, his or her dad was a draft resister, I thought I'd better get it straight with him and tell him why I did it and so they realized that. And to this day, I'm glad that I told 'em. I think many of the parents, I think, they held back and lot of the parents didn't know—I mean, the children, didn't know about what had happened to the Niseis and the Issei during the war years. And I think a lot of them, they just couldn't believe that it had actually happened.
Date: July 25, 1997
Location: Washington, US
Interviewer: Larry Hashima, Stephen Fugita
Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.
