REIKO AND KUGE

Interviews Courtesy of Nadine Rousseau and  iWitness to History Day Rocky Run Middle School, Chantilly, VA

 

REIKO

Interned in Jerome, Arkansas and Tule Lake, California because of her Japanese-American roots.

 

What happened to your family in the immediate aftermath of the attack on Pearl

Harbor?

The town sheriff – I knew him well because he was an active member of my

father’s Buddhist congregation – arrived with two other men.

I heard, “Sir, you must come with us.”

My father asked, “May I change my clothes?”

“No, come as you are.”

I remember low voices, footsteps, and a car door slamming. My sisters and I all

confronted our mother: Where is he going? Why is he going away?

When I got to school that day, I found that some of my friends’ fathers had also

been mysteriously taken somewhere. When I got home my mother told us that he was in

the town jail, but he would come back soon. “Soon” meant one and a half years later. My

father used to register newborn children for illiterate Japanese immigrants. He would do

that by regularly writing to the consulate in Honolulu, who would then go and register the

child in Japan. My father had a clear tie with Japan, and that is why he was taken away.

 

When did the rest of your family leave Hawaii?

A year after that. The authorities told my mother that she had to do one of two

things: Either stay in Hawaii and wait for her husband to come back, or go to the

mainland with her children and join him. My mother had no way of earning money

herself. She depended on my father and the church, but because the church was Buddhist

and Japanese, people had stopped coming. They were afraid. So we had to go.

A day before Christmas, we left Kaua’i. We went by ship to Honolulu and saw

the Aloha Tower. The following day, we left on the SS Lurline. It was a very beautiful

luxury cruise liner. It had apples and oranges. We ate whatever we wanted. But the next

day, everything changed. We stayed downstairs in the steerage. There were no chairs.

That lasted a whole week. On New Year’s Day, we went under the bridge of San

Francisco. Everybody was seasick. At the port of Oakland, soldiers ushered us off the

ship and onto a train. The train had blinds on it so nobody would throw rocks at us. Then

we went across the country to Jerome, Arkansas.

 

What are some of your early memories of life in the camp?

The apartments were in the barracks. In the apartment were cots with just one

blanket. We arrived in the wintertime. I couldn’t sleep unless my sister and I pushed our

cots together and huddled. We had no warm clothes because we were from Hawaii. Us

Hawaiians wore sandals. I don’t know how we escaped frostbite, but we did. The Red

Cross gave us sweaters. Mine was brown. It was really ugly. But that kept me warm, so I

wasn’t going to complain. That’s how my life began.

 

KUGE

Interned in a variety of Japanese American internment camps. Brother to two members of the

442nd Infantry Regiment.

 

On the evacuation of the Japanese Americans:

Immediately after December 7, 1941, the FBI and military started picking up

important Japanese people who lived in the United States. Many of them were Buddhist

priests, Judo experts, businessmen, or bankers. Relocations of Japanese Americans from

the west coast didn’t take place until FDR declared Executive Order 9066. That allowed

the military to move anybody of Japanese descent. 110,000 people moved into ten

relocation camps. My family went to an assembly center in Portland at a livestock

acquisition center. There were horseflies and manure. The smell was terrible. We had to

stay in stalls that had been converted into living quarters. We stayed there Tule Lake was

completed.

 

What was the community like at Tule Lake?

The reason why some people from the other nine camps were moved to Tule Lake

had to do with the Loyalty Oath. The US army gave it to anybody of Japanese descent

who was 17 years or older. There were two questions that caused a lot of friction in my

family.

Question #27 asked:

"Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty

wherever ordered?"

Question #28 asked:

"Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and

faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces,

and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or any other

foreign government, power, or organization?"

#27 was fairly easy for all of us to say yes to, except for people of the first

generation of immigrants who had been denied US citizenship. There had been so much

bigotry against the Chinese immigrants on the West Coast, and lots of anti-immigration

laws were passed against them. As the Japanese started to move to the United States, the

same strict laws applied. So a lot of older men thought, why should we say yes to fight

when we can’t even become citizens?

As for #28, a lot of second generation Japanese Americans said yes. They never

had allegiance to the Japanese Emperor in the first place. My brothers answered yes. But

again, some older immigrants said no because the only citizenship they had was

Japanese. If they forswore that allegiance, they would be people without a country.

 

After answering yes to both questions, did your brothers serve?

My two older brothers served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Unit. Because of

the unit’s efforts in Italy and Southern France, the soldiers ended up as the most

decorated unit of its size and term of service in the history of the United States. My older

brother was killed in action in Italy. I am proud because his heroism, and the heroism of

all those in the 442nd reduced the amount of bigotry taking place in Hawaii and on the

West Coast. Eventually, in 1983, the government reported that the evacuation of Japanese

Americans was not a military necessity. It was a matter of prejudice and war hysteria.

 

What important lesson is there to learn from the Japanese American experience

during World War Two?

You must be vigilant. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are just words on a

piece of paper unless you fight to protect them. In the United States, we are supposed to

be a progressive and forgiving country. Instead of judging people by the color of their

skin or their religion, we ought to judge people by their merit.