Because... well, my father of course was so
upset about what happened to us, plus having
three brothers in the U.S. Army, not knowing
what harm might come to them. And he had lost
the farm and everything, and here now his
whole family was in camp, so he was pretty
bitter. And then my oldest brother was a Kibei,
he was mainly raised in Japan, and when he
came to the U.S. it was the Depression years.
And then when we're finally doing good we
get thrown into camp, so he wasn't too happy.
But everyone said, "Well, you've got to answer
"yes-yes," because one question was, "Are
you willing to serve in the armed services
and report for duty wherever ordered?" And
the question there, which people said, "That's
like asking to be drafted." And then the second
question was, basically say you have supreme
allegiance to the United States and would
not have any allegiance to any other foreign
country, or I don't know if they mentioned
the emperor, but I think they did. And so
there were some people who argued that, "Hey,
you do that, the U.S. won't give you citizenship,
never had." And so they all, the Issei still
had their Japanese citizenship, they said,
"You could be become stateless if you say
'yes-yes.'" So anyway, they were in a quandary.
I always thought it was my father made
the final decision, and my sister, oldest
sister thought it was the oldest brother.
But then I found out later, I called them,
wrote to him, I guess, he was in Japan, and
he said it was actually my mother who said,
"Look, I got three sons in the U.S. Army who
are in harm's way, and then I may have two
more, so let's declare 'no-no' and maybe then
they'll be spared and also we'll keep the
family together."
And so we became a "no-no" family and then
we were shipped off to Tule Lake, which was
a whole different ballgame because when you
get there, it's an armed encampment, prison,
where the front gate, you have all kind of
guards and towers and you have very high security.
And so, in fact the whole camp was surrounded
not only by a barbed wire fence, but also
beyond that was about fifty yards of no-man's
land that nobody's going to go into. Then
beyond that you have a ten-foot high chain-link
fence with barbed wire at the top. Then you
had a tower every so many feet apart with
guards with their guns. And so it was a prison.
Poston, we had some guards at the front, but
after a while, the camp is just run by itself.
There was no place you could go anyway. So
Tule Lake was a whole different ballgame.
It was a true concentration camp, prison-like
situation.
