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[Background noise] Now we're very fortunate this morning to have another guest with us that's going to express his ideas and views about what he remembers about World War II. It's especially important today for me because our guest is Mr. Carl Hayano.

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And 20 years ago he was a member of this faculty in the art department here at the school. And I asked him 20 years ago if he would come and talk to my world history classes about his experience on the West Coast back in 1941, '42, '43, because he and his family were in one of those Japanese relocation camps.

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At first he was hesitant about coming and talking because he had never spoken of this publicly before. And he hadn't realized how he had felt about it. But he did come and speak to my class and it was very enlightening. It was very beneficial for everybody involved.

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About two weeks ago I called him up again. He now is the chairman of the School of Graduate Studies, the art department at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. And he's driven down from DeKalb this morning.

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I asked him if he'd come back 20 years later to tell his story again to another group of students. And we'll see if the stories have changed in over 20 years. We both matured in that particular period of time. We both learned a lot.

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So I think it'll be very interesting for him to explain to you what it was like to be a young boy, 89 years old, out there in the desert in a relocation camp with his family. And in light of retrospect now of what has happened since that time of 1942, '43, '44, with regard to the people that were incarcerated in those relocation camps.

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So once again, with great pleasure, I introduce my friend, Mr. Carl Mann. And if you want me to stand. I can sit at this point. I'm sorry I'm late.

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My tour director left me a little askew. I don't know how much you've been studying about World War II, but I guess for you people, it probably is ancient history. But for people like myself, the events that occurred are as clear to me today as they were --

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well, they're as clear as if something happened to me yesterday. They haven't changed, in other words, because the events that occurred are probably akin to something that might have occurred in your own family when you were growing up. But they're unforgettable, and you probably will spend the rest of your life thinking about it

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in terms of how it caused certain kinds of behavior patterns in your own lifestyle and how your value systems might have shifted or how your beliefs might have changed or how they're being developed. Because I was so young at that time, I represent one of the last group of survivors.

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There was 110,000 people -- just imagine the city of Oak Park being turned into what was at one time called relocation camps, but were in fact prisons throughout the United States in very remote areas. And just imagine that your entire family was removed from your comfortable environment

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and you were taken away from your friends, and your entire life had changed. That's about the closest I can approximate to making it relative to you. But when you're 8, 9 years old, there's a certain kind of thing that you operate under that your parents are secure, and whatever happened to them, and you were part of it,

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you went along with it. In other words, you were torn from your family, but your entire family was torn from their environment and you went along with it. And I didn't panic with that situation, although it was the first time I could truly feel that I did panic

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because I knew something terrible occurred. Because just during December 7th -- on December 7th, it was a Sunday, and in the afternoon I was playing with my friends. And one of the older kids ran over and told us that the Japs were bombing the United States.

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And we all climbed up to the highest point in the neighborhood because of his alarm. It sounded like the bombing was maybe a couple blocks away, and we kept looking for airplanes, and we kept looking for smoke, and we kept looking for the signs of disaster. But what happened was since I was growing up in a rather white middle class area,

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most of my friends were white, but I recall very vividly I became a Jap overnight. I became the enemy overnight. The very friends that I had been playing with, all of a sudden I was their adversary. And I never thought I was a Jap.

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I didn't know what a Jap was. I just thought I was an American kid growing in this situation, and obviously with different physical traits I was aware of those things. I wasn't blind to that fact.

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But I was not aware of the fact that such animosity could be created so immediately. But that's what occurred even within the first hour of Pearl Harbor, after Pearl Harbor. It created within my friends and the neighborhood a terrific sense of animosity and that you became a little less than what you were before.

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You became very much part of the enemy scheme within the next month or two. Because there was such a terrible scare. I should probably save part of my discussion for questions, which I will, and try not to ramble.

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Well, anyway, soon after December 7th, by January, the war had heated up. One of the big problems with the Japanese on the West Coast, they were probably like some of your grandparents, maybe great-grandparents. They immigrated here from another country with the same dream that the Americans.

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This new land would offer them. And part of the problem that I mentioned was that the Japanese were starting to own property on the West Coast. They were starting to own some of the best farmlands in the countryside.

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They were also controlling some of the fishing fleets near San Pedro, which is just east of Los Angeles. There were these reasons, as well as other political reasons, as well as the entire nation being scared that the Japanese were going to invade

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the United States, that caused a lot of people to decide that the Japanese people should be relocated into the interior of the United States. And at one point, if you've been to California, you know the spine of the Sierra Nevada and Nevada Mountains runs about right down the center of California.

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And so the other side of the mountains, the east side of the mountains, was at one point a safe zone. Because my father had been a rather important citizen and architect in Los Angeles, we were spared immediate evacuation.

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We were allowed to go to Fresno, California, which was in the interior of California, just east of San Francisco. But in the meantime, we suffered the same problems that all Japanese on the West Coast did. We had to virtually--I mean, can you identify with sitting in your bedroom maybe once Sunday

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or someday and having a bunch of people come by and buying everything? And the reason my parents were selling things was that we were allowed only an X amount of things to travel with. So I recall literally my bedroom furniture being evaporated before my eyes.

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It was like a garage sale. I mean, we didn't have time to think. It was either being sold or confiscated or stored. So there were these terrible, alarming warning signs all over L.A. and Los Angeles.

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There were curfews for us. We were to be watched. You know, this is ironic to me, right, today, because I look at half--I look at all of you and probably not too many of you had any inkling that this was going on.

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And the fact that if I visited probably all your homes, you would have Sonys, you would have Nikon cameras, you'd probably have a Toyota or a Honda or something Japanese, very Japanese in your house. And to you probably it would be a very coveted item.

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But at this time in the '40s, we were the most--we were animals. We were the scourge of the earth. We were slant-eyed. We were real oriental grease balls.

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We were really hated. And this hate was necessary because this hate was generated to obviously make sure that the nation, you know, wouldn't say things like, "Nah, they shouldn't go." It was generated so the entire nation would mobilize and say,

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"Yeah, let's get these people in prisons." You know, the question is always asked, "Why the German kids didn't go?" Well, it's probably because 40% of you have German blood in your nap. You know, how are you to be separated?

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But we Japanese are easy to be identified. We look different. And essentially our parents probably ate rice, used chopsticks, and a few other things that, you know, really identified us.

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So it was very, very racially motivated in terms of how we were to be separated and distinct, and since we were distinct, how convenient it was to put us away. Well, I lived in camp. I lived in the--we call it a camp.

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I lived in camp for two and a half years. And I eventually--my parents' father eventually settled in Chicago, and he left camp after two and a half years. And his track was that--his bid was that he would never return to L.A.,

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and he wanted to come to--he came to Chicago first. He was going to Detroit, then he went then to New York. But when he came to Chicago, he found it was a fairly suitable situation for his profession as well as finding an immediate living area for us.

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So this is how we eventually settled in Chicago. I'm jumping ahead of myself because I'll go back to the two years in camp. Now, a lot of the stuff that I've learned about what happened and how I feel today obviously was not there when I was a child 40 years ago.

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Currently it's a topic of some concern with the United States Congress because there is an attempt at this point to do some reparation for us Japanese people, in other words, settle some old scores. I mean, after all, houses were literally confiscated.

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Property was just sold at a minimum rate. So right now Congress is making some kind of bill that will pay back some of the expenses. But this is 40 years later. All us Japanese people want is an apology because not one spy or one conspirator or one traitor was found.

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Because you have to understand, all of us essentially felt we were Americans. And especially people like myself, we were born here. We had no allegiance to Japan. And literally we had no idea what the hell was going on in the first place.

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What's so crazy about this thing going on now is that, as I said, there's only about half of us left. I suspect if they wait another 10, 15 years, there's going to be a quarter of us left. Because I represent probably the age group that went to camp that was between those that were born there and those that were about 10 years old.

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I was about 7 1/2 when I went to camp. Now at that time it was very much of a different thing for me. After my parents got settled, and you know, you witness the trauma of your parents. My father was about 40 years old when this happened.

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My mother was about 30 years old. And just imagine your parents about that age, right? They were just trying to make it. They were just making it as an architect.

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He had just built his home in L.A. You know, a lot of things were going for him. But this was all taken away from him. And I often used to discuss this with him towards the latter part of his life, how he felt about this.

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And it's just remarkable how acquiescent in certain ways that he was. It was because he came from a culture when the government said to do something, they did it. So literally at that point there wasn't too much protest. There was nominal protest, but it wasn't the kind of protest that we see today.

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So we all went to camp rather easily. On the other hand, we couldn't do anything because it was the Army that moved us. It wasn't the police, it was the Army. I'm talking about bayonets, rifles, troops, barbed wire.

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You know, you have these visions of these things happening in Europe. But this is the terrible part. This is my country that did this to me. And later on in your discussions in any of your other groups about any social issues,

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this is either one of the things you, this generation, has to worry about. Because if you thought it happened to me, you know, these kinds of freedom-absorbing things still occur in this country. You're not careful. Well, anyway, this has been always the hurt for most of us Japanese.

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This was our country that did it to us. So, anyway, we went to camp. But when you're seven and a half years old, it was to me a situation which was unusually free. Because we had no school for at least six months.

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We were in the middle, not the middle of Arizona, but we were in an Indian reservation that was barbed wired as a prison. And there were 10,000 people living in the camp that I was living in. It's called Poston. It's actually near Lake Havasu.

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If any of you have recently been to Lake Havasu, you know that it's a nice resort community. But in the '40s, you know, that was just pure desert. And only Indians lived there. So they barbed wired a patch of acreage there.

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And later on, there became Poston I, Poston II, Poston III. But the total was about 10,000 people. So when you're eight years, seven and a half, eight years old, you know, and you came from, let's say, an area of Los Angeles probably similar to Oak Park,

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and all of a sudden you were thrown in the desert and there were no restrictions. You know, in other words, your parental bonds were there, but at the same time, all of a sudden you ran around because that was all you could do. There were no movies. Movies came later.

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The camp was still being built. We all ate communally. In other words, that family thing was starting to be deteriorated somewhat too because we all took baths together.

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In other words, in the middle of camp, the camp was set up so there was about five barracks facing each other. And in each barrack, it was divided into fourths. And here we were, you know, there was five in my family at that time in a room maybe about this size. And the barracks, as I said, this represented about a fourth of the entire length of the barracks.

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And the end barrack was the mess hall, which was usually each block. This was considered a block. My address at that time was 3613 D. I was in the 36th block.

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I had building 13 in my compartment, D. And the mess hall was over here. And, you know, you had to eat breakfast. It was just like the Army.

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We lined up and ate breakfast. We lined up and ate lunch. We lined up and ate dinner because there was no conditions that you could have a kitchen in this location. If you wanted to bathe, in the center there were three small buildings.

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One's facilities for women, for men, and then the laundry facility. And each room was maybe about this size. So if you wanted to use the washroom or the latrine, you know, you did it communally. Everything was communal.

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And this was quite a shock, right? It came from an environment where you had your own bedroom, you had a private bathroom, and so forth and so on. It's like you could--but all of a sudden it was like summer camp, right? And when you're young enough, you know, these things aren't that kind of difficult transitions.

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But you have to realize other folks that were older had to confront the same circumstances. Okay, so under these circumstances, knowing that school buildings weren't being built yet, and, you know, kids were running around, and there was a--you know, there were certain modest attempts to, you know, organize activities for us and so forth.

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But generally for the first six months or so, it was pretty disorganized. And of course it was hot. World War II began on December 7th. My parents were able to move to Fresno, and we lived in Fresno until about July.

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But we were finally, after the war had heated up so much, we also had to go to camp. We left in the middle of the night in Fresno, right? Army guards escorting us to the train. And we landed in Arizona mid-August.

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You think it's hot today? Well, it was hot then, and there was no air conditioning. And here we were, right? It was a very, very difficult situation.

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But the Japanese tend to be fairly industrious, so a lot of building was--that volunteered help to do--you know, to construct. It was also encouraged, and, you know, the people got it together. So by the end of the first six months, after the first six months, things became organized. We had school.

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There were a lot of people that say--I recall, as you know, that I teach at Northern Illinois University. And one of the ladies I remember meeting when I first started teaching at Northern was one of these grand old ladies that actually-- she was a high school teacher at that time, but she decided to quit her high school job and teach in these internment camps. She had to come to Northern.

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And I remember her name, you know, so when I went to Northern, I looked her up. She was just retired, but I met her. You know, it was like you had a lot of courage. You were a real feminist of your day.

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You were a real individual, and you were really doing something that you felt was important. And her name was Esther Robinson. Oh, right here from the art department. No, not here.

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Okay. I know what you're talking about. Well, I'll tell you about it. But anyway, it was amazing that, you know, as much as the pain and sorrow of all this was occurring,

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there were people that stood up and said, "Hey, this is inordinately wrong. This is inordinately stupid. And this is a real travesty against civilization." Not enough, obviously, because it continued.

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Well, anyway, living two and a half years in a situation like this, there are gaps in my education that I feel very self-conscious about, mainly because, you know, we were at one point thrown into no-grade situations because there weren't enough teachers.

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So it was like almost the prairie days of our own country where one classroom held several or many grade levels because you only had one teacher. And in many ways, for myself, you know, I came from a rather middle-class environment, and I met a lot of farm boys there who had totally different value systems.

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It was neat to meet them because they knew the ropes. You know, they were kind of ringwise and worldly. I thought I was a city boy myself, but I was still young. So I learned all kinds of bad things like not hearing, a few other things.

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But, you know, it made life bearable. There wasn't much to do with it. But gradually the camp sort of blossomed. People started planting trees, and adults were paid $27 a month, by the way,

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to do something for the camp. I took my father's salary at that time. And even at that time, that wasn't many months. But anyway, people did and became productive.

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They tried to make community life more enlightening and interesting. For a kid my age, it was still very boring. And so activities like, for instance, I have to this very day a terrific love of the outdoors because of the fact that this was also

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an interesting situation between me and my father. My father never had to go to work. He was always home. It wasn't because he was fired or anything.

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It's just there wasn't that much to do. So my father and I used to do things, probably the first and last time in our relationship. So one of the things we used to do is we used to go hiking. And that's probably why I still have a genuine love of the great outdoors.

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And I continue to love the Southwest. There are, in other words, there are positive things that happen. Okay, I think I'm jumping around a little bit. And I don't want the time to escape without having to have you ask me some things

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that are pertinent not only to this course but maybe some facts that I'm not dispersing to you about the situation. So why don't you answer some of these questions? Were Japanese people, were there a lot of people who were physically damaged or because of conditions? Yeah, because the medical situation was, you could tell that teachers were scarce,

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doctors, nurses, equipment, and those things. And obviously we weren't a priority. World War II was pretty well messy by '42, '43. So the food was terrible in camp. It really was.

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I mean, you're used to eating pita butter and jam sandwiches at your own pleasure, right? But we ate that continually. And we ate things like turnips instead of potatoes. To this very day when I see a turnip, I want to throw up.

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I mean, I still have those kinds of associations. But the facilities toward 1944 became somewhat improved. But if you were really in danger of dying like my uncle did, he was left in L.A. and he died. And my father had to have a special FBI agent go with him to L.A.

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to make sure that my uncle was buried and so forth and so on. So, you know, it was kind of messy. Everything, as you can tell, would take red tape. It was pretty miserable.

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Traveling between Boston and Los Angeles was truly arduous. There was no interstates. You were really in the boondocks. I visited Boston in 1967.

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I brought my sons there who were at that time about six and seven, and I wanted to show them where I was. I don't know what kind of impact it made on them, but it was interesting because I kept telling them we were in the desert,

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but we also, as Japanese, built irrigation ditches. And so the Indians now use that land because it's pretty well irrigated, and I was shocked to see how green it was because it grew cotton, especially where I lived. I went to see where it actually stood as a kid.

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I remember several focus points, like several mountains I remember, and the water tower. And it's now a field of cotton. Any buildings that stand there? Yeah, my father designed the auditorium and the school buildings,

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and those were used by the Peace Corps, although they weren't there. It was a group called Vista. That was a group that preceded, I believe, the Peace Corps. It was the Peace Corps like in this country.

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And so they were using it in the '60s, the late '60s. And several of the buildings were there, and I had some-- as I say, the ground was level and grown over with cotton, so it was hard to see exactly where it was,

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but I thought I found out where my building used to be. You had a question? Yeah, when you were hiking, did they let you out? Like, or did you have to hike inside the camp?

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No, after a while, even the soldiers were kind of lazy and fear, you know what I mean? I mean, truly, if we wanted an escape, we probably could have very easily. But remember, the desert that was confronting us was about maybe a hundred miles radius of nothing, and it would have been very difficult.

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But the Japanese people probably felt more safe there than out. And we really didn't have that great--where would we have gone? You know, our families were there. And Poston was--I mean, it was like a stockade.

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You know, certain parts were barbed wire, but after a while, I remember certain parts weren't. And even the soldiers, as I said, were kind of--it was like probably the worst soldiers were shipped there. You know, the best soldiers were probably fighting a war. And I remember these guys taking target practice and shooting, like, beer cans and cans, you know,

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just horsing around. We never saw too much of them. There weren't too many there, but there was a gate that we had to go through to find. But I believe my father used to get permission, you know, every time to do this.

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After a while, it was like they didn't care either. You know, I'm talking about towards the latter part. I think they believed, yeah, let them go. They'd probably die, you know. Because it was like--I don't know if you've been to Arizona, but there's a certain amount of hiking you can do anyway during the day

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unless you're really crazy. But, you know, out of sheer boredom, and the fact that I always felt my father was kind of adventurous, you know, and he--as a matter of fact, he trapped a couple coyotes. You know, it was my association with him, you know, looking for these things, like old traps, trappers, you know.

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We didn't carry any weapons. I remember I would sharpen a stick, or he would sharpen one for me and give it to me, but I don't know why. But it was just fun. It was just fun being with my dad. Did you--like, did people--was there a problem with people getting lost or separated from each other?

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Yeah. You mean family separation? Yeah, there was. There was a lot of that. And one of the worst things this government did was, at the early part of the war, they separated the older men who were basically non-English-speaking types,

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that the government or the government itself would be the worst kinds of Japanese spies. And these were like old men, you know, in their 70s. And they threw them into the worst prisons, and a lot of them died. You know, there are horror stories.

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We reiterate that amongst the community of this man, you know, who was-- the FBI made him spit on a picture of the emperor, and to him it's like spitting on the American flag, you know, for yourself. It was such an act of depredation that he refused to do it. And the story goes he died soon after that event, and we've never been able to find out how he died.

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And there are all--every family has a weird story like this. You've heard of the 442, Japanese-American fighting force in Europe. A lot of those sons were coerced into joining that outfit. They were all machined into it. They just had to do it to show their loyalty.

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But, you know, a lot of the--there was another group of Hawaiians that weren't incarcerated. They also kind of did it to prove their loyalty in a peculiar way. It may look peculiar, but, you know, when you were at that time, it was important. We Japanese were Americans. That's what we were trying to tell people.

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[Audience member] In any way, like, you lose your faith in America, like, in the system. Because at the time, it seemed like a lot of people were, like, really into America and what it was like. Did you feel like there was that kind of torture, or were you still kind of-- Probably not until I became--got to high school, you know, where my awareness of what happened to me was much stronger,

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and I appreciated the fact that I had survived. And those kinds of things became very traumatic to me. And, of course, as you became an adult, you studied about it, and understood what happened to you. Then you got very, very angry.

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I'm--see, this is a dichotomy that I'm reproducing here for you. My sensation of these events, not only as an adult, but as a child. I experienced it firsthand as a child, and I learned whatever I've learned in my tippity to this event, you know, grew as an adult. But as a child, that curious phenomenon of being in a situation where it were--

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Although all my possessions were gone, it was, like, fun because I had lots more kids to play with. I had my father with me continually in certain respects, and he was an adventurous guy. He loved it. You know, he built a rabbit-- You know, we used to go hiking to the Indian Reservation.

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That was one of my fun things. We used to trade chickens and rabbits for that, you know, for food that would be buried in my diet. And that's--you know, that was him. He was interested in the family. So we would have meat.

00:34:21.000 - 00:34:41.000

It caused a great deal of jealousy amongst the camp, so he eventually had to watch that. So eventually he got about a dozen, so we used to share food eventually. Yes? How long was the transaction time before you got the notice in the mail and you were thrown into this camp?

00:34:41.000 - 00:34:56.000

Okay. As I said, December 7, '41, right? And because of the dispensation my father had, we didn't go right away. Most people went by February, January, February. I mean, that's fast, right?

00:34:56.000 - 00:35:09.000

By April, we were out of L.A. and into Fresno. But we lasted in Fresno only until about September. I said August before, but now that I think about it, it was more like September. September.

00:35:09.000 - 00:35:23.000

So it was pretty fast. But you didn't have to go to places like Santa Anita. You didn't have to live in horse stalls like some of the people did that were taken out very quickly. Right. Those were the ones that went so fast they had literally nowhere to put them except in stables and stuff.

00:35:23.000 - 00:35:40.000

But when we went to camp, when we were in Poston, when we arrived, my aunt was already there, and most of the barracks still were not up, and so we had to spend the first few days before our barracks was completed. In a tent? No. We spent it in their quarters.

00:35:40.000 - 00:35:50.000

Shedding? Yeah. But at that time, the quartering of the walls hadn't occurred yet. So it was just one long building. No air conditioning, right?

00:35:50.000 - 00:36:02.000

And it was like tarpaulins. Desert. It was a desert. I don't know about how you used to go to the war movies, but what did you think about John Wayne?

00:36:02.000 - 00:36:14.000

Yeah, you know, we used to see these movies where all the dirty guys would jab. "Sans Iwo Jima" and all that. Well, that "Sans Iwo Jima" didn't come out until '45. "Wake Island" or one of those other ones.

00:36:14.000 - 00:36:38.000

Some of the older Japanese kids would react pretty strongly, as a matter of fact, I think I might have reiterated this earlier, but we were watching a movie and all the Japs were getting killed, and some of the older kids got so mad they busted the projector and ripped the screen down. So we didn't have movies. For us little kids, it was terrible.

00:36:38.000 - 00:37:00.000

We wanted to see movies. We wanted to have some entertainment. But those forms of protest were fairly non-violent. I mean, there was general anger with the adults and so forth, but it wasn't as bad as it should have been. Did you have any hostile feelings towards the Japanese in Japan?

00:37:00.000 - 00:37:18.000

Did you blame them for you being put in a camp? I don't think we felt that way because literally we did have relatives. We had our aunts and uncles, although I never met them at that time, and I didn't know who they were. I just knew them by picture.

00:37:18.000 - 00:37:32.000

But I think what we did was we felt guilt. We felt more like when we were together we were incompetent in doing this. Why? It's like your cousins had done something real bad to your family name.

00:37:32.000 - 00:37:53.000

But to the white community, we would defend that amongst ourselves. We would be greatly sorrowful. We just couldn't believe it because we were Americans. My father was here since he was 14 years old.

00:37:53.000 - 00:38:08.000

He went to the University of Southern California in 1927, even when most people didn't go to university. He was an American. You felt an American. But the problem is, you see, you couldn't hide anywhere.

00:38:08.000 - 00:38:16.000

Like if you did escape, say, from the camp, or if you go nowhere, you couldn't hide. I'd be shocked. That's right. They would think you was a saboteur.

00:38:16.000 - 00:38:28.000

There was a camp near Arkansas where some people kind of wandered out after a baseball game. Some kid about 12, 13 years old. That was one of the big scandals. He was popped off.

00:38:28.000 - 00:38:39.000

He was wasted by a 45. Some kind of rambled guy on a tower. A 12-year-old kid, you know, a big saboteur. Yes?

00:38:39.000 - 00:38:59.000

Did you have any older relatives, or know anyone that, like, went into the Army in the United States? My family was relatively young at that time. But the only other relative we had was my aunt. And her kids were older than my cousins.

00:38:59.000 - 00:39:20.000

But they were all girls. One of the things that they did do, however, was, if you were about a teenager on the way to college, there was some efforts by Christian groups, particularly, that sponsored people, students.

00:39:20.000 - 00:39:49.000

And some of these older students, well, your peer group, in a sense, 18-year-old kids, were able to go to colleges that were sponsored. But it was done generally through people like some Methodist groups, Protestant groups. And that sponsored, that's why three, two of my older cousins were able to get out of camp,

00:39:49.000 - 00:40:12.000

I would say a good, almost a year before us. Because they were 18 years old, they were 19, languishing in camp, nothing to do. And they wanted to go to college. And so because of the Red Cross and so forth, they were able to be funded and sponsored by some family who took them in.

00:40:12.000 - 00:40:27.000

And, I mean, you know, you know where they went? They went to Hardin-Simmons, Abilene, Texas. And Abilene, Texas, in the '40s, was about as dusty and as cow-town as you possibly can be. It's no longer that now.

00:40:27.000 - 00:40:47.000

And Hardin-Simmons was kind of a Protestant school to begin with. So there was some effort by some people there that felt this was inordinately wrong. And they sponsored people like my cousins. But they were like, you know, college age to begin with.

00:40:47.000 - 00:41:16.000

But if they were probably males, they would have probably been given the opportunity to join the army. What was the attitude of most Americans after the war, once everyone was released? Well, most of the people east of the Mississippi, and it's always intriguing, is that they never knew about this. You know, because remember, mass communication isn't what it used to be.

00:41:16.000 - 00:41:32.000

It isn't like what it is today, right? It isn't that immediate and so forth. So the terror of the Japanese east of the Mississippi probably didn't exist. In other words, nobody in Pennsylvania thought the Japanese were going to bomb L.A.

00:41:32.000 - 00:41:49.000

But if you were in L.A., you might have thought that that might have occurred. So after the war, when we migrated, most Japanese did migrate east, by the way, although some did go back to L.A. to stay. My parents refused to go back to such a racially prejudiced area.

00:41:49.000 - 00:42:06.000

They hated that thought. And even to this very day, I'm a little embarrassed about that. Otherwise, I'm sure she'd be better off being in it. But she's--Chicago absorbed this rather well, although I'm not a very physical person.

00:42:06.000 - 00:42:24.000

I never thought I was. But I can honestly tell you, I've had fistfights since I was about five years old to about 14 years old. Just because I don't know who I was. So when I came here, there was a few of those name-calling kinds of things going on.

00:42:24.000 - 00:42:45.000

But I think because we were in Chicago, and a lot of Chicago came here, it subsided pretty well. By the time I was in high school, I can honestly say that most kids were probably like you guys. We got along. I mean, even so, you still snickered probably if you had that opportunity.

00:42:45.000 - 00:43:07.000

But I guess because I settled in Hyde Park, which was largely a Jewish community at that time, who suffered their own prejudices, it helped be in a community that understood prejudice. Yes? Like with the movies and stuff that you saw, and just the general prejudice and stuff going on

00:43:07.000 - 00:43:22.000

and being put in the camps, did it ever make you feel less or anything? How did it make you feel? Sure. It pointed out to you immediately that you were different.

00:43:22.000 - 00:43:37.000

Remember I said at the beginning, I didn't know I was a jack. I didn't know I was an enemy. But when enough people convince you that you are, you not only have guilt, but you have this real notion that you probably are a real slimeball.

00:43:37.000 - 00:43:56.000

And so that probably persists in some Japanese people's behavior, Japanese-American behavior of people my age. We were put through a lot during our formative years. I'm not begging off your question.

00:43:56.000 - 00:44:18.000

I'm sure some of us survived real well. But in the back of my mind, boy, if I still hear the word "jack," the hair on my back just stands right up. But I don't want to drop my load to go after you like perhaps when I was 14 years old or something like that.

00:44:18.000 - 00:44:41.000

It's there, but it's not there in that kind of situation. Because I don't think you're calling me jack now for the same reasons you called me that in the '40s either. Yes? Do you think that because you went through all this that you're more proud of your ancestry?

00:44:41.000 - 00:45:00.000

Does it give you closer ties? For a long time, like first-generation kids, if you're first-generation Puerto Rican or first-generation anybody, the tendency is to reject your parentage. You want to become an American as fast as you can.

00:45:00.000 - 00:45:15.000

You want to have kids come over to your house and not have your parents speaking Japanese. You want them speaking English. You want American food on the table, not Japanese food on the table. I suffered that kind of duality too.

00:45:15.000 - 00:45:35.000

In other words, I became more American than American in certain respects. Because I wanted my parents not to be foot-dragging. The horror story would be to have kids come over, like my friends, and see my mother in a kimono or something like that with Japanese music, that kind of thing.

00:45:35.000 - 00:45:57.000

Obviously, it wasn't like that. That would be a horror for me to experience because I wanted her to be just as American as I was. As far as the proudness of my parentage is concerned, it took me some time. I didn't realize what my ancestry was, how genuinely important my people were until maybe I was about your age.

00:45:57.000 - 00:46:21.000

Because earlier than that, it was either through stupidity or unconsciousness, the fact that I was made to feel less than human. It took me some time to develop the notion that, yeah, my people were pretty true. You were like a convert first time you'd become so American. Yeah, we were.

00:46:21.000 - 00:46:44.000

Although our appetites didn't dramatically change. It was because I think my parents always lived in white middle-class areas for one reason or another. That kind of self-consciousness was probably a little bit more like myself. See, I'm not trying to also associate the fact that this may have occurred to everybody.

00:46:44.000 - 00:47:17.000

I'm giving you my impression of how it felt. So, if you came from Greece last week and you were coming to Oak Park High School, you would want to wear Reeboks, you want to wear Aizat shirts. And if you went home and you told your parents that you wanted to stay and didn't understand, you know, you'd have that conflict between the old and the new. You want to listen to certain things on the radio and they thought you were obscene and terrible and all that kind of thing.

00:47:17.000 - 00:47:39.000

It happens even if they didn't come over, but at the same time, if they did, that distance between your culture and your new view, your time with your friends, very different. So, you know, those are the things that I had to cope with. When you were in Kansas, did you hear anything about the Japanese victories? Very little. Very little.

00:47:39.000 - 00:48:00.000

I think most Americans didn't hear about them. It was time for this nation to mobilize and be patriotic. And remember, they always called World War II the good war, the honorable war. So, after the first, you know, we found out it was pretty devastating.

00:48:00.000 - 00:48:34.000

The Japanese did score some major victories, but it was never known how major they were until after the war ended. And they didn't know that, you know, the justification that only recently has been, in my mind, rational, is that probably the atomic bomb, the only good reason to disperse that out of Japan would be the fact that if the war went into Japan, it would have taken probably another 20 years to end it because the Japanese were ready to die for their country,

00:48:34.000 - 00:49:06.000

just like any American would be ready to die for their country. It was a stupid way to end the war, I still feel, but that was the only rationale I believe is reasonable, to believe that this is why this war would end the way it was, in my opinion. Yes? You said that the movies, the war movies, people didn't like those because the Japanese always had a blue boozing,

00:49:06.000 - 00:49:48.000

and it killed. Was that a view of the real war, that it wasn't, people were torn between true science and war? Yeah, well, it was only until the older kids told us, or through some osmosis, you know, after all, we were little kids, we were cheering to John Wayne ourselves. It wasn't until some other older kids told us, hey, you know what this movie's about, that we realized how pathetic these war movies are. You know, by the way, they show some of these, like Guadalcanal Diaries is still shown on Channel 9 after the Japanese people had protested year after year.

00:49:48.000 - 00:50:16.000

I even wrote them a letter one time, but they show this movie once more. I'm really, you know, I'm really going to tell you how angry I am. It's such a biased, vulgar movie. You know, all the Japanese are shown with buck teeth. And by the way, these were all Chinese actors, right? And there was a real resentment against Chinese people at this point, for portraying us in such sleazy ways.

00:50:16.000 - 00:50:38.000

And there were some Chinese that used to wear buttons that said, I'm not a Jap, I'm Chinese. You know, we resented that. We don't resent the Chinese as a group, by the way, now. But there are some people in LA, in the Japanese American community, that still remember this. But I remember in camp, being in one of my good friends' name was Willie Wong.

00:50:38.000 - 00:50:58.000

He was Chinese. His father was Chinese. His mother was Japanese. So his mother and the kids were in camp. His father was outside of camp. That's how crazy it got. You know, how would you like that? Willie Wong, he's Chinese. His father's Chinese. His mother's Japanese.

00:50:58.000 - 00:51:14.000

So we had some compassion for that situation. We thought how arbitrary and stupid that was. We have time for one more question. Another one? No? Yeah, go ahead.

00:51:14.000 - 00:51:32.000

Does this have anything to do with anybody else? Do you think it had, like going through something like that, like you said, during the formative years, do you think that had something to do with you going into art and stuff? Like do you think it affected your career choice?

00:51:32.000 - 00:52:01.000

What it directly affected me was my absolute consciousness of what prejudice is. And for instance, I think the prejudice in this country is ten times worse for black people, even though they were never in prison like I was. I feel that now I can develop these things, but I'm trying to give you a short answer.

00:52:01.000 - 00:52:20.000

So certain kinds of sensitivities did achieve itself. Yes, probably that I wouldn't have had earlier. I mean, I could very well say that I was a chauvinist pig. I still am. I was tempted somewhat by the birth of my daughter.

00:52:20.000 - 00:52:34.000

I had a daughter. I wanted her to have every kind of situation. In other words, we grow as human beings. But yes, you're right. There are things that kind of stimulate you to believe a little bit more compassionately or more sensitively.

00:52:34.000 - 00:52:51.000

It's terrible things to do. Carl, we appreciate you coming. We certainly do, and it's awfully nice for you to dredge up these thoughts and memories again because I know it's not been easy.

00:52:51.000 - 00:53:11.000

Well, if I could have gone to the bathroom first, I would have been speaking a little bit more comfortably. And if I didn't have to wait for my tour guide. I was in the opposite side of the building. I was in the old building where it's real hot, looking for my old room.

00:53:11.000 - 00:53:24.000

And I thought, "Oh, I'm going to miss something." But I think they heard a story that, as I said, has not really been written up very much. Only now in American history books are they beginning to talk about this. This is a very old American history.

00:53:24.000 - 00:53:39.000

And I think they have it from your viewpoint and oral history as someone who was there. You can understand it much more readily than you can through textbooks. Yeah, as I say, Tom, this is-- I wasn't patronizing you people, by the way,

00:53:39.000 - 00:53:54.000

but something like this really takes a heck of a lot more time to discuss than it can be done adequately within an hour. Because if you're really interested in this, obviously, like I am, there are things I feel badly that I'm not telling you.

00:53:54.000 - 00:54:18.000

I'm trying to give you kind of like a synopsis of an eight-year-old kid looking at the situation also. I'm trying to give you several points of view as quickly as I can to kind of give you a general idea. But if I were to really do a decent job, it can't be done in an hour. And I think some of your questions are starting to become important, and I think that was good.

00:54:18.000 - 00:54:21.000

Thank you very much. [applause]