BY: My name is Robert Yokiashi Yada, they call me Bob.
|
JW:
And that was your birth name? |
BY: Well, I added on Robert while I was in high school.
|
JW:
I see. And what is your birthday? |
BY:
(DELETED CONTENT) |
JW:
And where were you born? |
BY: I was born in Stockton, California. |
JW:
Okay. And what was your parents' names? |
BY: My parent's name was Utaka Yada, and he added on the name
Sam. And my mother's name is Haruwi Yada. And my dad was born in
Hawaii, Hilo, Hawaii. And my mother was born in Marysville,
California. |
JW:
So Americans of Japanese descent? |
BY: Yes. |
JW:
So you grew up in Stockton? |
BY: Up until when the war started. |
JW:
When the war started. And you would have been roughly four years
old when the war started? |
BY: That's correct. |
JW:
Well, tell us what kind of business was your father in?
|
BY: My dad was a tractor driver and a mechanic at a farm.
|
JW:
And your mother was a housewife and mother? |
BY: Yeah. She worked out in the field, too, in the celery
fields. |
JW:
And I guess I should ask, do you have brothers and sisters?
|
BY: I have one brother, he's five years younger than I am and he
was born in Rohwer, Arkansas, in the internment camp.
|
JW:
What is his name? |
BY: Richard. |
JW:
Okay. Well, tell us what happened to your family when the war
broke out. |
BY: When the war broke out, everything was going normal, I
guess, until the Executive Order 9066 was signed by the
President. And from that point on, it got to be pretty scary for
my parents because I remember, they not knowing what to expect,
they built a fire in the front yard out in the country and
burned all their family photos and movies that they had. And I
kind of regret that and they kind of regretted it, too, later on
in life. |
JW: Well, let me ask you this. I mean when you were telling me
that, it struck me that if people were suspicious, then they
would have been really suspicious, I think, if somebody had
suddenly burned all 2 the family records. And I'm sure that's
not what your parents had in mind. |
BY: No, no, no. From the information I gathered in just recent
years, I think the FBI or whoever were more interested in the
more educated people, college graduate and that kind of thing.
|
JW: Well, are your parents still living? |
BY: My mother's still living. |
JW: Okay. Did they tell you anything about how they began to
fear for their own safety? Was it the minute they heard that
Pearl Harbor had been attacked, or did they think, well, we're
Americans, why would anybody be suspicious of us. I mean was it
immediate fear or did things start falling into place?
|
BY: It just started falling into place. When they signed 9066,
they just had about thirty days to get rid of all their personal
belongings. All they could carry was what they could put in
there, what they could carry. |
JW: Do you remember leaving California? |
BY: Yes. I remember the long train ride and the hard wooden
bench seats. And we would stop in the middle of the desert and
they would let us get out and stretch our legs, and I would see
the MPs with their rifles out there watching us. I never will
forget that. |
JW: Because you'd just been a little boy, and then all of a
sudden that happened. Where did you wind up? |
BY: We wound up in Rohwer, Arkansas. |
JW: And that was an internment camp that was, I assume, quickly
built for such a purpose? |
BY: Yes. |
JW: And do you know what date that was? |
BY: I think it was October of '46. No, no, no. War started in
'41, it would have been October of '42. |
JW: So it was really quite awhile between Pearl Harbor and when
they came and moved you all? |
BY: Well, during the interim period, while Rohwer was being
built, we were housed, some of us, in horse stalls and some in
barracks in Stockton Assembly Center, it's the racetrack.
|
JW: Do you know how soon after Pearl Harbor that they gave your
parents thirty days and moved you out of your home?
|
BY: I'm thinking it was after the first of the year in '42. I
can't recall what date. |
JW: Do you recall or do you recall your parents saying anything
about being harassed or mistreated after Pearl Harbor, after the
attack on Pearl Harbor? |
BY: No, they never said any derogatory thing about the U.S. or 3
anything that went on. |
JW: Okay. So you arrived in Arkansas and they'd built a camp.
And was it barracks, was it individual houses? What happened?
|
BY: It was tar paper barracks. |
JW: Was it segregated men and women, or families?
|
BY: It was family units. |
JW: Family units? |
BY: I think the family unit size were 12 x 20 or 16 x 20, I
can't remember what the dimensions were. |
JW: So it was just your mother and father and you at that point?
|
BY: At that point. |
JW: Did you have grandparents alive at that time?
|
BY: Yes. My grandparents came to the U.S., on my mother's side,
to U.S. to work the peach orchards in California. And they felt
like the war was inevitable and they wanted to go back to their
homeland before the war started. |
JW: They went back to Japan? |
BY: They went back to Japan and they lived in Hiroshima, and
they lived there when they dropped the bomb. And the only thing
that saved them was a mountain that separated the city and where
they lived. |
JW: So they survived World War II? |
BY: They survived, yes. |
JW: That's good. What about on your father's side?
|
BY: My father's side, his parents came to Hawaii to work the
sugar cane fields. And when he was twenty-three, he moved to the
mainland for bigger and better things, I guess. |
JW: Were his parents still alive when the war broke out?
|
BY: Yes, they lived in Hawaii. |
JW: What happened to them? |
BY: My grandfather died, I believe it was during the internment
camp period. And my grandmother lived to be a hundred and four
years old. |
JW: Well, were they interned, also? |
BY: No, they were not. |
JW: They were just left alone in Hawaii? |
BY: Yes. |
JW: Well, what do you remember about the first few weeks or
months in Rohwer, in the internment camp? |
BY: Well, when the train pulled up at the gate entrance to
Rohwer, I remember the barbed wire fence and the guard shack.
And that's the 4 only memory I have, other than after we moved
in. So my dad built furniture out of orange boxes and stuff like
that so we'd be more comfortable, but we slept in Army cots just
like the military. And we had a potbelly stove in the room and
that's all we had. |
JW: I guess since you were a little boy, once you got used to
your new surroundings, you just played with the other kids?
|
BY: That's correct. But everybody that I played with, they all
came to Rohwer, so I didn't know that there was any difference.
I thought it was just a period in life where everybody went
through. |
JW: Well, your father built furniture out of orange crates. What
else, were the adults required to work? |
BY: They weren't required, I don't think, but my dad helped in
the kitchen and cut wood, cut wood for block fireplaces, and the
potbelly stoves during the winter to make just a little bit of
money, spending money. |
JW: And would the government pay him for-- |
BY: They paid him, and they paid everybody, the doctors, what
the privates were getting paid in the Army, which was about
sixteen, eighteen dollars a month. |
JW: For being interned? |
BY: Yes. They had to work. |
JW: If they worked. If they had money in their pocket, was there
any place to spend it? |
BY: They had a canteen, it was sort of like a quickie like we
have today. |
JW: And when you said your father worked in the kitchen, was
there one large kitchen where everybody ate? |
BY: Yes. Every block had a kitchen and they had a shower and
bath facilities and laundry facility. |
JW: And you say blocks, how many blocks do you think there was
in Rohwer? |
BY: Oh, gosh. I don't know. There were more than-- We were in
Block 19 and I know some people lived in Block 28, so I know
there was at least twenty-eight. |
JW: Have you ever been told the approximate population of that
internment camp? |
BY: I think it was about eighty-five hundred. |
JW: That's a lot of people. What did your mother do during this
period? |
BY: She tried to take care of me, I guess. |
JW: Chase you around? |
BY: Well, she took some sewing courses and things like that.
There 5 wasn't much for women to do. |
JW: Did she or your father talk about how hard it was to make
such a change, be forced into such a change? |
BY: No, they never said anything like that; but I wondered,
myself, and I'm kind of amazed at how they managed, after the
camp, how they managed to start from zero and to get to where
they were. |
JW: Do you remember anything else about that period of time?
|
BY: Well, I remember just personal things that I kind of
remember. I tell this story everytime. The most memorable
Christmas was when I was in Rohwer. And on Christmas Eve, my dad
sat on my bed and asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I said,
"I'd like to have Santa Clause to bring me a bicycle." And he
said, "Well, I don't think Santa Clause can bring a bicycle down
that chimney." So my second choice was a Boy Scout knife. And
Christmas morning, I got up and there was a Boy Scout knife. And
I don't know how he did it because there was not a Wal-Mart
around. |
JW: Didn't appear out of nowhere, so he pulled some kind of a
trick, didn't he? |
BY: Yeah. |
JW: How long were you and your parents interned?
|
BY: Oh, about three and a half years. |
JW: Was it until the end of the war? |
BY: No. Some of the people left right before the war, and we
left, I think, in the spring or early summer of '45, we were
invited to farm at this farm in Little Rock so we could get our
crops in. And I think that was the reason we left early. And
then the war was over that year, August '45. |
JW: And then your parents chose to stay in Arkansas, rather than
return to Stockton? |
BY: Yes. There was about nine or a dozen families that stayed
around Arkansas in Little Rock and Scott, Arkansas. And they all
eventually went back to California except us. |
JW: I know what I was going to ask you. I suppose your parents
spoke English at home? |
BY: Oh, yes. Well, my dad was fluent in both languages. My
mother still has trouble speaking English, but she understands
English and speaks English because in her childhood, my
grandparents sent her back to Japan to go to school. So I guess
I can't remember how long she stayed over there, but she came
back and I guess she was in grammar school or junior high when
she came back. |
JW: Were you taught both languages growing up? |
BY: Yes. I wasn't taught, but I just picked it up.
|
JW: Well, after the war, your parents go to work on a farm. 6
|
BY: Yes, sharecroppers. |
JW: And where did you live after the internment?
|
BY: We were provided homes. We were sharecroppers so they
provided us a home, tractor and land. And there was some deals
made who paid for what and how much these people got. So it was
like a commune, so to speak. Not a commune, but everybody split
the pot, so to speak. |
JW: And so it wasn't a time of doing without and it wasn't a bad
time, I guess, is what I'm saying? |
BY: It was hard times. |
JW: It was hard times. |
BY: I was just telling Carole while ago that everything I've
done since farming, is a heck of a lot easier. |
JW: I bet. Well, how long did you live in the sharecroppers
house? |
BY: Well, after about a year and a half in Little Rock, we moved
to Scott, Arkansas, in a sharecroppers house, and we stayed
there about seven years. |
JW: Where is Scott, Arkansas? I'm not familiar. |
BY: It's across the Arkansas River from the Little Rock Airport,
if you know where Lock and Dam 6 is. |
JW: I don't. But you lived in that house and your father worked
that farm for seven years? |
BY: Uh-huh, about seven years. |
JW: And was life fairly good outside of a lot of hard work?
|
BY: Well, as a kid, I would say yes. We did without, we were
poor, but we didn't know we were. |
JW: I guess your father was experiencing about the average life
of a sharecropper in Arkansas? |
BY: I guess, yeah. |
JW: I never heard any of them say that it was very easy and that
there was lots of money involved. Well, what happened after
Scott, Arkansas? |
BY: Then we moved to another farm and they had rented the
property, so he did a little better. And eventually bought some
property, went into the greenhouse business and plant business,
and he did fairly well until the Highway Department decided to
build an Interstate through their living room. |
JW: That must have been about 1966 or 7, 8, somewhere in there?
|
BY: Yeah, yeah. |
JW: Well, did that ruin him or just make him mad?
|
BY: Well, you know, when the Highway Department takes property,
they have to find you someplace comparable to that. So he had to
move and 7 relocate his business somewhere else, but it was
okay. |
JW: It eventually recovered? |
BY: Yeah. |
JW: That's good. And by that time, you're a grown man, aren't
you? |
BY: Yes, I was going to college then. |
JW: Where did you go to grade school and junior high and high
school? |
BY: I went to Badget School, in Little Rock, until I was in the
4th grade, part of the 4th grade. Then I went to Scott until 9th
grade. Then I commuted to Little Rock Central High School
twenty-five miles each way. |
JW: And that's where you graduated from? |
BY: That's where I graduated from high school. |
JW: What year did you graduate? |
BY: In 1955. |
JW: You graduated in time to miss the racial trouble of '57?
|
BY: Well, I graduated, but I was in the National Guard then so I
got called up. |
JW: You got called up? Okay. Well, let me get to that. You
graduated from high school in '55 and then what did you do?
|
BY: Well, I went to junior college and helped my dad, parents,
on the farm. I never had to worry about a parttime job.
|
JW: Right, right. You just stayed there and went to college and
worked? |
BY: Then I went to University of Arkansas. I was a late bloomer,
so to speak. |
JW: What year did you graduate from the University of Arkansas?
|
BY: I knew you were going to ask me that. I graduated in the
summer of '68, with a degree in Engineering. |
JW: Well, let's do this. When did you wind up in the National
Guard? |
BY: It was right after high school. I was in the medics, they
were starting up a new medical unit. And the guys I ran around
with said let's join up. I was reluctant at first, but I said
what the heck. |
JW: Got a little extra money? |
BY: Yeah, wasn't much back in those days. |
JW: And so you were in the National Guard and got called up in
1957 when the integration of Central took place. Tell us about
that. |
BY: Well, I was at the University in Fayetteville at that time.
And I had to report for a few hours every night, which didn't do
much for my studying. I wasn't much of a bookworm anyway, but
anyway it was just for about thirty days, but that was enough to
mess me up. 8 |
JW: But they called you back, they called you in and you went
into Little Rock? |
BY: I did not go to Little Rock. |
JW: Oh, you didn't? |
BY: I stayed in school in Fayetteville. |
JW: I see. But you were prepared to go to Little Rock should you
be needed? |
BY: Yes. And I continued to stay in the National Guard, and then
we got called up again for the Berlin Crisis. |
JW: Did they put you on a plane and fly you out?
|
BY: No. I was stationed in Fort Chaffee, they opened up the
hospital in Fort Chaffee and I stayed there for ten months.
|
JW: I see. And lived on base? |
BY: Uh-huh. |
JW: And so in the National Guard, you were in some sort of a
medical unit? |
BY: Yes. |
JW: I see. Were you a single man during all that?
|
BY: I was. |
JW: Okay. Well, back to the internment just one more time. Did
your parents ever say anything? Do you have any stories you
heard them tell or anything like that? |
BY: They showed no animosity towards anyone. They never talked
about it much. |
JW: So they weren't scarred for life? |
BY: No. |
JW: Or if they were, they didn't show it? |
BY: That's right. |
JW: Well, I hoped they weren't scarred for life, because I've
known several Katrina victims who, in effect, I mean it was not
quite the same thing, but one day they're living in their house
and everything is fine, and the next day they wind up in
Oklahoma or Arkansas or Texas or something, and have nothing.
And there's a few of them that aren't handling that very well,
and I don't blame them. I don't know that I could make that kind
of a transition, I'm so set in my ways. |
BY: Right. You know, there was over a hundred thousand Japanese
that were interned and some of those never recovered either.
|
JW: Right. Was there ever any trouble at the camp?
|
BY: No, not at Rohwer. 9 |
JW: Do you recall if-- You were such a little boy, I'm sure you
didn't, but I wonder if there was any of the adults that just
couldn't take it. |
BY: I'm sure there were, but I didn't know them.
|
JW: Didn't know anything about it? |
BY: No. |
JW: Okay. Well, the next thing then, let's see, you were called
up for the Berlin Blockade and you were in for ten months active
duty at Chaffee. And then after that, you went back to the
University of Arkansas and eventually got a degree in
Engineering? |
BY: Yes. |
JW: And no more National Guard duty? |
BY: No. But there was a job, I worked for the Corps of Engineers
in Little Rock, and they were going through a reduction in
force. And I thought I was going to be one that would get hit,
so there was this job that came open at Fort Chaffee and I
applied for it and got it. So we moved to Fort Smith in August
of '71. |
JW: August of '71. You say we. You must have gotten married?
|
BY: I got married. |
JW: And who did you marry? |
BY: I married Sarah, Sarah Edwards. |
JW: And where did you meet her? |
BY: I met her at Little Rock University. |
JW: I see. Do you have any children? |
BY: I have two, a boy and a girl. The boy is a civil engineer,
works for the Corps of Engineers in Little Rock. And my daughter
is a social worker, she works at elderly facilities in
Springdale. |
JW: Okay. What job did you take in Fort Smith in 1972, did you
say? |
BY: '71. |
JW: '71. |
BY: I was the civilian engineer at Fort Chaffee. I was the only
engineer at Fort Chaffee. |
JW: I'm trying to remember. It wasn't real busy at Fort Chaffee
in 1971, was it? |
BY: No. It was a caretaker, what they call a caretaker facility,
mostly maintenance work and National Guard and Reserve training.
|
JW: I see. I assume you didn't live on base in 1971?
|
BY: No, I did not. |
JW: Okay. You lived in Fort Smith? |
BY: Fort Smith. 10 |
JW: Okay. And how many years did you have that job?
|
BY: About sixteen years. |
JW: Sixteen years. Did you retire? |
BY: Yes, I retired from that and went to work for City of Fort
Smith for twelve, and I retired from that. |
JW: Now you're just retired? |
BY: Now I'm just retired. I work for my wife. |
JW: Don't we all. Well, it was pretty quiet in 1971; but about
1975, it was no longer quiet at Chaffee. |
BY: That's correct. |
JW: Can you tell us about that experience. |
BY: Well, I was in bed. And early in the morning, I got a call
from my boss. He said, "Meet us at the airport, we're going to
Fort Sill." And I got up, and we went to Fort Sill, and we did
some planning over at Fort Sill because Fort Sill was our next
in chain of command, if you will, that we had to answer to. And
we had to coordinate some engineering things that we had to do
as the Vietnamese actually came. |
JW: At that point, were you preparing in case they came?
|
BY: Yes. |
JW: Were you sure they were coming? |
BY: We were pretty sure they were coming, but we weren't really
definite about it. |
JW: I see. But you sprang into action to get ready, in case. And
so then at some point, they must have told you here they come?
|
BY: Yes. |
JW: And then I guess all hell broke loose, would be my guess.
|
BY: Yes. We didn't have much very much time, and our facilities
at Fort Chaffee was not capable of handling all those
twenty-five thousand people at once because our sewage system
was-- there was a pond a sewage pond facility and we had to
expand it because of the EPA rules. |
JW: I imagine it was pretty antiquated. |
BY: Yes, very antiquated. |
JW: Well, what do you remember when the Vietnamese started
arriving? |
BY: I remember it very well. They came in truckloads and bus
loads. And I was in charge of getting the mess hall contracts
and the landfill contracts and designing family petitions in the
barracks, and we had to design a new sewage system. And we
worked sixteen hours a day for three months. |
JW: I was going to say, all that had to be done pretty fast? 11
|
BY: Yeah. It was design construction, I mean they were
constructing it while we were designing it. |
JW: Did any of that make you think of Rohwer? |
BY: Yes, it did. |
JW: I would think it would. |
BY: And I said to myself, and I was quoted in the paper, that I
thought the Cubans were getting treated better than we did in
Rohwer. |
JW: The Vietnamese or the Cubans? |
BY: Vietnamese, I'm sorry. And until I started talking to some
people in surrounding communities around Rohwer, they thought we
were getting treated pretty good because we were getting meat
and they weren't getting meat, and we had electricity and
running water and they didn't. And after that, I kept my mouth
shut. |
JW: I remember it was very confusing just being a regular guy
over here walking around Fort Smith. I'm sure out in the middle
of the explosion that went on at Fort Chaffee out of the blue,
it was pretty amazing times. Do you recall any problems, other
than just so much work that had to be done so quickly?
|
BY: There was basically it. We didn't have any personal problems
with the Vietnamese. They were very well behaved.
|
JW: Well, as I remember the time, people came from all over the
country to work. |
BY: Yes. |
JW: And I remember several people that at least thought they
were very important, that came here and had a job at Chaffee
just during the relocation time. And I remember being amazed at
where they came from, just all different directions.
|
BY: Yeah. They sent military engineer troops to construct the
sewage lagoons and we had a general commander. |
JW: Was that the high population out there, twenty-five
thousand? |
BY: I believe it was, but there was about fifty thousand plus
that went through Fort Chaffee. |
JW: I see. And about how long did that last? I can't remember.
|
BY: It started May the 5th, I remember that day.
|
JW: 1975? |
BY: Yes. And it ended at the end of the year, but I think they
all left by December, some time in December. But we had work to
do, clean up, tear up what we built and get something back in
order, the streets back in order. |
JW: And after the Vietnamese were all gone, then did it return
to more or less a caretaker situation, like it had been before?
|
BY: Yes, yes. 12 |
JW: Well, I assume you were there in, what, 1980, when the next
thing happened, the Cubans arrived? |
BY: I was. |
JW: And was that a replay? |
BY: It wasn't-- I don't know what it was, but it didn't seem
like it was a replay because the sewage lagoon was built, we had
things in place. |
JW: There just wasn't that much work to get ready for them?
|
BY: There was a lot of work, but it wasn't so intense like the
Vietnamese. |
JW: Do you recall how many Cubans came? I don't.
|
BY: I don't quite remember, but I would think it was over twenty
thousand. |
JW: Was it? Well, what do you remember from that?
|
BY: Well, I remember I was jogging around the block one time in
the evening after work, and one of my buddies called and said,
"They set fire to one of the buildings here at Fort Chaffee, you
better get on out here." So I went out there. And in a few days
after that, they had the big riot. |
JW: Were you there? That was a Sunday, as I recall.
|
BY: Yeah. I was working that day. But yeah, my wife took the
kids and a neighbor friend to the swimming pool.
|
JW: At Chaffee? |
BY: At Chaffee. At the front gate, there were a lot of people
there so they turned around and went to the back gate. And as
they went through the back gate, the mass of Cubans were headed
their way. And she said to lock the door and roll up the
windows, and they just kept going to the pool. |
JW: And you weren't there? I guess a better way to put that, you
didn't have any interaction to the rioting Cubans that day?
|
BY: No. |
JW: Well, were the Cubans a whole different ballgame than the
Vietnamese? |
BY: They were. |
JW: Were they destructive? I mean you said they set fire to one
barracks. Did it burn badly? |
BY: I think it was scorched, it didn't burn to the ground.
|
JW: I see. I can't remember. |
BY: Yeah. We had to build miles of chain-link fence ten foot
high to keep them where they were supposed to be. 13
|
JW: Well, I just recall that I had some Cuban neighbors and it
didn't go well for them. And they eventually just, I don't know
where, drifted to another city or I don't know what happened to
them. But I had Vietnamese neighbors, and not a peep, no
problems, no police, no nothing like that. And my Cuban
neighbors, there was always somebody complaining to the police,
and I had no problem with any of them. But it was just not the
same thing living in Fort Smith when the Cubans were released,
compared to when the Vietnamese were released. And a lot of
Vietnamese settled in Fort Smith. |
BY: Yes, they did. |
JW: I'm not sure if any Cubans settled in Fort Smith.
|
BY: I don't know of any. |
JW: I haven't met one in years. If there's any Cubans that
stayed in Fort Smith, I'm unaware of it. What else? Anything
else connected to Chaffee that you think we need to know?
|
BY: I believe that's about it on Chaffee. |
JW: And tell me again when you retired from Chaffee, from that
job. |
BY: Gosh, it was '88, somewhere along in there. |
JW: Okay. Well, I guess after the Cubans, there wasn't any other
ordeals at Chaffee. |
BY: No. |
JW: Or am I forgetting something? |
BY: I think the last big event was when Clinton gave it to the
National Guard. |
JW: Were you there for that? |
BY: No. |
JW: I assume you worked for the Engineering Department for the
City of Fort Smith? |
BY: Yes. |
JW: After that. Is there anything we need to know about that?
|
BY: No. My time in Fort Smith has been great. |
JW: So this is home to you now? |
BY: Yes, it is. |
JW: I guess so after all that time. And your mother lives in
Little Rock? |
BY: Yes, in Sherwood. |
JW: How old is she? |
BY: She just turned ninety-one in June. |
JW: Still in good shape? |
BY: She still mows her yard and takes care of her garden. 14
|
JW: I'd say that's good shape. Well, in one way, it's easy to
think of you not being an American, which is ridiculous.
|
BY: Yeah. |
JW: What do you think about all that? |
BY: Well, I never thought I was anything but American. After my
enlisted time in the Army, I got the recognition and I retired
in the Reserves. So I wouldn't have done that if I thought
anything different. |
JW: Right, right. Well, course looking back on everything now,
it seems like such a terribly unfair, unkind thing to do to
people that are as American as I am or anyone else. It would
have been unkind to do that to your grandparents, who had
actually been born in Japan, much less do it to your parents and
to you. And there is debate now. Just last night I saw there has
recently been a debate about a survey asking if people would
feel safer if we put people of Arab descent into intern camps.
And fortunately, according to the survey I saw last night, about
seventy-five percent of the people said, no, they were not in
favor of that. But you still got to worry that twenty-five
percent of the population thought that that was a good idea. I
was surprised. |
BY: Well, I don't think we should put the Arab descent in a
concentration camp; but however, if it meant people would be
safer of, what are they called, race profiling, I don't mind
them picking me out and questioning me if it will make people
feel safer. And I don't think it's a bad thing to do racial
profiling on anything myself. |
JW: Well, it's always easier to look back at something that
happened and have an opinion than, it is to know what to do
while it's going on and everything is so confusing.
|
BY: Yes. |
JW: Did your parents-- I recall reading that, was it Bill
Clinton, was it in Bill Clinton's term of office that
restitution was paid to the Japanese that were interned?
|
BY: I think it was George Bush. Reagan signed the Bill, and it
was George Bush's turn when-- |
JW: I see. Well, the important thing is did your family get
restitution? |
BY: Yes, they did. They got a letter of apology and twenty
thousand dollars each. |
JW: Well, do you think that that is as fair as our country could
be? |
BY: Fair? |
JW: That many years later? |
BY: I don't think it's fair. I think it's something, and that's
better than nothing, I guess. But if they did that to me as a
person, 15 you know, the way the court system is now with the
jury's awarding, it would be a multimillion dollar pay-off for
somebody. |
JW: Well, do you think your parents-- The money's great,
everybody likes money, everybody can use some. But did the
letter of apology, did they feel like that meant anything?
|
BY: Yeah, it meant something. |
JW: Because there's no way to make up for it. |
BY: No, you can't make it up. It would have been nice if they
got it when they left the camp. |
JW: Right, right. |
BY: But we all got it-- we all need it when we didn't need it as
bad. |
JW: Right, right. Well, that seems to be the way everyone's life
goes unless they're born rich. When you need it the most, you
couldn't find it if you had to. |
BY: That's true. |
JW: Have you got any other thoughts that we need to know about?
|
BY: I can't think of anything right now. |
JW: Well, we'll just call it good. |
BY: Okay. |
JW: Thank you very much. |
BY: You're welcome. |