A first person account of living in the Japanese concentration camps during WWII and its effects on Japanese-Americans.

some excerpts (not for people who don't care for four letter words)

It is sobering to recall that though the Japanese relocation program, carried through at such incalculable cost in misery and tragedy, was justified on the ground that the Japanese were potentially disloyal, the record does not disclose a single case of Japanese disloyalty or sabotage during the whole war.

- Henry Steel Commager, Harper's Magazine, 1947 (1)

Fort Lincoln: An Interview

"What is your full name?"
"Wakatsuki Ko."
"Your place of birth?"
"Ka-ke, a small town in Hiroshima-ken, on the island of Honshu."
"What schools did you attend in Japan?"
"Four years in Chuo Gakko, a school for training military officers."
"Why did you leave?"
"The marching. I got tired of the marching. That was not what I wanted to do."
"Have you any relatives serving in the military, now or in the past?"
"My uncle was a general, a rather famous general. He led the regiment which defeated the Russians at Port Arthur in nineteen five."
"Have you ever been in contact with him since coming to the United States?"
"No. I have contacted no one in Japan."
"Why not?"
"I am what you call the black sheep in the family."
"So you have never returned to your homeland?"
"No."
"Because you are the black sheep."
"And because I have never been able to afford the trip. I have ten children."
"What are their names?"
"How can I remember that many names?"
"Try."
"William is the oldest. Then Eleanor, Woodrow, Frances, Lillian, Reijiro, Martha, Kyo, and let's see, yes May."
"That is only nine."
"Nine?"
"You said there were ten."
"I told you, it is too many to remember."
"It says here that you are charged with delivering oil to Japanese submarines off the coast of California."
"That is not true."
"Several submarines have been sighted there."
"If I had seen one, I would have laughed."
"Why?"
"Only a very foolish commander would take such a vessel that far from his home fleet."
"How can you explain this photograph?"
"Let me see it."
"Aren't those two fifty-gallon drums on the deck of your boat?"
"Yes."
"What were you carrying in fifty-gallon drums ten miles from shore?"
"Chum."
"Chum?"
"Bait. Fish guts. Ground-up fish heads. You dump it overboard and it draws the mackerel, and you pull in your nets, and they are full of fresh fish. Who took this photograph anyway? I haven't gone after mackerel in over a year."
"What do you think of the attack on Pearl Harbor?"
"I am sad for both countries. It is the kind of thing that always happens when military men are in control."
"What do you think of the American military? Would you object to your sons serving?"
"Yes. I would protest it. The American military is like the Japanese."
"What do you mean?"
"They also want to make war when it is not necessary. As long as military men control the country you are always going to have war."
"Who do you think will win this one?"
"America, of course. It is richer, has more resources, more weapons, more people. The Japanese are courageous fighters, and they will fight well. But their leaders are stupid. I weep every night for my country."
"You say Japan is still your country?"
"I was born there. I have relatives living there. In many ways, yes, it is still my country."
"Do you feel any loyalty to Japan or to its Emperor?"
Silence.
"I said, do you feel any loyalty…"
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-nine."
"When were you born?"
"I am the interrogator here, Mr. Wakatsuki, not you."
"I am interested to know when you were born."
"Nineteen thirteen."
"I have been living in this country nine years longer than you have. Do you realize that? Yet I am prevented by law from becoming a citizen. I am prevented by law from owning land. I am now separated from my family without cause…"
"Those matters are out of my hands Mr. Wakatsuki."
"Whose hands are they in?"
"I do not like North Dakota any more than you do. The sooner we finish these questions, the sooner we'll both be out of here."
"And where will you go when you leave?"
"Who do you want to win this war?"
"I am interested to know where you will be going when you leave."
"Mr. Wakatsuki, if I have to repeat each one of these questions we will be here forever. Who do you want…?"
"When your mother and your father are having a fight, do you want them to kill each other? Or do you just want them to stop fighting?" (60-64)

Papa never said more than three or four sentences about his nine months at Fort Lincoln. Few men who spent time there will talk about it more than that. Not because of the physical hardships: he had been through worse times on fishing trips down the coast of Mexico. It was the charge of disloyalty. For a man raised in Japan, there was no greater disgrace. And it was the humiliating. It brought him face to face with his own vulnerability, his own powerlessness. (72)

The man who emerged as leader of the rioters was Hawaiin-born Joe Kurihara. During the First World War he had served in the U.S. Army in France and in Germany, and he was so frustrated by his treatment at Manzanar he was ready to renounce his citizenship and sail to the old country. (75)

The all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team was the most decorated American unit in World War II; it also suffered the highest percentage of casualties and deaths. (85)

The truth was, at this point Papa did not know which way to turn. In the government's eyes a free man now, he sat, like those black slaves you hear about who, when they got word of their freedom at the end of the Civil War, just did not know where else to go or what else to do and ended up back on the plantation, rooted there out of habit or lethargy or fear. (132)

I wouldn't be faced with physical attack, or with overt shows of hatred. Rather, I would be seen as someone foreign, or as someone other than American, or perhaps not be seen at all. (158)

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