Yasutake, Kris (11/3/2017)

[NOTE: This transcript has not undergone a final proofreading and may contain errors. It is being provided in draft form to enhance access to the video recording. As soon as possible, it will be replaced with a final, corrected transcript and will be synced to the video to provide clickable timecodes.]

Anna Takada: 00:00:00 You could just start by stating your full name.

Kristine Y: 00:00:03 Kristine Yasutake.

AT: 00:00:06 Where and when were you born?

KY: 00:00:08 I was born in 1951 in Chicago on the South Side around the 43rd and Oakenwald area, but moved very soon after that to Hyde Park. So I don't even remember. You know, I was young enough when we moved that Hyde Park is the only place I know and that's where I grew up.

AT: 00:00:27 And um, did your family move anywhere after that? After Hyde Park?

KY: 00:00:32 Not my mom and dad. They stayed in Hyde Park until all their lives. The rest of the family moved away, like most of the Japanese community did, but my parents were devout Hyde Parkers. So--

AT: 00:00:45 And you've stayed in Chicago?

KY: 00:00:47 I'm the only one. I'm in Lincoln Park, but the rest of the family's kind of all spread out now.

AT: 00:00:53 Okay. Um, and like I mentioned, if you want to start by referring to your notes and then we can kind of open it up with any questions I might have for conversation.

KY: 00:01:03 Okay. I apologize for having to look at notes, but this kinda got bigger than I thought. It got away from me and so I have not memorized any of it yet. So anyway, as I said, I grew up in Hyde Park. I'm Sansei, both my mom and dad grew up in, on the West coast and uh until Executive Order 9066 of course, upended their lives and they had to go to Tule Lake with their families. At the time of the internment, uh, my dad was 24. My mom was, I'm sorry, my mom was 24, my dad was 20. They didn't know each other in Tule Lake. They didn't meet each other until after the war when they settled here in Chicago. So this is their story, or rather, it's the bits and pieces that I've been able to assemble over the years because unlike, like, because like so many Sanseis my parents didn't really like to talk about those war years and at least not to their kids.

KY: 00:02:05 So my mom would talk about life before the war, which she wouldn't say much about the war except to say kind of darkly: 'You think you know who your friends are but you don't really.' So--

AT: 00:02:21 And where in the West Coast were they from?

KY: 00:02:23 Well, okay, I'm getting to that. Uh, my mom was from Medford, my dad was from Sacramento, but anyway, uh, my dad was a quiet man, more comfortable with books than people and he said little about his life at all. My parents are both long gone, but fortunately my dad, my mom's younger sister who always called herself Auntie Nanny is still alive and with us at age 98. She loves talking about the old days and her memory is still surprisingly good. She always said that one of the biggest problems with getting old is that she has now outlived all her old family and friends and she misses being able to talk to them. She's happy that I want to hear her stories, but I can only ask her questions. I can't really share her experience with her and I can't corroborate her memories. Uh, after my dad died, we cleaned up his apartment and I ended up with my mom's Tule Lake scrapbook and a box of old documents that had family photos and uh papers. My grandparents' Japanese passports, uh, photos of the family in Tule Lake; Uh, my mom's tags that she wore like what on the bus to camp, uh, letters from the WRA (War Relocation Authority) interviews conducted with my family. Uh, luckily at the time, which was 10 years ago, I had the foresight to sit Auntie Nanny down when she was a mere 88 years old and ask her to tell me the stories behind the photos, which she did. She had almost perfect recall. Then I put the box of memorabilia under my bed and pretty much forgot about it for the next 10 years until in April of this year at a movie downtown about the resistance of Tule Lake.

KY: 00:04:31 I met a man sitting a few rows in front of me who turned out to be Mike Takada of the JASC (Japanese American Service Committee). And he said: 'Oh, you know, Alphawood's doing a big exhibition about the internment and JASC is gonna, has been asked to uh work with them. We're going to be partnering'. And I said: 'Ah, I got this whole box of stuff under my bed. You guys might be interested in seeing it.' Well, to make a long story short, I was about to go to Paris in a few weeks for an extended period of time. So I pretty much just took a box and foisted it at Ryan Yokota and said, here, use anything you want. So anyway, that's how my family's memorabilia wound up being included in the display cases here after many emails between me and Rich [Cayan?] And Tony Herschel.

KY: 00:05:30 Okay. I know more mom, my mom's side of the family than my dad's, so I'll begin with that. My maternal grandfather was named Kinai Saito and he originally came from Guna--Gunma Prefecture, which is near Tokyo. He was the third son of a poor farming family and life in rural Japan was pretty tough in those days. At that time, Japan was becoming a military power in Asia. And so around 1894 when he was 10 years old, the Japanese army came to his parents' farm and they rec--went, requisitioned his horse for the war effort. And he said it was the saddest day of his young life. Well, my grandpa didn't want to be a farmer, so he decided when he got older to take his chance and come to America. So he arrived in San Francisco by ship in 1906, he was 22 years old and he spoke no English. As a young bachelor, he was able to travel freely, which surprises me, up and down the West coast. So we know from San Francisco, he stayed in places like Seattle. He went all the way up to Alaska and he was always able to find work with other Japanese immigrants. He said he liked America, he liked the freedom here. So he was pretty happy. Anyway as a bachelor in America, he soon met two other bachelors, also Nisei like him, and they were to become his lifelong friends. The first one was Louis Machino, who was uh university educated in Japan, in Tokyo, and he spoke and wrote English almost perfectly even, you know, before he came. Now my, I remember my mom saying that Lou has uh got into some kind of trouble with the government of Japan because he was an outspoken Leftist, so he had to leave the country. The other, uh, Issei was their friend, uh [Gunji?] Fujimoto who was called Fuji-San and he spoke and wrote English pretty well too, although not as perfectly as Luo-San. Uh, when the U.S entered the war, first World War in 1917, Grandpa Saito. went to the draft board and said, I'll volunteer to fight in the army if the government will give me citizenship. And of course, they said no. So he went and boarded the boat back to Japan and decided where he was basically going to meet a wife and bring her back to America. And that's exactly what happened. Grandpa Saito met my future grandma, uh Kinko, Shesaki at Tokyo hospital where she was working as some sort of a nurse. Now, grandma Saito's family was from, uh, uh, let's see. Saitama Prefecture, which was, uh, near Tokyo, and she was also from a farming family, so I am not sure how she got trained to be a nurse, but somehow she managed to do so. And uh, at some point or another, some young son from the Imperial family of Japan had to stay at Tokyo hospital and she was part of the team that was selected to, uh, to take care of him. And that was considered to be a very great honor, especially in those times when people were not even allowed to look at the emperor. They had to look down on the street and advert gaze, whenever he or anyone from the royal family passed by. But okay. Kinko Shimasaki was a beautiful young woman and apparently Grandpa Saito took one look at her and he liked what he saw. So, and he fell in love immediately. Uh, grandma was quite present, progressive at the time and she didn't want to be a farmer's wife any more than he wanted to be a farmer. So she agreed to marry him and come back to America with him. So in 1917 they were married in Japan, got on the boat, and somehow, uh, they wound up in Medford, Oregon, which is where they raised their family. I guess--I'm actually guessing grandpa was there before in Medford. Okay. Medford, Oregon had a population of about 20,000 back then. It was a really small urban town, all white, of course, rural community. And at the time there were only 36 Japanese people. Grandma and grandpa had a, a big house and a yard out in the countryside. Grandpa owned a dry cleaning business in Medford where he took care of the operations side and grandma worked behind the counter dealing with the customers. She liked learning English. And soon she spoke English better than he did. They had enough space on their property to rent rooms to seasonal Japanese farm workers who would stay about a year and then they'd move on.

KY: 00:11:03 My mom Akiko Saito, Aki, was born in 1918 and two years later, her sister, Naoko Saito, Auntie Nanny was born. While they were young girls. Grandpa Saito invited Lou and Fuji, his old friends to live with them and they became part of the extended family. In the 1940 census records, they're listed as lodgers in the home, but they were actually really treated like uncles. Lou and Fuji, who were in the restaurant business and they worked for a very nice German immigrant man who owned a pretty upscale American-style restaurant in Medford and he hired them. So cor-- Uh, Fuji was kind of the manager. Uh, Lou was the chef and, uh, my mom and Auntie Nanny were put to work after school, helping out in the restaurant; making pastry and doing kitchen chores because Fuji said 'young people get in trouble if they aren't kept busy'. Aunt Nanny sort of remembers those days and sighs and says 'there are child labor laws against that now' [light laugh]. When I look at the old photos of my mom and Auntie Nanny, I see two young, confident, smiling, happy girls posing with their schoolmates. My mom wearing tutu and uh ballet tights in her class, doing splits. Auntie Nanny wearing like a school band uniform playing an accordion. They're the only Japanese girls in their class, but they look like they're as assimilated as you could be in those times. Mom was even the Vice President of the Girl's League in high school. My grandma, my mom and Auntie Nanny were all Methodists and they attended Methodist church in Medford. But my dad, my grandpa remained a Buddhist. The photos of the Isseis in Medford, showed them wearing smart American clothes, the men wearing suits and bowler hats looking very dapper and the women wearing nice dresses and millinery, life was good. The Saitos had enough money to buy a car and after she graduated from high school, they had enough money to send my mom to Chouinard Art School in California. Grandma Saito hoped that one day she would, the law would change and she too could become an American citizen, which was her dream.

KY: 00:13:49 In contrast, dad's family was very traditionally Japanese. His father, Asakichi Yasutake emigrated from the Fukuoka prefecture in Japan, which is Southern Japan. Around the same time as Grandpa Saito did, which we're guessing is about 1907. He too lived as a bachelor in California-- for years. But when it came time to marry, Grandpa Yasutake chose a picture bride, my grandma, Mitsuko Funakoshi also from a farming community in Fukuoka. They operated a cleaning business in Sacramento where my dad and his brothers and sister grew up. My dad, Hiroshi Yasutake, later known as Gary was born in 1922, the second son. The Yasutakes lived in Japantown, in the Japan town, part of Sacramento, a half a block from the Buddhist temple. There were a lot of Japanese living in Sacramento at the time, so you could get by not speaking any English [chuckles] if you stayed in the Japanese community. And so my grandparents never did learn English. Uh, they were devout Buddhists. They were very traditional. And not only did they go to temple regularly, they sent my dad's older brother to Japan for an education. In other words, he was Kibei. My dad was something of a nerd, studied hard and graduated near the top of his high school class. So the Yasutakes had enough money to send him to Sacramento Junior College where he graduated with a major in premed and the plan was for him to continue his studies and become a doctor.

KY: 00:15:40 So in 1942, both of my parents are college students in California. Then Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. And we all know what happened after that. So they had to leave school to join their respective families on their journeys to Tule Lake. Both the Saitos and the Yasutakes lost everything they had worked so hard to earn: their businesses and their homes. I imagine life until Tule Lake for my, my parents families wasn't much different than it was for anyone else there. Uh, everybody knows the horror stories about the heat and the dust storms and scorpions and snakes and lack of privacy. Uh, Tule Lake was so remote that even though it was surrounded by barbed wire and the towers with the armed guards, uh, I heard that no one was really worried about anybody escaping because you'd die in the desert. So anyway, Tule Lake is located in Newell, California, but Auntie Nanny says, 'we always called it New-hell, not Newell'. At the time they were interned, mom was 24. Auntie nanny was 22. Grandpa Saito was 58 and Grandma Saito was 51. So the Saitos were all assigned to live together in one big, one barrack, a tarpaper shack. 'Ah, yes. Home sweet home', Auntie Nanny said when she saw the photo of the tarpaper shack here in Alphawood, in the exhibition. Uh, Lou and Fuji, you were assigned to live in some barracks that they had set up for all the bachelors, the single men. Everybody at Tule Lake had some kind of work detail. So grandpa was doing carpentry, grandma was working in the mess hall and Lou and Fuji as cooks of course, were cooking, which they were very welcomed of course. And my auntie says, everybody told them being cooks was the best job you could have in camp because at least you would never go hungry. So anyway, mom and Auntie Nanny joined the recreation committee at Tule Lake, known as [the Wreckers?]. And they helped organize dances and variety shows. Uh mom taught ballet at the Tule Lake dance studio and everybody did what they could to keep their spirits up.

KY: 00:18:21 When the WRA announced that the Niseis could leave camp if they were accepted as students at a university or got employment, my mom and dad applied. Now remember, they didn't know each other yet, not until Chicago. So, uh, my mom's WRA interview report says: "Worked for Caucasians, lived with Caucasians mixed with Caucasians, won't have any trouble outside, good looking, neat appearance, talks and writes intelligently." Unquote. So mom was accepted as a student at the school of the art Institute of Chicago where she majored in fashion design and would win an award for, uh, uh dre- a dress, she designed. And this news was covered in the local papers under titles like: 'Evacuee Student Wins Fashion Award'. Dad had been working as an orderly at Tule Lake-based hospital. So when he saw an ad placed by a doctor at the university hospital in Ann Arbor, he applied and was accepted. The WRA approved his request to leave with the condition that he, that a military permit must be obtained for travel through the evacuated areas. He was 22 years old at the time. He was paid 53 cents an hour, which I was told is about the going rate for Niseis at the time.

KY: 00:19:55 In 1943, the government and the WRA forced all adults in the camps to answer that infamous loyalty questionnaire. Tule Lake would soon be transformed into a segregation center housing only the disloyals. Grandma and Grandpa Saito and Auntie Nanny would be transferred to Minidoka. My dad's younger brother, Uncle Tom had answered "no" to question 28. The only member of the family who had done that when he was 19 years old. Dad told him that he better change his answer to "yes" or he was going to be separated from the rest of the family. So an interviewer from the review board for segregation wrote on his notes "bitter over evacuation", "misunderstanding". His brother had been relocated and has been very well treated and this has overcome his prejudice. So he wishes to change his "yes", his answer to "yes" and relocate. So they allowed him to change his answer and the family chose to relocate to Topaz where my dad's married, older brother was already living and when the government reclassified all the Nisei men to One A. In fact, Uncle Tom volunteered for the army, not the 442nd, the regular U.S army and was sent to Tokyo post-war for the next two years. When my dad was working as an orderly at the, at the hospital in Ann Arbor, he wrote to the military intelligence, uh, school language laboratory, le- language school at Fort Shelby asking to be accepted in their program. My dad spoke and wrote Japanese passably well because he had attended Japanese classes in Sacramento and so they called him in for an interview. He received a letter saying that he had been judged to be (quote) "linguistically qualified for further training at this headquarters preparatory to combat intelligence duty" all after a series of letters back and forth explaining how first he had to be inducted in the army and placed on some kind of special reserve corps and you know, a bunch of delays. He uh, got a final letter saying okay, you're to report to class at MIS (Military Intelligence Service) beginning October 1945. Well, in September, 1945, the war ended before he left to start classes.

KY: 00:22:36 So anyway, the Niseis in my family had left camp before the war ended because they all found jobs on the outside, but my grandparents and other Isseis would remain in the camps pretty much until they closed. Now Grandma and Grandpa Saito had petitioned for early release from Minidoka and submitted the names of some of their hakujin (white person), friends and neighbors in Medford as references. The government did indeed contact these people because included in my family's files from Tule Lake, I mean, sorry, not Tule Lake from well, the government files. We found a letter written by a woman, obviously somebody they had known and trusted. The gist of the letter was, yes, I knew the Saito family back then in Medford and they were really nice people, but they've been in camp for years now and who knows if that has made them bitter and distrustful and besides they're Japanese underlined twice for emphasis and she recommended they not be released and they were not released until September 1945. I think this is what my mom was referring to when she said, yeah, 'ya never know who your friends are'; having lost everything in Medford, including the trust of the people they thought they knew. Grandma and Grandpa Saito decided to join mom and Auntie Nanny in Chicago. They lived on the Northside in the area around Clark & Division where other Japanese families had settled. The Yasutake family all settled on the South Side in the area around 45th and Berkeley where all great many Japanese families had originally settled right after they got out of the camps. My dad had also moved from Ann Arbor to Chicago, and so he was living with his parents and brothers and at the same place until he met and married my mom. And they moved out to their own apartment nearby. One by one, all the Niseis in my family begin to marry and start having their own families. Auntie Nanny met and married Kenneth Yahiro and they moved, they bought a house in Park Ridge and my Auntie Nanny is still living there. Grandma and Grandpa Saito moved into an apartment on the 900 block of West Newport up near Wrigley field. Uh, and the day-- my dad's family, the Yasutake clan, pulled their resources and they bought a big three flat apartment in what is now the Andersonville neighborhood, and each of the kids took one floor. So we've got my dad's oldest brother and his family on the top floor, the younger brother and his family on the middle floor and on the ground floor, his sister and her family. And everybody's got kids and also they've got grandma and grandpa Yasutake living with them. So the whole family's all together in the one building there.

KY: 00:25:59 Mom and dad decided to live to Hyde Park, move to live in Hyde Park. So my sister and brother and I were all born, sorry, we're not born there, we all grew up on the 5600 block of Maryland near the university of Chicago. Hyde Park was the liberal multicultural neighborhood even back in the 50s and my parents felt comfortable there. My mom had been a Methodist. My dad had been a Buddhist, but they decided to join the Unitarian Church in Hyde Park where they remained, uh, active members all their lives. And naturally they sent us kids there to the same church. So as kids, we did not attend Japanese school. We did not attend Buddhist Temple. We did not join the Japanese boy scout and girl scout troops, they were being created up on the Northside. My mom said she didn't want to be clannish and only hang out with Japanese Americans. And part of this stemmed from the fact that in Medford she had not grown up in a Japanese community anyway, but also I'm sure part of it had to do with the trauma of the, the relocation and the internment and uh, the WRA (War Relocation Authority) directives to the first Niseis who were allowed to leave camps, to not speak Japanese and to not associate with other Japanese unless they had to. So, and just as tellingly, we were not given Japanese middle names unlike most other Sanseis I know. In fact, my brother, his middle name is Louis, named after Lou from the old Medford days. But twice a year we'd behave like any other Japanese family. In the summers, every year there was a group called Fukuoka Kenjinkai that used to sponsor picnics in the uh park near (mantras?) beach and it last all day long. Everybody from the Fukuoka region, including the Yasutakes all came to the picnics with their families and they brought all this Japanese food and American food and they organized races for the kids and the adults alike. And the prizes were like big (cans of?) Kikkoman shoyu and 50 pound sacks of rice, which probably didn't last that long in those days because the Isseis were still eating rice three times a day. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and I still remember that.

KY: 00:28:48 And every year our family of six would take the L (train) together, all the way up to the North Side to Andersonville to go visit the Yasutakes where grandma always put out this enormous spread. The whole table just covered with food. She was a great cook and so tempura and sushi and sashimi and everything. I mean it was just insane. And along with a bunch of stuff like those boring boiled vegetables, whose names I can't remember, and that red fish, it's supposed to be a carp in Japan, but here they used some kind of red snapper and you had to coil it up just right; So that it was supposed to look like it was uh jumping out of the stream. And of course there was ozoni and a sip of sake in the morning first for good luck for the new year. So before stepping into the house, mom would always coach us to say: "(speaking Japanese)" in which we'd say to grandma and grandpa. And I knew, you know, that was all we knew and my grandma would fuss at my dad, "why don't you teach the kids how to speak Japanese?" But luckily for us, grandma and Grandpa Saito spoke English pretty well, so we were able to get to know them growing up. So I remember going up to their apartment in-- on West Newport, near Wrigley field and w-- and I've, we've got a lot of happy and funny memories of them. Grandma Saito tried to teach me to make sushi and I remember she was flabbergasted when I asked her, how come I had to sit there and fan it with those paper fans and why couldn't we just put it under the fan to cool? She just looked at me like "what"? And then grandpa would was always a trickster and he was always like playing jokes on us kids. He had, at that point he was completely bald. He was the only bald person we knew and we were fascinated by his head and he used to let us feel his head. So, and here we get props a prop. He used to tell us that his hair would grow back the next time we saw him. So I remember, this may have even been the same puppet, but at least we had one like that. He said, if we took this puppet and like did this on his head, that in fact his hair would grow back. So each of us did that and we were young enough that we actually believed him. So the next time we came back, we said, "you don't have your hair yet!" And he said, "Ah, it didn't work". And then he'd make up some other thing we had to do. And every time he said, next time for sure, hair; while we believed this for awhile, because we were pretty young anyway.

KY: 00:31:45 When I was 11 and my brother was 9, uh, on what se-- we went on what seemed to be this epic journey on the Santa Fe railroad to go see the old family friends from Medford. So it took us three days and two nights to get there. And since we didn't even have a car at that time, I had hardly ever been out of Hyde Park. And this was just a real journey. So anyway, uh, soon after the war, before she was married, Auntie Nanny had gone back to visit her old Medford friends, but she was the only one. And so now, all these years later, finally, mom and grandma Saito and grandpa Saito, her parents, were gonna make this epic trip to see the friends that they hadn't seen for nearly 20, 20 years at that point. And, uh, I think they all knew that this was probably gonna be the only time they'd see them because at that point the Isseis, were all in their seventies. So we stayed with their old friends in Medford and I remember being shocked by how small it was and how rural, having grown up in Chicago. And we finally got to meet Fuji and Lou, who we called Uncle Fuji and Grandpa Lou, who were now living as bachelors in Los Angeles. And sure enough, it was the last time we would see them. A few years later, Grandpa Louis died but at least he'd gotten to meet his namesake, my brother. When the government finally announced that Isseis could become American citizens, Grandma Saito happily enrolled in a program of citizenship classes and English classes. She had never given up her dream of becoming an American citizen and she had always told her daughters: "this is the best country in the world, you'd be proud to be Americans". And now she was hoping she too could become an American citizen and finally realize her dream. Well, unfortunately she died before that happened. Grandpa decided-- Grandpa Saito decided that rather than living in Chicago here as a bachelor, well not bachelor as a widow, he was going to go back to Los Angeles to live with Uncle Fuji. So he did and they, the two of them were staying there together until when grandpa was 87, he got sick and had to come back here and he moved in with Auntie Nanny and her family in Park Ridge. So he'd lived a long life. He was very calm, very philosophical. He was still a Buddhist, but before he died he decided to convert to be a Methodist just in case grandma was right about Methodist heaven. He said, well, if she's there in Methodist heaven, he didn't want her to be there by herself. And if she was wrong, no harm done. So, so he converted. My mom and dad were much more conflicted about their feelings. They felt betrayed and bitter about the internment because they were American citizens and good Americans, very assimilated only to learn that it hadn't been enough. There wasn't enough money left to for my mom to continue her studies at the art Institute. And there wasn't enough money left for my dad to, to go on to med school. Although he did go to Roosevelt University here in Chicago and completed a degree in chemistry, but many of their early dreams would never come true.

KY: 00:35:40 Uh, it was only after my siblings and I became adults that mom began to send us the occasional thing she clipped out of a newspaper or magazine and she'd write little comments about it and mail it to us. So, I have a copy of, uh, of a from a page of a book about Tule Lake describing Thanksgiving and Christmas in 1943. Mom's cousin, uh, Perry Saito was a pretty well known Methodist minister there at, uh, Tule Lake. So mom wrote: "I speak only for myself. I shall never ever forget that first Thanksgiving and Chri- and Christmas. The services were so stark and so moving beyond anyone's wildest imagination, I never felt so alone and betrayed as I did at that time. And the impact of all of us gathering there and under the same circumstance is still within me and I can never fully tell you that feeling of being of being (lost?), words fail. I cry inside every time I think of those desperate days up there". By the mid 1980's my mom, who was-- always been outspoken about everything except the internment got outspoken about that too. And so when a teacher she knew from the Unitarian church, asked her if she'd be willing to come and speak to his, uh, his high school class about the subject. She said, "why not?" And agreed. And then later on she was interviewed by the local newspaper, the Hyde Park Herald, about her wartime experiences and her guarded hopes for the restitution, which hadn't happened yet, at that point. She did not pull her punches. "It was racism, pure and simple", she said. My dad never talked to anyone. Instead, he bought every book ever written on the subject of the internment. Since he couldn't find his words, he looked to others for theirs. It's always easier to talk to strangers than it is to talk to family. And I regret that I never had a heart to heart than--with, sorry, give me a second [Yasutake begins to cry]. I never had a heart to heart with my parents and my mom's case. Her death at age at 90, at 74 was a bit of a surprise, but my dad lived until age 84 and his health was failing. So I know I shouldn't wait too long, but I did. It seemed hypocritical to me to suddenly ask him about his experiences, uh, when we'd never talked about it before. So after a lifetime of not knowing who he was, so he, his secrets with them except for that box family memorabilia that I had. I do that. And then I turned two in April of this year. So that's when I looked in the documents and found the paper trail about my dad's brother in question 28. And I remembered hearing when I was a kid about how uncle Tom might've been a known, Oh boy, I'd heard it whispered by my mom, I think because in April this year when I called uncle Tom's widow, my Auntie Nanny, Auntie Nancy, to ask her what she knew, she had no idea what I was talking about.

KY: 00:39:21 Apparently Uncle Tom had never told his wife or his children about how he answered. Question 28 if you want, I can pull those documents out of the box I'm giving to the JASC. I said, no. She said, this is what really happened. It's part of history. Go ahead and let them see it. We'd always seen photos of Uncle Tom in his army uniform, but we'd never know the back story. Maybe he thought we wouldn't understand. In that same box, the family memorabilia, I'd also found the paper trail showing how dad applied to MIS and been accepted, but hadn't actually been inducted because the war had ended before he had time to report to Fort Shelby. So in April of this year, I found dad's sister, my Auntie Mary, who is 86 year old now. And I asked her what she knew. Your dad was never an MIS. She insisted. I said no, but he would've been if the war hadn't ended. So I read part of the document to her. Gee, I never knew that she said, and her husband, my Uncle Kiki, who'd been listening in on the speakerphone concurred. Is that right? Well, your dad never said much about those times. You know, he never really got over it. Hm. Did my brother and sisters know about dad in the MIS? I asked myself yesterday, yesterday I asked myself, so I emailed them with the simple question. Was dad ever in the MIS? And each of them said no. They thought because he had a heart murmur, he wasn't eligible for service. Well, that was the same thing I had been told my whole life. So I, since my dad never talked about his life, I'm guessing my mom must have told us that, since all four of us remembered it. Which leads me to the question as of yesterday, what if my mom didn't know either? Here I am thinking it was strange that Uncle Tom never told his wife and kids about question 28. When, in my family, maybe my dad never told his wife and kids about applying to MIS. So we've got a pretty similar situation here.

KY: 00:41:59 I mean, the issue of the Nisei, uh, in the service during the war of course was very controversial is we, you know, we all know from the George Takei, a Broadway musical allegiance, it tore families apart. And I think a lot of people just decided they weren't even gonna go there. Uh, possibly my dad thought his own father and possibly even his older brother. Cause I remember, uh, my grandparents had come from Japan and my old, his older brother had lived in Japan. He's Kibei, maybe he thought they wouldn't approve of it. And while pretty much everybody agreed that, okay, you know, even if you didn't agree about the circumstances of volunteering from the camps, everybody pretty much agreed that going to fight the Nazis in Europe was fine, going to work for MIS, if you think about it, is a whole different kettle of fish because you are being asked to work against Japan. You are being hired because you speak Japanese. So your intelligence to work is against Japan, which in fact is what happened. People working the Japanese working at MIS help crack the code for the Imperial Navy and they say, uh, helped end the war probably two years earlier. Anyway, I think it was just too controversial. My dad said nothing and if I hadn't found the paper trail I wouldn't have a clue either. But fortunately my dad never met a piece of paper he didn't like, he kept everything. And so we've got the documents. So this concludes my version of the family history. If you were to talk to my siblings and my cousins, you'd get a different story from each one of us. So much has been lost, misremembered, confused, suppressed. My dad's sister, Auntie Mary was only 11 when she was interned at Tule Lake, so although she's still alive, her memories are those of a child, which are different. So I've tried to construct my family's memories for them. So let me on the story with 98 year old Auntie Nanny, summary of her wartime experiences, unrelenting optimist, and the happiest person I know she likes to say, I look back on the camp experiences and in a way I'm glad they happened. I don't know how to explain that. I know terrible things happen to us in those years, but in many ways they were the happiest years of my life because I made such good friends in camp and we remained best friends all our days of our lives. So thank you JASC. Thank you Alphawood. Thank you Anna Takada.

AT: 00:44:56 Thank you. Cause that was, wow.

KY: 00:45:02 It was really long. It got carried away kind of like

AT: 00:45:04 No, no

KY: 00:45:04 It just kept getting longer and longer and I was adding to it even this morning before I came, so. I kind of didn't know where to end, but I decided the cut off was just to keep it my grandparents' and my parents' story cause my siblings and cousins who are alive can tell their own stories if they want to continue. I think I gave enough.

AT: 00:45:23 Yeah. Thank, thank you so much for not only for coming in, but I mean putting that together. That's uh, that's incredible. And I, I think, I'm sure your family will value having, a, a narrative form of your family's story.

KY: 00:45:39 Well, I think actually they'll, if they ever see it, they'll look at it and I'll hear nothing but fusing. "That didn't happen! Who said that? No, are you sure that's true?!" Anyway, I have some, a few family photos which I'll stick in front of the camera.

AT: 00:45:53 Okay. Let's see.

KY: 00:45:57 Am I close enough?

AT: 00:45:57 It may be a little dark, but um, you can also.

KY: 00:46:00 Turn on the light?

AT: 00:46:00 Um yeah.

KY: 00:46:10 Does that work?

AT: 00:46:13 Yeah, we can also scan these if that's all right with you.

KY: 00:46:16 Oh

AT: 00:46:16 Bring it, here do you mind, just hold it down.

KY: 00:46:22 Okay.

AT: 00:46:22 Yeah, I think it might be best to scan cause it's taking a minute for them to

KY: 00:46:26 Oh, okay

AT: 00:46:26 Adjust

KY: 00:46:27 Alright

AT: 00:46:31 Um, but we can still go over them and maybe I can take note of

KY: 00:46:37 Okay

AT: 00:46:37 Which ones they are so we can match them up.

KY: 00:46:42 Um, Grandma Saito, before she got married. I mean beautiful. I can see why Grandpa fell for her. Photos of them growing up in Medford. Now the best photos unfortunately are in the exhibit here in Alphawood. So. Grandma's Saito, mom, Auntie Nanny.

AT: 00:47:03 And these, there are ones that I, I actually did see in the video in the 2007.

KY: 00:47:14 Okay. Yep. She's gone through them so.

AT: 00:47:16 Cause and you were commenting on the hair of the dolls.

KY: 00:47:20 Dolls.

AT: 00:47:21 The weird dolls.

KY: 00:47:21 And one of them was like bald, I think that one. And so Grandpa took blue magic marker or something and filled it in. So you know, we've got that dapper photo of him with the suit and bowler downstairs. But that's in the exhibit so I can't show. So this was the only photo that I had with them. So this is their place in Medford. This is Grandpa Lou. Oh, very debonair. 1907, hes, uh, he's written himself in English, new machine, 1907 so, so that's probably what he looked like when he first met Grandpa Saito. And here he is just an old man. Yeah that's Fuji. So this is about 10 years before we met him. He was, he's a cook.

AT: 00:48:02 And you all were saying he looks like Gumby?

KY: 00:48:03 Yeah.

AT: 00:48:05 So now I, now I know who he is. Cause in the video you were just talking about him.

KY: 00:48:08 Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. So this is the Yasutakes, Grandma and Grandpa Yasutake. That's my dad, there's Uncle Tom. No boy. But that's what the grandparents looked like when they're older. You know they're living up in Andersonville. It's probably the table. They only have the one big table where we had the big New Years spread. So my mom and dad's wedding picture, that's what they looked like. And then this is how grandma and grandpa Saito looked like we were growing up. So that's my mom, dad, me, my brother, my little sister that's Aunty Yanny and my youngest sisters and born yet. And so Auntie nanny must not be married yet cause otherwise Uncle Kenneth would be in the picture too. So anyway, that's what they look like growing up. You see he's got that bald head! We were just fascinated by that. We just remember rubbing it. We just thought it was. So, I don't know. We're fascinated. We were a little in back and see little kids here.

AT: 00:49:12 And, sorry, did you say this was Hyde Park or Andersonville

KY: 00:49:14 No, no, no this was was their house.

AT: 00:49:16 Andersonville.

KY: 00:49:16 No, this is Newport.

AT: 00:49:19 Oh, okay. So this is your mom's, mom's side.

KY: 00:49:22 Saito, this is my mom's

AT: 00:49:24 Oh right, and this one.

KY: 00:49:24 So cause I recognize this painting I saw this was a Saito house. Grandma had like french impressionist paintings, like Renoir paintings and stuff on the wall, which now that i think about it was kind of odd. But anyway, so that's, that's how they, that's how I remember them.

AT: 00:49:44 Okay, great. Yeah, we'll have to capture some of those. Um, and then if you,

KY: 00:49:52 These i'll scan by just one to show you. My mom and her like the interview and all her comments about, you know, and this, she's going through the scrapbook. I mean there was a scrap, but that's where all these pictures got pulled out from. But she's actually flipping through the script talking about things. And so you've got all her comments when she's doing like you'll know pretty outspoken. That was her way. And then you know, I just her copies.

AT: 00:50:21 Okay.

KY: 00:50:22 Sorry.

AT: 00:50:23 That's ok

KY: 00:50:23 I don't know any other families, you know I've asked people. But we got all these documents, they have handwritten notes and stuff.

AT: 00:50:30 Yeah,

AT: 00:50:30 it's like the uh, after the war, a lot of documents were like, I don't know what, went on to uh, computerized records. But of course they never do like interview notes.

AT: 00:50:44 Right.

KY: 00:50:44 So if you go on Google you can find people and it's helpful, you know, the information you know like how they were, when they entered camp and moving where, but you don't get any of this stuff was nobody ever sat down and wrote all these notes about them. So,

AT: 00:51:00 Yeah, and actually, um

KY: 00:51:02 So like that was the stuff about Uncle Tom them though, you know the notes stuff. You know Interview notes about mom "worked with caucasian and mixed with caucasian" "neat appearance" stuff. There's a whole bunch of other stuff too. I just wanted to show you.

AT: 00:51:20 Thank you for bringing these

KY: 00:51:21 These are all in that box too. But they made the decision here not to put any of this stuff in the exhibit. So I mean I guess from an artistic standpoint it doesn't look like anything. In fact, most people don't stand there, read this stuff anyway, but.

AT: 00:51:37 And then these are, these are pretty fascinating.

KY: 00:51:39 Yeah, that's what I thought too. So I was really surprised. And I thought, oh well.

AT: 00:51:44 Well nd um, if you have a few more minutes, I'd love to talk to you a little bit more.

KY: 00:51:47 Sure.

AT: 00:51:47 About, all of this.

KY: 00:51:51 Sure, yeah. Oh I just bought the, completely separate thing. Wednesday November 2nd, where did they get some of this weird stuff? You know, I mean, this doesn't do anybody, any service: Number people who survived the camp 60,000 less. It looks like a death camp. They come up with crap like that. I thought this was nobody a service.

AT: 00:52:28 Interesting.

KY: 00:52:29 It makes the whole thing look suspicious now. I mean, Doesn't look like a death camp under 120,000 going in 60,000 coming out.

AT: 00:52:38 Yeah, that's not clear

KY: 00:52:38 That's terrible. I saw that at the time and I just thought let it go. It's too late. It's like alright, they've already handled that out. So I'm assuming at least nobody except the people who were at the show. And it was a very rainy night. So not that many people were there, but I thought, Oh well, I don't know where it came from, but not good. Somebody needs to fact check stuff a little bit.

AT: 00:53:07 Yeah.

KY: 00:53:07 Before this stuff goes out

AT: 00:53:09 I'll definitely, I'm happy and willing to look into that cause it's strange.

KY: 00:53:17 Um, well that's the problem with handouts people do on their own.

AT: 00:53:20 Sure.

KY: 00:53:20 You never know what they're going to put on it.

AT: 00:53:24 Um, well just, just to start off the bat, um, I would love to hear from you a little bit more about the process of, um, kind of putting this piece together, um, that you came up with for today. Um, just because you did such a great job of capturing, you know, your family story in writing and I'm wondering is this something you've been working on or

KY: 00:53:54 I had a different document, much shorter, but also with a different focus that I put together in two weeks back in April. Because originally, you know, when I talked to your dad he said, well you know, I mean, I said I've got, nobody had seen it. They had no idea what I was talking about. He said, well you know you can send us, you know, why don't you scan some things and write a description of it. And I th- I started doing it and I thought it's going to take longer to do that, you know, than it is just to tell a story. And I didn't know what documents they were going to use anyway. Course, I don't think he had any idea how many documents I had. So I thought a bunch of photos without a story doesn't really say anything anyway. So I thought, okay, I got to write a story. So before I go to Paris, I'm always trying to like get everything together. And I thought, Oh, here we go again. I always seem to have some major project that needs to be done. So I just sat there and started putting together a draft for what I thought they might be interested in. And then of course I had to fact check everything I'm going, Oh what year was that? A, it's like quick, you know, Googling all these things. When did the, you know, is this reasonable or not? And then I had to do that, you know, well what camp was it? Was it, you know, was it Topaz or was it Heart? We and I couldn't even remember that stuff cause we never talked about it. So I had to go through the documents and, and put them in order by date and sort of just sort of figure that stuff out.

AT: 00:55:35 So a lot of this, it sounds like was very recent.

KY: 00:55:39 Yeah. Yeah. It's like the bare bones in the first document, which was about only a couple pages long, was an April. And that's the document that I sent to Mike Takada who then passed it on to Ryan Yokota. And so when I walked in with the box, I said, okay, here's the story. And everybody kept saying, ah, you know, we don't, we don't need this, yes. It's like Alphawood told us we're not going to need personal stuff until later in the year and you'll be back from Paris then. And I said, Oh, you know, just take it all anyway. I said, because if I know if I were going to mount an exhibit, I would at least want to know what was available to me, can't hurt. So I basically said, here, just take it. Ah, okay. And put it away in the box. I mean, in a, Ryan's, uh, room in a, in a locked filing cabinet. So where it stayed until I surprise of all surprises in June, a weeks before the exhibition open, I get email from everybody saying we changed our mind, we changed our mind. We decided we can't just go with the big pictures on the wall. We have to have some personal stuff too. Can we use this? Uh, it was like, "wah!" If I had known this, I would have like written on the backs of photos and things like who people were. And so Rich [Cayan?] was literally like scanning things, sending me things saying, "is this your dad?" "No, it's his brother," you know? "Is this your mom?" "No, it's some total stranger," I've no idea who this is, so we had, we had a bunch of that stuff. So

AT: 00:57:21 As far as the, um, you had mentioned that you inherited the box of documents. Um, ten years ago

KY: 00:57:30 I got it about 10 years ago and I just kinda looked through them then said, ok. But I hadn't actually sat there and read through it, so I put it away and I really hadn't thought about it. I think in the last 10 years I might've gone to that box once and it was for a completely different reason. So it just sat there and I didn't think about it until I ran into Mike at the screening of the Tule Lake movie and suddenly said, Oh, so actually the first thing, one of the first things I had to do was go get my mom's scrapbook back because it had been sitting at Auntie Nannies for years. I had left it there after I interviewed her because she liked looking at it. So we just left it on the dining room table there. And at some point or another had gotten put away somewhere, we didn't know where. And so my poor cousin Lauren was looking through the whole box trying to find it, you know, and said l gotta have the scrapbook gotta have the scrapbook, I'm getting ready to leave for Paris. So she found it. So that's how we got all this stuff. So I had just the bare bones at that point of what I was gonna do. And then when I realized I was going to do the interview, when I, I mean I had told you, it had always, sort of been my intention to do an interview, but I thought, "Ehh, ehh, ehh, yeah, yeah, yeah." And I kinda kept putting it off, but then I started attending the share your story sessions here, Saturdays and listening to what other people said and how they did it and getting ideas. And so I thought, well, why not? So I just sat down and a couple of days ago basically just wrote this, I used as sort of the bare bones, the information I'd already like found out in April for the first draft, the one that I'd sent to Tony and you know, Ryan and everybody at a, you know, Alphawood and JAC they, they had seen that, but it didn't have as much stuff because I didn't know if they were in fact gonna use any of my parents' stuff. And I didn't have time to write anything longer. So I pretty much just started this, uh, Tuesday, Tuesday. I started Tuesday, thought I'd be completely done, uh, didn't finish and kept adding things and rearranging things and

AT: 00:59:54 Well, it's, it's great and it's definitely a valuable resource to have. Um, so, and one thing that has been coming a lot in these conversations and interviews with folks and as I'm sure you know with sharing stories as well, um, a lot of, uh, Sansei and even Yonsei have kind of described this process of learning about their family's story as piecing together. Just like doing a, making a puzzle, you know, trying to piece things together.

KY: 01:00:30 It's lot of missing pieces!

AT: 01:00:32 Right. And yeah I think that's a very [inaudible].

KY: 01:00:32 And sometimes pieces belong to a different puzzle. You're looking at a guy, I don't think this is right. You know, they start getting confused and you're hearing somebody else's story or the right story with the wrong people or something where you go [shakes head] "Can't be, this can't be."

AT: 01:00:47 And I'm wondering if you can, um, tell me a little bit about, um, your own journey of learning your family's story, starting with, um, whatever you heard as a child. Did your family, you said that your family didn't, really talk about it.

KY: 01:01:04 They didn't really talk about it. So almost most of what I've learned, I've learned really, really, really recently or like I found up the stuff that we had heard as a child wasn't completely correct. So you never know like what a, what to trust and not to trust. I mean, we all thought my dad had a medical deferment, you know, but then I've got his, uh, included in the box, the famous, infamous docs, all his draft cards. He'd saved them all. And so you can flip through them and it's like a, he had the same classification that every other Nisei had. You know, where the, what is it, the foreign, the alien thing, I forget. Anyway.

AT: 01:01:52 The 4C?

KY: 01:01:52 Yeah, 4C. Yeah, it's like he wasn't even there for military deferment. Then all of a sudden he goes, well, Hey. And it was like, "hmm", perhaps then, that's why he sent the letter to MIS rather than being, you know, in the army.

AT: 01:02:06 And what, can you describe what that experience has been like of kind of doing this investigative work? Um, you know, very recently, um, has anything surprised you?

KY: 01:02:22 Oh, all sorts of things have surprise me, you know, like that, but I haven't gotten into this as much as I could. I mean, I know other people really, you know, they go into ancestry.com and they really go into that stuff and in fact Rich Cayan and emailed me the boat records, you know, the ship records he found from grandpa first coming over. I mean, we'd never seen those documents, but you know, he knew how to do this as a professional historian, whereas I just kind of stumbled into this and my information is all like what you can get free on Google. And there's so much info, misinformation there too. I mean, half the stuff, my, the names are completely misspelled. It's like, no wonder you can't find anything.

AT: 01:03:12 Um, one thing I wanted to ask you about, because like you mentioned, it's very unusual for families to have a lot of the documents that were in that box that your family had. Um, so whether it's the FBI notes or, um, you know, the written letters and things like that, um, you, you mentioned in your piece, like your father didn't see a piece of paper he didn't like, and I was just wondering if you can tell me more about what it was about. Was it mostly your father who was keeping documents?

KY: 01:03:49 My mom threw out everything. She was one of those, "Ehhh, you know, get rid of it, get rid of it." My dad was the opposite. He was a pack rat. He was a bit of a hoarder. So he had paper everywhere, you know, newspapers stacked up to here. Books and books and books everywhere. And he also, I mean, when we had to go through his apartment after he died, I mean, Oh my God, you would not believe how much crap, the- we had to have a bonfire and burn stuff, you know, 25 year old bills, everything. But he had also, of course, put all this stuff somewhere and there was a big trunk that nobody ever went to. And I think that might've been where my, I mean I didn't find the trunk, but you know my either my brother or sisters or my friend, best friend Rosie who had been, was helping and she was taking care of dad at the time. Somebody found this box of documents. So I'd never seen it until then.

AT: 01:04:50 What was it about your dad? Did he ever give reason or explanation for holding on to things?

KY: 01:04:57 No, but I have heard, and I think it's probably true that a lot of older people tend to hoard, but especially a lot of that generation of Japanese have a hoarding problem and it's because they had to get rid of everything they owned. You know, they could only take with them what they could carry and on some level I think that kind of traumatized them. So they kept everything and like my dad they, he wouldn't move. I mean he stayed in that same apartment in Hyde Park his whole life. We tried to get him to move. His family said, come up here, you know, they're on the North side. Come up here near us wouldn't move, wouldn't move. He just got, they get very, very set in their ways so he wouldn't change. He took a job way back when we were kids and he stayed at that same company his whole life. He was still working in his seventies he would, he'd still be there except the company went out of business.

AT: 01:06:01 What company was that?

KY: 01:06:01 It was the national paint and lacquer company. He was paid almost nothing. People kept telling him, you can do better leave, leave, you know, come and he just wouldn't do it. I think he was just terrified. I think, you know, a lot of Japanese had had that fear that nobody was going to hire them. And I think a lot of them were told that too. You know, you're lucky you have a job at all. And being, I mean it must be terrifying, I think for anybody to be responsible, you know, for a wife and four kids. And my mom wasn't working at the time, so I just think he wasn't taking any chances. So he tended to just stay with what he had and not change it. And kept himself very much. So even, you know, his own family, people, he knew. Nobody. nobody really knew him very well. His best friends, I don't, I'm not sure, but I don't think even as best friends knew his inner most thoughts. I think he just wasn't in touch with them. He chose not to be or, or he wasn't able to. That's why it was really hard to have a conversation with him. He didn't converse. You could ask them a direct question and he would answer it. He went to Japan like back in the 80s by himself and I remember he came back to Japan and I said, Aw, so how was it? How is Japan? And he said, fine. Would you like to elaborate on that? I mean, you have to like ask him questions and he would answer, but very succinctly, you know, he never just talked.

AT: 01:07:35 How did your mom compare?

KY: 01:07:37 Oh, she was totally the opposite. I have no idea how they got together. They were complete opposites. She, I'm sorry she's not alive. She would have been great for this interview. She was a talker, she was opinionated and she was very outgoing, so she would've done a great interview.

AT: 01:07:57 And, um. I know you said that growing up she didn't really talk about it, but it sounds like in the 80s and around redress, you know, you said that she had become more outspoken about it.

KY: 01:08:08 Yeah. But not to the family. She was outspoken to everybody else she knew, but I never talked to her about it. She'd send us these, you know, kind of like we'd get things in the mail. "Oh I saw this" and who, she typed a little comments at the top just a little bit. I never had a conversation with her about it. Now maybe she would have been willing, but it takes two sides to be willing. It's like they have to be ready to talk and you have to be ready to accept. And it just didn't work out ever. So I don't know that, I mean I'll, I'll have to ask my brother and sisters if any of them ever had talks with mom and maybe they had some, but I don't think any of us really knew. But she was perfectly happy to tell everybody else.

AT: 01:08:58 So when she was sending those to you, um, at the time. Did you not feel ready to have that conversation?

KY: 01:09:07 No. So I don't, like I said, I'm not sure. I'll have to ask my brothers and sisters if any of them did. I think she talked a little bit more like with my brother who was, you know, much more outgoing person than this and that they were, they were very close and my brother has in fact been to Medford to, you know, and visited the Oregon Historical Society there. And looked at the family records and things like that. So I'm sure he would've been a good person to talk to. But I don't know if he did either because he was living at the time, he wasn't in Chicago. The norm. I've always, I'm hearing from all these Saturday, uh, share your stories thing is that generally people assume that, well not assume necessarily, but the most comfortable thing is for the grandchild to interview the grandparents. Well, my parents were so much older that uh, when my mom died, for example, my nieces, they were little kids. I mean the oldest one was only five. So it was, you know, it just didn't work out that way. Their parents were old, my parents were old, or there was just too, too many years between the generations. So it didn't happen. So Auntie Nanny has been the stand-in, you know, my mom's sister who's 98 and still alive. My mom would be a hundred if she were still alive and Auntie Nanny's great, but she's beginning to get forgetful. As you saw, you met her here at the exhibit. And her take on life is just very, very, very radically different from my moms. So I'm sure my mom would've said very different things than what I hear from Auntie Nanny.

AT: 01:10:52 Do you think that's an age thing or?

KY: 01:10:56 From- Yep. From what I heard, they were always like that from the time they were kids. Auntie has always just been super, super positive. Some people are just like that. She just always looks at life and says, I'd rather look at the good things. So that's just true. That was her nature before any of this happened. This isn't, you know, like a defense mechanism that she, uh, she learned to have.

AT: 01:11:26 Um, and uh. So I'd love to talk a little bit about your experiences in Chicago. Um, but one thing I'm curious about is, um, when did you, do you remember when you first heard of camp or knew about it?

KY: 01:11:47 I think we always knew about it. I mean, when we were really young, we knew about it partly because, you know, I mean, mom said you kids need to know about it, even though she didn't go into details. So we knew about it. And then back in the old days, I mean, I don't know if they still do it, but in high school in Chicago, they used to talk about the internment that was taught. I don't know if it still is or not.

AT: 01:12:16 Um, can you tell me a little more about that? Was it an elaborate unit or was it kind of?

KY: 01:12:20 No, no, it's just kind of the whole, you know, I mean, when they in you're in history class or whatever U S history and they get to the part where they're talking about World War II and this and that. And they mentioned, you know, the fact that while at least in the Chicago history books, I mean they probably don't mention it at all, you know, in other States. But we got to that part and you know, I of course it didn't say anything, but the girl in front of me who was a friend of mine turned around and looked to me and she whispered, "Did that happened to your family too?" I said [knods] and she went [nods], you know, and went back, cause class was going. And that was the end of it.

AT: 01:13:02 But, so that was a, another Japanese American friend?

KY: 01:13:06 No, she was black! She was African American. So, yeah, but she didn't, but a lot of, you keep finding more and more people who don't know about it. I had Alphawood here when they're having tours, like I'll sometimes kind of like listened to people's comments. I pretend like I don't know anything about what's going on and I'll sort of just listen in and, and I keep hearing that. I didn't know about this, oh I didn't know about that. And I'm just wondering, I guess that they don't teach that stuff anymore.

AT: 01:13:38 And um, so you went to high school in Hyde Park?

KY: 01:13:44 I went to Hyde Park high for the first two years and then I transferred up to Senn. So I graduated from Senn High school, which is up on the North side near Bryn, the Bryn Mawr L stop.

AT: 01:13:55 And so were you commuting from Hyde Park? Or,

KY: 01:13:57 Ah, yes. Yes. That was an hour and a half each way. That was not easy.

AT: 01:14:03 Um, and what, and what was the reason for the transfer?

KY: 01:14:09 Hyde Park? Hyde Park High School is not actually in Hyde Park, it's in Englewood. It was very, very dangerous. Uh, at the time that I was going there, Kenwood High School had not been built yet. So my two younger sisters went to Kenwood, but my brother and I went to Hyde Park High and it was the height of the gang wars between the Blackstone Rangers and the Disciples. So it was not a safe place to be. The only good thing there about being Japanese was there was so few of us, nobody ever bothered with us. We never got picked on.

AT: 01:14:49 Um, that was something else I wanted to ask. Um, when you were growing up in Hyde Park, um, did you have Japanese American friends or was there a community there?

KY: 01:15:00 Oh yeah, there was a community there. Uh, we had some Japanese friends for the simple reason that our next door neighbors were Japanese. So just there were like three houses in a row and we had, uh, two families like right next to us. And so, and you know, when you have kids the same age and everybody's going to Ray School. So we used to play with the kids every day. And then we had, you know, like just one block over the Matayoshi family. Of course, Rocky Matayoshi being one of the most famous and highly decorated 442nd veterans. Uh, I mean there's footage on YouTube and whatever, of president Obama will putting the medal around his neck and Rocky's and, uh, Elsie and the Matayoshi kids were just a block away and we grew up with their kids too. So there was always, you know, enough people, it wasn't a Japanese community, but if you grew up in Hyde Park, there are enough Japanese that you know who everybody is, even if you're not playing with them, you know, I mean, you just, you know who they are and all the moms knew each other and, and the moms would sort of do little coffee klatches here and there.

AT: 01:16:11 And you mentioned that, um, you were going to a Unitarian Church.

KY: 01:16:18 Yeah.

AT: 01:16:18 And so no Japanese school or anything like that?

KY: 01:16:21 No.

AT: 01:16:21 No girl scouts. Um, did you do any other activities outside of school growing up?

KY: 01:16:27 Well, with the Unitarian Church that we had the, it was a Chicago Children's Choir at the time. It's now, no, actually it's a Chicago children's choir now, but, but when I was, there used to be the first Unitarian Church choir, so we had choir practice a couple times a week. And then, uh, for the high school level they had something called LRY, It was like Liberal Religious Youth. And that was like the high school group from the church. And uh, the Unitarian church was very progressive. They were among the first churches in Chicago to have an integrated congregation. And so not only did they have people from different races there, they uh, I remember when I was growing up there and going to church in the 50s, I think half the congregation were Jewish. They were, you know, liberal Jewish because their attitude was, well, they didn't, Unitarians didn't ask you to believe anything, you couldn't get around. It was very, it was, people would say things like, it's the closest thing you can get to atheism. So it was the liberal community. Hyde Park was liberal, the church was liberal. So we did the church stuff. Uh, what else did we do? I, uh, girl, I did campfire girls. I think my brother might've done, uh, Boy Scouts, but this was the Hyde Park groups. And so it was mostly kids that we went to Ray School with. So there were no all Japanese things that we did.

AT: 01:17:55 And what were the at the time, the general demographics of Hyde Park at that, in the fifties and sixties?

KY: 01:18:02 I don't know. I would have to look that up. Uh, certainly I would say it was mostly white, especially like in the area immediately around the University of Chicago because so many professors lived there with their kids. There was some African Americans, there were not many Hispanics back then at the time. And most of the Asians living in Hyde Park were Japanese Americans. They weren't Chinese, some were Chinese, but it was not, not as many as now. You'd go to Hyde Park. Now it has a much higher concentration of Chinese than Japanese.

AT: 01:18:39 And do you remember any, um, were there any Japanese American, uh, businesses or restaurants or grocery stores or anything?

KY: 01:18:49 Franklin Food Market on, I think 55th Street was the only Japanese grocery store. But they were really expensive. We thought. Cause Japanese food's expensive, it all, has to be imported. And of course things like sashimi are really expensive and we didn't grow up eating Japanese food. That's something I didn't mention either. My mom said Japanese food takes too long to prepare. I'm not messing around with this. So we ate meatloaf and spaghetti just like everybody else. She never cooked Japanese food. And so the only time we got to really eat it was at the grandparents because I think they cooked it every day. Probably three meals a day. But mom didn't do it once in awhile, you know, some teriyaki or something real simple. But that was it. So Franklin Food store. Do I remember any other Japanese food? Japanese places in Hyde Park? I don't think so. That's the only one that springs to mind.

AT: 01:19:49 Or maybe, um, Edgewater or, I don't know if Senn is Edgewater technically.

KY: 01:19:55 Oh, well when you get up to the North Side, there used to be like Star Market on Clark Street, you know, uh, near, oh what was, oh, probably not too far from where my grandparents lived. But that was, that's Lakeview, that wasn't Andersonville sorry. It was Lakeview and that was way too far for us. We didn't have a car. So we couldn't have gotten up there, but Star Market, Star Market was there until what, nineties or something. They're, they're pretty long. And of course, you know, like when my, uh, when everybody first came out to Chicago around Clark and Division area, there were Japanese grocery stores and one of the grocery stores was Sun Grocery, which was owned by the Yahiro family. And that's where Auntie Nanny met her husband, Kenneth Yahiro who I think was, I think at the time, might've been helping his parents out in the store. It was a Japanese grocery store. So I think that's where they met. Of course Uncle Kenneth and went on to IIT and all that other stuff, you know, became a partner who, you know, like they created their own electronics company, which is still operating, but that, I think he was helping out in the grocery store and she met him.

AT: 01:21:12 Do you know when they closed that store? That family

KY: 01:21:14 Oh no, probably when you know when grandma and grandpa, Yahiro died is my guess. It's been gone a long time.

AT: 01:21:22 And so it was the.

KY: 01:21:23 Not store, sorry sun, Sun Grocery was the name of it.

AT: 01:21:29 And it was the Saitos that first came to Clark and Division. Is that right?

KY: 01:21:33 My mom was there. She was the first one because that's where she was living when she was going to the Art Institute. She's got, I've seen documents, letters and whatnot with her addresses 1039 S Lasalle. So that's where she was first living. And then she told Auntie Nanny, her sister to come out to Chicago because she said it's better out here than the West coast. C'mon out here. So Auntie Nanny decided to come out too. And she said, my mom like sewed her a special dress, so she has something to wear on her trip to Chicago. So they were living there too. I think it was like an apartment building or something like that. I mean it wasn't, they weren't all living in her apartment. There were other Japanese people there. And then the grandparents came out. And so that was originally where they all were, was 1039 S Lasalle Street to my knowledge.

AT: 01:22:30 Do you have any other information about, um, your parents' experiences of first, like initially coming to Chicago? Did they ever talk about that with you?

KY: 01:22:43 No, not really. I'm sure it must've been a shock. I know any number of levels. Uh, my mom's family, of course, coming from Medford, Oregon, you know, population less than 20,000 even now it's still a pretty small city, although, you know, it's grown quite a bit since then. But coming from that to Chicago was, you know, just completely something they'd never experienced. And my dad's side was from Sacramento, which is of course a big city, but they come from the Japan town part of Sacramento and they wound up on the South Side of Chicago, which was completely different from everything that they had, you know, like known before. So I'm sure people had culture shock coming to Chicago.

AT: 01:23:32 And I think you mentioned your mom eventually picked up work. After being in Chicago, is that right?

KY: 01:23:37 Oh she was? Yeah. I mean, what was she doing? I don't remember. It's like her earliest jobs, but she wound up after she got married and had kids, you know, and we'd grown up and some point or another, she decided to go work at the Unitarian church. So she was at the Unitarian church. Wo- working in the office for like a decade or something. She was there until, you know, until her, the end of her life. So she really liked it there. So.

AT: 01:24:08 And um,

KY: 01:24:11 I know like Auntie Nanny was an executive secretary for awhile before she got married, but I'm not sure about the details of that. I just remember she was an executive secretary. She'd taken like secretarial classes or something. And she said she didn't want to be a take care of anybody's kids or do anything like that. So, but then when she got married and moved to Park Ridge, that was the end of her short career. I know grandpa and grandma worked briefly too when they came to Chicago. Grandpa Saito was originally doing some kind of assembly line work, but at that point, you know he's, he's pretty old. He was in his sixties and he'd always been working for himself. And so after I think not very long, he quit. He said, I'm too old to start over again. And Grandma Saito was working with a bunch of other Japanese ladies at a millinery store. They were, you know, back in the old days when proper ladies all wore hats. So they were putting together all the little frou frou that you put on fancy hats, the kind that are sold on Michigan Avenue that people were back then. So she liked that because you know, it was her and a bunch of them, the, you know, issei ladies all all doing that job.

AT: 01:25:35 Do you know where they did that?

KY: 01:25:36 No, I don't. Unfortunately, I was just, I remember being told that, well, I'm sure too, they were not working in the store. You know, there was some probably some little room off somewhere where they all did it. But I was told that the hats were pretty fancy hats that were sold at better stores in Chicago. So that's all I know about it. I can try to ask Auntie Nanny, I think I've asked her before, but she doesn't really remember any other than the fact that it was, it was millinery work.

AT: 01:26:07 Hmm. And um, and then for both, um, the Saitos and the Yasutakes. Um, do you know about, um, where the, the Yasutakes were they going to, um, Buddhist church?

KY: 01:26:25 Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

AT: 01:26:29 And where were they affiliated?

KY: 01:26:29 I think originally a Buddhist temple up on Leland and then later, uh, Midwest Buddhist temple here. Yeah. Now they, they remained devout Buddhists their whole lives. So I think we were the only Unitarians in the bunch and I'm sure had, we moved with my dad's side of the family, which was what they wanted. Ya know, they wanted us to, they wanted to buy a bigger house and all of us live together. I would have had a totally different upbringing than I did living in Hyde Park, but my mom did not want to do that. So

AT: 01:27:09 Can you explain a little bit more what, um, in what ways would it be so different if you had gone with the Yasutakes on the North side.

KY: 01:27:17 They were very traditional. That drove my mom nuts. She was way too independent, too outspoken, too Americanized. She was not your typical nisei wife. Uh, I frankly don't think, uh, grandma and grandpa approved of her for very much, but you know, that's it.

AT: 01:27:42 Um, I also wanted to be sure to ask about, um, so grandma's Saito. She very passionately wanted to, um,

KY: 01:27:57 Be an American citizen. Yeah.

AT: 01:27:59 I wanted to ask you a little bit more about that. Was that, um, was that a desire that you kind of always knew about or the family?

KY: 01:28:11 Yeah, just because Auntie Nanny would always talk about it, you know, so actually I think I knew about the citizenship from my mom too, but since I see Auntie Nanny still, she always, she brings that up. It's sort of one of the recurring things that she talks about. You know, whenever I ask questions about Grandma, she'll, she'll always kind of go back to that and say, Grandma always said, you know, be proud to be Americans. This is the best country in the world. So she, she's still, you know, it made a big impression on her and so she always brings it up. So, it's one, it's one of Auntie Nannies, like, themes.

AT: 01:28:53 Um, how do you respond to that? Does that,

KY: 01:28:57 It surprises me a little. I mean, just because I'm, I'm not sure if, if I had been through everything they'd been through that I would feel that way. But you know, what can I say? I mean, I think it's, maybe she was optimistic the same way Auntie Nanny's optimistic. I don't know. I mean, certainly she wasn't bitter.

AT: 01:29:26 Um, let's see. Were there any other activities you could think of that either, um, side your grandparents were involved in besides church or anything?

KY: 01:29:44 I don't know. At that point they were pretty old. You know, they were in their seventies and living, you know like Grandma Yastake and Grandpa Yasutake you're living with the whole Yasutake clan. So I'm not sure they went out a lot or anything like that. You know what I mean? Basically your life's your family. So I don't, you know, and they're involved, I'm sure with some stuff with the Buddhist temple and all, but they're pretty old at that point and I think they, I get the feeling that they kind of stayed at home a lot. There was no Japanese community per e up in the Andersonville area where they lived. I mean, I'm sure there was the occasional, you know, Japanese family here and there, but it wasn't like Japantown in Sacramento where they could go out and walk into any store and talk to people because they didn't speak English. So that really meant that every time they had to deal with the outer world, they had to go through with one of their kids as a translator. So I think that limited things. Plus grandma being a traditional issei a housewife, uh, thought she had to make three meals a day for everybody. And uh, as my mom said it was like a restaurant, she would ask, you know this son, "what do you want to eat?" I mean, "what do you," and she'd cook! Eh she was a great cook but she was in the kitchen the whole time. So I don't know when she had enough time to go do anything else except cook. I'm hoping she liked cooking cause that's what I remember her doing all the time.

AT: 01:31:15 And you had cousins who lived in that.

KY: 01:31:17 Yup.

AT: 01:31:18 In that building?

KY: 01:31:18 Yup. All of them. It's like one cousin up on the top floor. That's Corky. Three on the middle floor. So we've got Brucey, Carol, Corey, bottom floor, Sandy and Laurie and then the grandparents. So I'm sure they, my cousins, even if they don't speak Japanese per se, they understand it on some level because how can you not, the grandparents only spoke Japanese. So if you wanted to come, you know, like communicate with them at all. You had to know. And just kinda hearing that, you know, around you and they had that big building and they left all their backdoors open. And so people, you know, they just come up and down on the back steps and you know, they'd be sitting there and all of a sudden an uncle shows up or an aunt shows up and they were there, you know, it was kind of a great big house and they all pretty much lived together. So they were much, much more traditionally Japanese that way. They are exposed to that. And, and I know they were, you know, they were Buddhists so some of them practicing Buddhists and they had shrines in their home, which of course we did not, stuff like that. So I mean I, I don't see my mom being able to get by in a situation like that, especially when she was always saying things like, "Grandma thinks she's running a rest stop. I'm not doing that." So she didn't, didn't get along with that. And Grandpa Yasutake from what I remember, every time I saw him, he was sitting in front of a TV watching sports games. Even if he didn't speak English, he could watch baseball or whatever and you know, follow the games. And so when we'd go there, of course, I mean this happens in every family, everywhere on holidays, all the men are sitting around watching sports on TV and the women are all sitting in the kitchen having coffee and chatting. And that's, that happened there too. The only thing I remember that was different was that the men would play go instead of poker, you know, I mean, sorry not go, hana! They'd play hana, not so they'd be sitting there including my dad. All playing hana afterwards. But that was, you know, that was the only thing kind of, and the food that made a different from any other holiday in America anywhere.

AT: 01:33:37 Um, I also wanted to ask you about, um, the Fukuoka picnic. Um, how many people would go to that and who was organizing it? If you can remember

KY: 01:33:51 It was called Fukuoka, it was like, uh, Fukuoka Kenjikai is like an organization. So I don't know who the old guys were. Actually, uh, Karen [Kana-o?], You might ask her, she might know, but there are, there was the whole organization there, you know, and every year they had this big picnic, and it was big. A lot of people that I never saw any other time except at that picnic would come up. Everybody came to that. It was really wonderful, I think especially wonderful for the isseis because at that point there wasn't a, you know, tight Japanese community per se. Everybody kind of, you know, spread out amongst Chicago. And so the isseis only saw their own families. So this was great. You know, they get to visit with their old friends again and that kind of stuff. So it was, it was really a lot of fun. I mean I remember it being a lot of fun and they had, they had games and the games were fun too. Games for the, an uh races for the kids where, you know, involved a lot of running, you know, the usual kind of run up here and turn around and come back. And I mean they were easy. You'd win the prizes, but they had, by age, races for the kids, races for the niseis. And then you'd get everybody's moms and aunties running around doing stuff. And then the funniest one was the ones where they would include the isseis. They were very smart about how they did that. So at the end of the line, they'd have like a bowl with little like uncooked beans, raw beans, they're really like shiny and slippery, and those real pointy chopsticks, the ones that you can't pick anything up with? And you had to get run down to the end of the line and then transfer like let's say 10 beans into a different bowl and then run back. So of course, you know the nisei women would go charging down there and then you'd see them doing that and the issei women were kind of, you know, like trudging, they're really cute, you know, they're old, they're kind of trudging down there, but then they get to the end of the line, go [motions quickly] in two seconds. They'd like cleaned out the bowl and then trudge back. So it wound up being kind of equal. But anyway, it was a lot of fun. I remember that. And it was, they were very Japanese things that way, you know? I mean, who else is gonna have a race with chopsticks and, and beans.

AT: 01:36:14 And did you, throughout your life, did you continue attending those picnics or the new year celebration?

KY: 01:36:21 The new year celebrations? Uh, yeah, until, you know, we well, moved out, when I moved down the house, we stopped doing that. And I don't know when they stopped the Fukuoka Kenjikai stuff. So I don't know. Basically once we graduated high school, I mean, I kinda went my own way, so I'm not sure how long these things continue. I just know I didn't continue with them. I imagine, I'm sure grandma was having those new years spreads than you know, until she died because she lived to like 85 as long as she could cook, you know, it's like, I'm sure at some point her health didn't really allow it anymore. But she had a lot of help from all of the aunties and uncles. Everybody got inducted into helping out, including the men. So usually like the men would be out doing the grilling. And then even I remember like my uncle Yutaka complaining that she had assigned him to like grate gobo which turns your hands black. So she had everybody working.

AT: 01:37:23 And so we can be wrapping up. But before we do, I want to just ask you, um, so you've, um, you've done a lot of looking into your, your family's story and, and their past. Um, and I know I've, I've seen you in the gallery number of times. So one thing that I just want to ask you about is, um, why do you, why is this story so important and, um, what are some of the lessons that need to be learned from it?

KY: 01:38:18 Well, I think everybody knows their family is important. It's just only when it gets down to the last members of the family still being alive, that you realize you've probably waited too long and you better do it now while you still can. Even though it's in many ways already too late. Because the people who know, you know, the best what actually happened are gone. But at least there are a couple people left who I can sort of bounce things off of and say, does that sound familiar? So I just, I probably would not have done this had I not met Mike Takada, you know, at the Tule Lake movie and gotten this, uh sorry, gotten this stuff all ready for the exhibition. I probably wouldn't have done it. I needed some, something to prod me. So I will actually probably finish it out a little bit more because having now seen, uh, what other people did, you know, for example, and [Shi?] Majima talking about how she did her whole family history and uh, what's his name from Densho organization, talking about putting all this stuff together online. I thought, well yeah, maybe I should do that too. Cause if I don't do it, who will? So I'll, I'll try to finish out a little bit more of it. I mean a lot of these, these people are gone now. And I figure if I don't, and that's part of why I put so many names in, as I was talking like Grandpa [Lewin?] Fuji, nobody else will.They have no kids. So it's sort of like, okay, you know, they had their place in our family history. Let's, let's put them in too.

AT: 01:40:21 And do you have any, um, any hopes for just future generations more generally? Or if you could leave some kind of legacy or, um, or message behind, um, what's something that you want to leave?

KY: 01:40:42 Well, only in the message, don't wait too long! But everybody, I've seen at the Saturday story, you know, share your stories. Who said that? I can only reiterate that message. So many of us waited too long. So, but even if you have waited too long, it's like get what you have, get what you have out there. And yeah, we can say we should have asked earlier, and it's true. We should have asked earlier, but it is what it is. And rather than just saying, Oh well it's, you know, like, well let's, let's do our piece to do what we can. So I don't really know. I mean, I've got two nieces there, that's all. It's like my sisters didn't have kids, I didn't have kids. My brother has two daughters, so I don't know if they're interested or not. I really don't know. I know my brother's interested, so maybe when they get older they will get interested. Sometimes that happens. You have to get to a certain age where you defined you're interested. So possibly that will happen with them and even if not, it's there for anybody else who is interested, but sometimes it takes until you get very old to get interested in .

AT: 01:42:02 Before we wrap up, is there anything else that you'd like to add or that, um, I might have missed.

KY: 01:42:09 No, I think I've said already quite a bit, so...

AT: 01:42:12 Thank you so much for coming in.

KY: 01:42:16 Well thank you. Thank you for having me. And like I said, thanks to Alphawood and JASC too. So thanks so much Anna.