Chikahisa, Frances (9/16/2017)

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Sam Kirkwood: 00:00:01 Alright. My name is Sam Kirkwood and I am here with...

Frances C.: 00:00:04 My name is...I go by Frances Chikahisa. But my legal name is Michiko.

SK: 00:00:11 Michiko.

FC: 00:00:11 And um, I've stopped using it when I got into graduate school and started my professional life. It was easier not to have Michiko and Michiko Frances became to be- and with the last name like Chikahisa it was more laborious for people to try to remember my full name. So I've- in Chicago, people have known me as Frances.

SK: 00:00:40 Right.

FC: 00:00:41 Um, and I'm formerly from Los Angeles. I was born in Los Angeles city.

SK: 00:00:46 Oh wow.

FC: 00:00:47 And um...

SK: 00:00:48 So-

FC: 00:00:48 Went to camp from Los Angeles and actually returned to Los Angeles as soon as, uh, we were released from camps because we have a home, we never sold the house that we had, so we had a home to go to. All the furnishings were in the house. And the reason we were able to keep it was my father had a Mexican American fa- man, that was his employee and he had a business that was w- all otherwise Japanese American young men, he had a wholesale produce business in Los Angeles. And he had this one Mexican fellow, so he let them stay in our house. And during the war that was helpful for them because they had rent control and housing was really tough. So he stayed there the whole time and as soon as we got released, he left the house for us.

SK: 00:01:50 Wow.

FC: 00:01:51 So we didn't have to sell anything. So we also had a car and um, that's another story about the car. So anyway, after the war, 1945, we returned to Los Angeles and then I was one year left to go to high school. Graduated, went to UCLA for two years. And then my family finally allowed me to become a baptized Catholic, which is what we- I had always wanted. But my father said I had to be old enough to know what I was doing. So when I was mid-college he said, you- all right, you could, you could do that too. Then I went to a Catholic women's college and went from there and worked a little bit, but I went on to graduate school and graduated from USC School of Social Work and I practiced as a social worker in California and I had a private practice. I saw a lot of Sansei couples. I also work with a lot of young kids who were, you know, dropouts from school, having difficulty finding their place. And anyway, so I, um, I did that until, um, I can't remember. It was in 1998 that I decided to move to Chicago 'cause in the meantime, my daughter married a young man from the Midwest. He was, and so he wanted, he was doing his medical residency in Los Angeles when she met him. Uh, but he wanted- didn't want to live in California as he wanted to come back to Chicago. So, um, he came and my, my daughter came with him and in the meantime, my husband, her father, my husband passed away. And so, um, my family said, well, my son in law, and my daughter said, um, as I get older, they would, if I wanted to remain in California, they had no problem me staying. But it meant a little bit inconvenience for them to have to go back and forth. So you're, yeah, my son in law said, 'Well, you're, you still have enough life in you. You could go and create a life of your own and Chicago so why don't you consider moving?' So by this time, grandchildren started to, you know, two were on the way. So of course I'm not gonna want to stay in California when they're here. So I agreed to move and came here in 98 and um, live by myself. I had bought a condo and off of Lake Shore Drive and uh, they lived in walking distance, but I didn't live with them. And then, um, JASC wanted had, had a Japanese-speaking social worker who, um, left the agency. And so they were asking around for somebody who could maybe do some bilingual kind of counseling. Now I can speak, but I can't read and write because my formal education in Japanese was interrupted during the war years, you know, so I never learned to really read or write, but, um, you know, I always was able to carry on a conversation and there were some Japanese speaking clients here in Chicago, so they hired me at, um, as a part time social worker at JASC. And so that's how I really got established here in Chicago. And the, the demand for me to work with Japanese-speaking clients, you know, was, did not increase. It was tapering off because some of these folks were getting pretty old and passing away. So, but I stayed on as a social worker and developed some programs for the aging within the community. And I was, I was, things were really going along quite well. And I was there at the point that Mike Takada became the director of the agency. But then in the meantime, my daughter and her husband and the two grandkids decided that they needed to move because my son-in-law took a job in Seattle.

SK: 00:06:52 Oh wow.

FC: 00:06:52 And, uh, so my- I was approached to consider moving and living with them and, um, you know, I'm 88 years old, so it was not very a, I mean, a future for me to remain active and healthy was unpredictable. You know, anything could have changed my health condition and my ability to live by myself. So I said, okay, I'll, I'll go with you. So the last oh about three and a half years I went, were living in Seattle and I must say that the, this move to Seattle was a lot more difficult. It was doubly. It was a double adjustment because I didn't know anybody in the Seattle community and I had never lived with my in- my son-in-law and my daughter and their family. Uh, so I gave up my independent life and I moved to a community where I did not know a single Japanese American. And, uh, it took me a while to get it. And I still don't have much connection with the Japanese American community, but I, um, I'm a practicing Catholic. I found a very, very welcoming parish, Catholic parish run by the Jesuits. And you know, their philosophy is so much more liberal than the standard Catholic parishes. So I found my home there. So I'm getting finally settled and I'm looking forward to, to many, many, many happy years ahead.

SK: 00:08:45 Good, good.

FC: 00:08:47 But I think you want to have some record of our experience in the war years and our family history. Phil- I alluded to it earlier, but I went to a Catholic Japanese Catholic mission school in Los Angeles. I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's called Maryknoll School. The whole school was children of Japanese immigrants. School was located just outside of Little Tokyo. And the good thing was they had bus service. So we lived quite a ways away from the school, but we had transportation every day to and from school. And of course, uh, the nuns were the, our instructors. And as I said earlier, my father and, my father and mother uh, were Protestants religiously. There were no, I was, our family was never Buddhist. And, um, so they'd had a little bit difficultly because they had found loyalty to this Protestant community church. But anyway, they, uh, so, but they allowed us to go to Maryknoll School because they believed in the education and they taught Japanese as one of the classes. So I didn't have to consider going to a special language school. And so my father, um, had this produce wholesale produce building business in Los Angeles and was doing quite well. I must say that we lived a very middle-class life in Los Angeles at that point. And, uh, uh, so, uh, life was, was really pretty good for us. And then of course the war came along and because my, my father never supported any of the national, he never donated to any of the national Japanese organizations. Um, he had left Japan and he wasn't not interested in returning. So, uh, he was perfectly happy for us to live an American life. But of course the war comes along and he had to sell his business. And we, the interesting anecdote is as soon as Pearl Harbor was, you know, occurred, my father said, 'I have to go, I have to have a good car cause I have to go up and down the coast to get the farmers to give me the produce so I have business'. So he went out and bought himself a brand new Chrysler Imperial in December, 1941.

SK: 00:11:44 Wow.

FC: 00:11:45 Never thinking that anything was going to happen to us. And he always said maybe our first generation, the Isseis, might have to be interrogated and treated differently, but he said, "You guys are all Americans. They're not gonna touch you'. Well, famous last words, right? So, um, anyway, here we are getting word that we probably can't even stay in California. My father's got a brand new car. We got a house full of furniture, you know, and uh, the school, as soon as we knew we were going to evacuate, Maryknoll School had to shut down because there were no students anymore. All the Japanese students were all going to camp. So, um, you know, our life was really turned upside down. In the meantime, um, in 1937, my father took us all to Japan for a three month vacation and he went because he had never met his in-laws. My mother was a picture bride. She came from Japan, already married, and he never knew, it was an arranged marriage so he never knew her family. And it wasn't until years later that I discovered that they, her family did not approve of her marrying and going into the US but she was stubborn and she decided she's gonna move, you know, make the transition anyway. So, she was pretty well disowned by her family when she came to the states because they, she came without getting permission from them. So my father had, uh, you know, it was important for him to go back to Japan to prove to his in-laws that he was a decent person, that he took good care of us. So 1937, we all went to Japan for the summer. That was the year China and Japan went to war. So in July of '37, Japan declared war on China. So we go- we saw the beginning of a military lifestyle in Japan. They were always guys being drafted to go to serve, to war, but we, we only stayed in the summer and then returned. My father had said later that he had made this trip thinking that he had made it, you know enough money in the US that he thought he could return and retire in Japane- in Japan and, uh, have a nice life. But once he got to Japan, he realized how Americanized he had gotten and he found the society too constricting. And he said, 'this isn't for me'. So he was the first one that said, um you know, 'we got to get to California' [laughs]. So then we know, we get back but what happens in what, three years?

SK: 00:15:01 Yeah.

FC: 00:15:02 War...war is started. So, um, we went from, we went to Santa Anita Assembly Center, um, and while we were there, my youn- older sister had an attack of appendicitis and medical services were very limited in the camp and you had to wait long. And you know, it wasn't easy to get there. And so by the time she was seen by the doctor, her appendix had ruptured. And so she had to have immediate surgery. And you know, they did the surgery in the veterinary surgical unit at Santa Anita that they use for the horses.

SK: 00:15:49 Wow.

FC: 00:15:50 That was the operating table was a table that they operated on for horses. But anyway, she survived because the doctor who took care of her was a Nisei doctor who had been trained in Berkeley and he didn't, he learned how to use sulfa drugs, which it was just new on the market just before penicillin. And so he, you know, spread, he sprinkled the sulfa drug in, internally, which saved her life. So here he is, an internee, who was a physician operating in a horse veterinary hospital surgery and saves my sister's life. Wow. But secondarily, she was so weakened that she couldn't travel. Plus, so she developed tuberculosis and the internal camps we were about ready to be moved into rural, um, did not have facilities for communicable diseases. So, uh, they couldn't, she couldn't get authorization to go inland, but they had two tuberculosis sanitariums set aside, one in San Francisco and one in southern California. And they put all these Japanese who were actively tuberculous into in these two sanitariums, you know, so she was put there because her appendicitis had pretty much cleared up, but she now had TB. And so she spent the, those three, the three years we were an internal camp she stayed in the sanitarium in La Crescenta, California.

SK: 00:17:46 How old were you all?

FC: 00:17:47 Huh?

SK: 00:17:47 How old were you all?

FC: 00:17:48 I was, uh, well I had just finished the eighth grade. I was 13 going on 14.

SK: 00:17:54 Wow. How old was she?

FC: 00:17:55 She was 19.

SK: 00:17:58 Wow.

FC: 00:17:59 Yeah. So, um, you know, and they put a MP guard at the gate of the sanitarium, they still had that if anybody you know, wanted. And then, you know, those days they put sanitariums on the hillside so you were not on down and flat. So if anybody decided to escape, they'd have to run down these hills. And many of 'em were so sick that they would've start hemorrhaging and probably die on the spot. So to put a MP guard with these very, very sick patients, that was so crazy. But anyway, she was there. And she recovered and was about ready to be discharged when the ban could be- was lifted and we could return to California. So we were prepared to come back. In the meantime, I'm going to high school and, or my younger sister is in junior high and, uh, she contracts valley fever, which is a fungal infection of the lungs. And so she goes into the hospital and then she doesn't get over it right away, instead develops center pleurisy and then becomes tuberculosis. Pleurisy is like a cousin of tuberculosis. So she's how old she was, um, I was 15, she was 13 and she was in the hospital and so she wasn't even- she was sick and they were arranging for her to go into a sanitarium in California as soon as we got back. So when we returned to Los Angeles, my older sister was discharged, my younger sister was hospitalized, so they traded places, but we had the home, you know, so my, we, we started out, my father was way too old now 'cause three years he was in his, almost 60. He was about 58 and he had no more, he didn't have the capital to go back into the market business. Uh, so we, he had a hard time trying to figure out what he could do. He ended up being a gardener and he was cutting people's grasses, lawns. And that's what he did for, I don't know, about five years. And I had such a gratitude and respect for my father who had been a successful businessman and now he's driving this pickup truck and he's going to people's houses and cutting their grass and coming home full of sweat and exhausted. Never complained, you know, and he said, I have to have something to feed my family. And he tried to make a best of it. He said, the one good thing is he said, I see how American white families live domestically at home. And he said the, he met the housewives who were always home when he was cutting the grass. And he said, you know, they were sweet. They joked with him, they always brought him something cold to drink. And he said they were so warm and caring. He said, you know, he would've never known that white women were the way they were. You know, and Japanese husbands were not always the most thoughtful in terms of their relationship with their wives, you know, so to have these women who were you know very sincere and saying it's hot, you know, sit down and take have, have a glass of water, don't push yourself so much, um, was, was very endearing to him. He said, ah, you know, he really never would have known what it was like, the home life of an American fam- of white American family. So, you know, he tried to be philosophical and when you consider how much he lost in terms of money, business and sick, sick daughters that he couldn't do anything to care for. Um, he never, he never lost faith in the meantime because the Maryknoll priests followed us to camp. They couldn't live in the camps with us because they weren't Japanese. They lived in neighbors, neighborhood communities, but they were there to provide the, you know the mass and the sacraments. And my father was so impressed with the faithful, the faith of the, of the priests. So when they came back, we picked up with them Maryknoll mission church. The school was pretty much not open yet and anyway, we were out of high scho- we were out of elementary school so it wouldn't affect us. But anyway, he, uh, he and mother- my mother both became Catholic and um, appreciated the Catholic priests because they were so supportive and tried the best to make our lives uh, somewhat more palatable.

SK: 00:23:43 Is that why you joined the Catholic Church?

FC: 00:23:46 I always wanted to but it was my father that was, you know, adamant that they had this loyalty to the, you know, this little Protestant Christian Church they, that they help that helped them get settled at- originally in Los Angeles, but he said that, that since all of us got so much help from the, the Catholic uh priests and nuns that, uh, he could make the change. And by that time I, he was ready, you know, in his, in his seventies and close to eighties, you would thought thought he was a cradle Catholic. And my mother too, you know, they went to mass every Sunday with us. And you know, they just fitted in so well 'cause it was of course this little Jap-, Japanese community. So that's where I was until, um, I moved to Chicago after, you know, of course I had been married, I had these children and the fam- my daughter and her husband and the kids moving to Chicago and me not having my husband, my husband was also a social worker and uh, but he, he was a smoker when he was younger, so he developed lung cancer. And so he did, he didn't live very long. He died just, just about the time he retired, he was 65 when he passed away. And, uh, of course in my, by then, my parents were gone too. So, um, once my daughter had the grandchildren here in Chicago that, there was no, no hesitation on my part. I've thought 'uh well the kids are there, I'm gonna go'.

SK: 00:25:38 Right.

FC: 00:25:39 So I moved and I lived here in Chicago, 17, almost...16, 17 years. And you know, worked at JASC, you know, and had a few private clients, have connection with my grandkids and made a lot of friends and life was, was really quite, quite well settled until my grandson my son-in-law decided that his future in medicine was more, was better in Seattle because Chicago's, I mean Illinois was in such financial difficulties-it still is. So as an ER doctor, they relied on Medicaid patients, coverage for their patients and their salaries were related to how much Medicaid money came into their, um, see the, the hospitals contracted with men, uh, pro. Uh, what am I trying to say? Uh, emergency doctors were not hired by the hospital. They hired the group, the practice group. Uh, they had a contract with the practice group and the practice group had to make enough money to pay the salaries. So you had to have the Medicaid patients billing to s-to support the program. And because fiscally Illinois was in such bad shape, these doctors worked at like a third of what they would have earned otherwise. My son-in-law said it was not acceptable. So he looked for someplace else. That's how we ended up in Washington [laughs].

SK: 00:27:28 Is your son-in-law of Japanese American descent?

FC: 00:27:31 No, he's Jewish American [laughs]. So my grandkids are half Jews. Religiously, they're Jews, culturally, they're Japanese American. So we're kind of a hybrid family.

SK: 00:27:47 Do you ever talk about the experience with them? Do you ever talk about the experience of being in the camps with them?

FC: 00:27:54 Oh yeah, I do. Yeah. And they're always curious. My, my son is with me today and he's just taking in the, all of the photographs.

SK: 00:28:05 Wow. Did you talk to your kids about it?

FC: 00:28:08 Yeah, uh huh. But general it's not the same. All of these, especially Dorothea Lange's photograph set are so graphic. You know, she captured the feeling of the people and, and we, the kind of pictures I have couldn't begin to show what this exhibit is able to, to show. You know, and I think a lot of, I understand there aren't too many Japanese American young people come to see this exhibit.

SK: 00:28:41 Actually no, a lot of them, um, they kinda hear about it and then they pry a little bit. They talk to their parents. Maybe grandparents, but they can't get a lot of information. Um, so a lot of them, they've never even heard of this moment in history. They have no idea that this happened.

FC: 00:29:01 Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And they don't know the suffering, you can't begin to, unless somebody tells you, how, you know how hard it was.

SK: 00:29:13 But from what I've been hearing is that a lot of the Issei and Nisei don't like to talk about it.

FC: 00:29:19 That's right. It's like the Holocaust survivors, they don't tell their family.

SK: 00:29:23 This is true. This is true.

FC: 00:29:24 You know, it's, how do you tell, and put in words what it does to you as a person?

SK: 00:29:36 Mhm.

FC: 00:29:36 You know, we came out of our camps so ashamed, feeling like we did something that caused you know, them to treat us so poorly, but how do you, how do you put that into words?

SK: 00:29:51 Yeah.

FC: 00:29:52 Especially when the government says, 'We did it for your own protection' and you knew that, you knew that that wasn't true. You know, it wasn't for our protection.

SK: 00:30:05 Right.

FC: 00:30:06 We could have probably survived in all of the communities we lived in. Um, and if there was a little more education of the general population that we were not Japanese nationals, we were American Japanese, you know, the people could begin to understand. But the wartime hysteria of every- they just figured we were all somehow saboteurs.

SK: 00:30:37 Mhm. You know, I hear that a lot, war time hysteria. Can you describe that? Like what was that like?

FC: 00:30:41 Well, I lived in Los Angeles city and I lived in a neighborhood that was largely black. And of course the black folk were very supportive of us and we, I didn't, they didn't call us names. I think if I went to the local public school, some of the students were called, uh, called the Japanese students Japs and kind of make fun of them. But they were doing it in com- because they were- felt being attacked themselves. You know, you, you, it's a pecking order. If you could find somebody who's more vulnerable than you, you let them know that you know, you, you can, you can pick on him. And, uh, of course, most of those blacks in our neighborhood had seen much, much more prejudice than I ever felt. But anyway, um, you know, there were ways we could have done it without having to put us in camp. And you know, I, it's, well the Japanese people are very private and there've been and stoic told to put up with, um, you know, poor treatment and lack of understanding. And so they don't know how to express their anger and their, uh, and in fact, some of the younger Nisei men that objected to the camps, they had a lot of pressure from their parents to keep their mouth shut. You know, don't, don't, don't stand up for your rights. You're causing people to look at you, and, you know, just, just suck it up. Be, don't, don't be so, um, uh, what did I- talk, don't talk so much about...

SK: 00:32:41 Right, right.

FC: 00:32:42 Just sort of, um, deal with it privately and then, so how do you tell that to the younger generation?

SK: 00:32:49 Right.

FC: 00:32:50 Except for you'll say, to your kids, um if they say, 'Well, why are they doing this to us?' They say, 'Just be quiet and hold it all inside and try not to make trouble.'

SK: 00:33:04 Now, was the community like that before this happened?

FC: 00:33:08 Yeah, I think so because a lot of, um, especially in the rural areas where the Japanese farmers became an economic, uh, competition. They were afraid that they were gonna, they were being outsmarted by these you know, immigrants. Um, they- there was a lot of bad feeling. The, I think in the urban areas because there was so much diversity anyway that, um, you know, we didn't, we, they, they didn't know who we were, but we didn't face quite so much direct hostility and prejudice. But along the central California valleys and up in Oregon and the farming, the areas where the Japanese farmers really constituted economic competition and threat, the, and the, liter- the newspaper, media was largely, they talked about the yellow peril. You know they, so that there was a lot of, uh, you know, publicity about this encroaching group of people who were going to somehow rob the Americans, white Americans of their prosperity [laughs].

SK: 00:34:27 Wow, wow.

FC: 00:34:29 You know, so there was that very overt racism, um, uh, economically, you know, in a lot of the communities, particularly the rural communities.

SK: 00:34:42 So other than economic competition, what else do you think fueled this hysteria?

FC: 00:34:50 Well, the fact that we're- as a group, we were more, we're not Christian, so there is not a religious connection. You know, so you'd be, that's another thing to s- look at us as different and not one of us is- makes you then...

SK: 00:35:11 Other.

FC: 00:35:12 Other.

SK: 00:35:13 Yeah.

FC: 00:35:14 And that 'other' is one that is not positive. It's a negative 'other'. You're different, you're bad. Of course we're getting some of that today.

SK: 00:35:24 Yeah.

FC: 00:35:25 It's scary.

SK: 00:35:26 Yeah. There is a lot of similarities, you know, between now and then, um...

FC: 00:35:35 And the subtle white man's feeling that they're superior.

SK: 00:35:40 Yeah. Yeah.

FC: 00:35:42 It's always been there.

SK: 00:35:44 Yeah. Um, to kind of talk about though, talk about that though, I've always felt like that was a facade. You know what I mean? I don't know if you've experienced that, but in my experience, this whole idea of, you know, white supremacy, you are white and superior has always seemed to mask this fear that whites are potentially potentially inferior in certain aspects. Have you noticed that yourself?

FC: 00:36:15 Oh, it's, yeah they cling to the feeling that in numbers they're, they're around and they could be more powerful, but they don't have, I think there is a suspicion of a cultural identity that these ethnic groups have. Like the Muslims, and the Buddhists and the Hindus, that it brings them together. And then it makes a white man that is not as connected to his cultural roots, um, feel really threatened. You know, and there's so many varieties of being white, you know, and especially in our country because you have the south and you have the north and we don't seem quite know how to bridge that and make it be all you know, one same acceptance.

SK: 00:37:16 I know what you mean.

FC: 00:37:17 I think a lot of the racism is basically feeling that someone's gonna find out that you're inferior. And you overcome it by becoming super, you know, uh stro- more, uh, demanding and of course, and then you set up walls and so you don't really get to know each other. It's really, it's really scary.

SK: 00:37:45 It is truly. Um, one thing I wanted to ask you about, I hear a lot of people talk about their dads during this case, during this situation, I mean. What was this like for your mom? What did she go through?

FC: 00:38:03 My mother, I don't know how she does it. She just keeps everything, you know, she doesn't cry. She just keeps doing the best she can. Um, I think that um, she had, she had a really rough life at the beginning coming in, being married to this. My dad is 11 years older than my mother and he had been in the states and he was, he was kind of cocky and I don't, my father was never abusive towards my mother, but he liked to drink in the evening and in business trying to get farmers to come. He's, he got into the habit of wining and dining them. And my mother was left alone. So my mother, my older sister thought my mother was very depressed and somewhat suicidal. I never saw it 'cause I'm six years younger. I never saw that. But my older sister felt very protective of my mother felt that dad was, you know, cruel in his way. He was cruel to my mother because he just overlooked what she was going through. It was years later, I discover that when she grew up in southern Japan in the Fukuoka area, um, she excelled in school. She finished, uh, primary school and was given a scholarship to go on to what would have been like a teacher training college. It's almost like the junior college and uh, so she was being trained to become a bo- bookkeeper. And in fact, when she got married to my father, she was already- had left the southern island of Japan and was in the Osaka area because an uncle was managing some kind of a business and she was being trained to be a bookkeeper for them. So she had a career path. So the family thought when offer of marriage comes, I don't know why, but she decided she wanted to leave and go to the America and the parents objected. They told her they did not want her to leave because they said she had a future. And it would have been a future where her income would have helped the whole family. Um, and then those days in Japan in order you, even if you are a majority age, the government wanted parental approval because they didn't want people running off to the America on kakamania kind of things. So they insisted that the parents approved of the wives getting married and leaving. Well, her parents wouldn't give that permission. So my mother takes the paper or goes down to the rural part of Japan that my father was from. He was an orphan by that time. And so she begs his older brother to sign the paper for her, which he is willing to do. So she comes back home. I don't know how she stepped back in the house 'cause she comes back with this paper signed by this brother-in-law that she'd never met before. He's a stranger, but he signed the paper that said they approve of her going to the US. So on the strength of that, she comes to the US and then she meets this kind of cocky man that's, you know, getting uh, getting ahead and becoming very Americanized and he leaves their home a lot and she doesn't drive. She doesn't, if she goes any place she has to take the public transportation. And so she learned early that this was her choice and if she cried over it, nobody was gonna give her much sympathy. So, um, she survived. And I think the thing that almost broke her was when my older sister had the tuberculosis and had to be left behind 'cause she didn't see her for the entire duration.

SK: 00:42:44 You weren't able to speak to her or write to her or anything either?

FC: 00:42:47 Oh they wrote to each other, but you know, she writes in simple Japanese, my sister writes in simple language [laughs], you know, and then we didn't have, we don't know, we didn't have phone, phone connection. So it was very, very difficult, and uh, shows you how strong she was 'cause she never broke down. And she always told us, you know, to look forward, get educated, work hard, and life will get better for you. And if she harbored any really heartbreaking circumstances, she wouldn't let us see it. So the two of them, my mother was really very, very strong. My father was pretty open minded and he allowed us to be much more Americanized and I am appreciating that. But as I get older, I really appreciate my mother's internal strength, you know? I mean she went through stuff that would have broken another person a lot long, you know, years ago. But she outlived her husband and she lived to be 94 before she passed away. And uh, so she got to see my, my son and my daughter. So she got to see that. Well, he did, he did too. They, both, both of them got to see their grandkids. So, uh, she and she became very active at the church and they would have bazaars and she would participate and she made a lot of friends that way. So, um, I think she was able to spend the end of her life feeling good. And my father really, um, appreciated her at the end, you know, and if we were, if we were critical of her, he would always scold us. Said, you know, 'you don't do that to your mother, she's put up with a lot'. So, uh, you know, I think there were, uh, he finally was able to give her some, really show her the love that she should have had. So I, you know, it was difficult for these Issei people to show their feelings, but I'm grateful that they stuck together and he did, he did, he improved rather than, you know, continued in his wild and demanding ways [laughs].

SK: 00:45:37 All right. My next question is, what, what would you say is your fondest and least favorite memories of the camp?

FC: 00:45:49 Of camp?

SK: 00:45:49 Yeah.

FC: 00:45:50 The friendships. You know, the pure friendships. All of us had sadness and unhappy things that happened as a result of the war. But, um, I still have, I come in from, uh, uh, when I lived in Chicago every once a year, my high school friends, about eight of us would get together and have lunch together and I would make the trip to join them. And these are like the camp classmates. You know, so we don't have much in common other than the fact that we were in high school.

SK: 00:46:36 But I mean, that's, that's important. That's a pretty powerful connection.

FC: 00:46:37 And so, you know, and now I, this, this past year in April, we, we got together but the group has gotten smaller. People that have, you know-

SK: 00:46:48 Passed

FC: 00:46:48 Developed, you know, uh, physical conditions-- they can't get out. They can no longer drive and of course a lot of them had passed away, but we had six of us got to- they're just women, the men don't seem to join us.

SK: 00:47:05 I wonder why.

FC: 00:47:08 So I appreciate the fact that there is this bond of us having survived together and we don't talk about what went on, but we just know we're soulmates.

SK: 00:47:23 Right, right, right.

FC: 00:47:25 And so, um, I appreciate that we have, that I go back to Los Angeles and uh, you know, was able to connect with these folks. And then here are the resettlement committee group have that kind of bonding coming out of the camps, yeah.

SK: 00:47:45 What about your least favorite memory?

FC: 00:47:48 Huh?

SK: 00:47:48 Your least favorite memory?

FC: 00:47:53 Least favorite memory? Well, some of the, you saw people's mistakes and bad things, you would have never seen it if it weren't for, you know, I mean, if we were living in the city people's lives, you don't get to see, right.

SK: 00:48:18 Every little detail, yeah.

FC: 00:48:18 That detail, one of my closest friends in camp, her mother had an affair and had a baby and it was with a younger man that she supposedly had set aside for her older daughter to marry. But she ends up getting pregnant with him and she abandons the baby and my girlfriend never once broke, broke down and talked to me about it. It affected her so much. She became epileptic and she went back to Los Angeles and tried to build her life up, but she was so distraught. She ended up dying. You know, the epilepsy got so bad she would just go into coma and she finally didn't survive. So you know, you saw things like that that you wouldn't see in a, in a more, you know, more disperse kind of an environment.

SK: 00:49:30 Now, are stories like that the reason why you choose to share what happened instead of keeping it in?

FC: 00:49:37 Well, people, you know, yeah they, they make it so light and I think that we were really so seriously affected and we don't know how to explain it or where we're not accustomed to talking about it. And you carry this stone in your heart, you know, and um, since I'm a therapist, you know, I want people to talk about things that are painful and put it together as some po-, you know, that it happened. It wasn't something that you chose to have, but that it made you be- you know, I think you could become a more full person if you could address it, but see culturally, we don't have that avenue. You know, like the Jewish community are more able to share their deep feelings and be bonded as a result of feelings. And even the African families, because they are, gone through so much together, they can talk and they can sing and they can talk about how bad it was. Um, the Japanese don't seem to have that built in. Some people are very expressive, but as a rule, we are just very stoic, suck it up and think, you know, just to look ahead and don't, don't, um, reveal how embarrassing or how painful, but it made you be ashamed for no reason. You know, if, if you did something bad, your shame is related to guilt, but to be shamed without any reason to feel guilty, it just destroys you. And if you talk about it too much without putting it together...

SK: 00:51:50 It overwhelms you. Yeah, I get that now.

FC: 00:51:52 Yeah. So I think, uh, that we, the third, fourth and fifth generation still carry the effects of it and I don't think they even know it.

SK: 00:52:05 Good point. Good point.

FC: 00:52:08 But, I, you get me going, I don't know how to shut up-

SK: 00:52:12 No, no, no, no, no-

FC: 00:52:12 So you'll have to excuse me.

SK: 00:52:14 No, you're fine. Um, you actually, a lot of the stuff that you were saying actually relates to the way a lot of people feel now with everything that's going now. Um, it's just, it's refreshing to hear how you explained it.

FC: 00:52:32 Oh yeah? Oh.

SK: 00:52:33 Yeah. Um, 'cause like I said a lot of people don't share. So to hear how...

FC: 00:52:38 Well you see them walking through and you wish you could hear what's really going on inside.

SK: 00:52:42 Yeah, yeah, you know, a lot of times I want to ask because I like to ask, I like to know like how does this make you feel? How can we connect, you know, through feelings, through thoughts, through ideas. And a lot of times I'm actually afraid to approach people because I know that this is something that's not, you know, this isn't a hot topic. This is something that a lot of people choose to not to speak about. So I just, I really appreciate, you know, how you framed everything for me. Um, I think the last thing I want to ask you, 'cause I don't want to keep you, you too long. Um, you've given me a lot. Um, what was life, but, what was life like when you first got back?

FC: 00:53:26 Strange.

SK: 00:53:26 When you all first moved in, you know, you're getting re-acclimated to your home and everything. What was that like? How did that feel?

FC: 00:53:34 Well, you know, when I, when we left Los Angeles, Los Angeles was a tiny little, it was a tiny little village. And during the war, because of war production and all that Los Angeles just became a metropolis. Okay. So, um, I walked up and I felt like such a country bumpkin because I didn't know how to cross streets, you know, I didn't know how to follow traffic lights, I, to come out of a place where there were no traffic signals, hardly even cars. And uh, things whizzing by, you know? And so I really, that was strange 'cause I, I knew this was where I came from, but I didn't recognize the city in terms of how it had changed. And it took a while for me and um when I left, I was a child in a very protected environment. And I come back and my family had gone to gone so many changes and my dad is struggling to try to find a way to support his family. And my mother is still worried because another, child is sick in the hospital, you know, and I'm running around trying to find my way to UCLA [laughs]. And so we lost its cohesiveness, you know. My parents couldn't protect me anymore and I didn't have... my older sister never went through that experience, she was in the sanatorium. So she and I clashed. We didn't, we didn't feel connected. So, uh, that was the effect that the family wasn't united in the way it was when we left for camp. You know, and I think the- all of us went through experiences 'cause when were in the camps, you didn't eat like a family. The kids went to eat by themselves. Parents ate someplace else. So that, and then a lot of times the fathers were in federal camps. They weren't even in camp with us. So the family life was very disjointed. And because my father didn't go to a federal camp, and the reason he didn't get pulled by the FBI was because all of his support was with this Catholic mission school. And the agents who interrogated him were all Catholics from, you know, Catholic universities on the east coast, the FBI agents. So they couldn't find anything to say he was unpatriotic. So we stayed as a family other than the fact that my sister was sick. We, and so, when we went to camp, my father said he wasn't going to to let us go eat with our buddies. So my mother would go to the mess hall and asked them to give us a tray of food and she'd bring it to the barrack where we lived. And we ate as a family in the barrack. And I thought that was one of the smartest things my father insisted upon because he maintained the family core. But for a lot of our friends, they just had no more, you know, parents no longer had control. So it affected, you know, affected the family. They, as they got older, a lot of them, a lot of the family members, you know, they came here without their parents and it, family got hit, family unity was, was really weakened. And the Isseis when they came to Chicago, had no power. You know, they were not able to get out and work or not enough to support the family. And the younger kids were now making more money, not that they're making a lot, but they were making more money than the fathers were making. So that the Issei generation just sort of lost their position and then a lot of their kids went to different communities to work and the guys were in the service that came back and you know, so the families' composition changed a lot. So, uh, you know, the, so that, but it's, you know, when you consider that, how so in spite of it, most of the younger people still held that held on to getting educated and working hard and supporting not only themselves but the family members so that, um, you know, we didn't give up all the things that our parents taught us. You know, I may have strayed a little bit, but it was still built into us, you know. I think as a group we are pretty strong.

SK: 00:59:02 Right, right.

FC: 00:59:02 Well, I better let you go.

SK: 00:59:05 Okay. Um, before we leave, is there anything that you would share with the younger generation? I believe it's Sansei and Yonsei?

FC: 00:59:12 Sansei and Yonsei. It's probably gonna be Gosei, fifth generation pretty soon. I would suggest that they read up on the history of what went on because they can't rely on their family to give them the information you know, that they need. And so the more, the younger group can understand and respect what we went through, you know, it would help them and if it helps them, helps the community.

SK: 00:59:50 You're right, you're right. Well, thank you. That was the perfect, perfect message to end it. Thank you so much for your time.

FC: 00:59:58 Yeah. Well, you're very easy to talk to [laughs].

SK: 01:00:01 [Laughs] I appreciate it, thank you.