and where did you grow up I grew up here in Los Angeles until Pearl Harbor and then as I think you know uh Japanese Americans on the west coast were sarily rounded up and sent into 10 barire internment camps uh I was four at the time of uh Pro Harbor and I was too young to really understand what was going on but I still do remember that day when uh armed soldiers Soldiers with guns bayonets on them came to our home to order us out I remember that as a very scary day and you know a child can sense your parents anxieties and we were taken from our home to um a horse table in uh at San Anita racetrack where we were housed for a few months uh while the camps were being built and when the camp was built we were put on a train and taken all the way AC across the southwestern desert to the swamps of Arkansas a camp called rower and I grew up uh there for a portion of the war and then we were transferred from that camp to another camp in Northern California called toy Lake which was an even more uh harsh uh Camp there were three barbwire uh three levels of barb wire fence and tanks patrolling the uh perimeter and and after the war we came back home to Los Angeles now why were you transferred from Camp Roar to Camp T Lake yes there's a um a dark chapter of American history in that um immigrants coming to the United States could all aspire to someday becoming naturalized American citizens except one group of immigrants immigrants from Asia and uh so for for our rights and purposes at that time it was excluding Chinese and Japanese immigrants to the United States they could not be uh naturalized um when the war broke out um young Japanese American men and women rushed to the uh their local uh recruitment boards to volunteer to serve in the US Army but um because we looked like the enemy and simply for that uh we were rejected from Service uh those that um um volunteered to sered were classified as forc which means enemy non-alien now that's a very peculiar term non-alien it means a citizen we couldn't even be called enemy citizens we were called enemy non- aliens and they were rejected from service and we were all all incarcerated but a year into internment the government realized they had a Manpower shortage and here was uh here was all this Manpower that we've incarcerated uh under the the label of being potential spies sabur uh traitors how do we tap this Manpower so they came down with what was called a loyalty questionnaire which in its uh on the surface sounds outrageous after they've taken our property our homes our businesses our freedom and incarcerated us for a year they want to test our loyalty it was a series of about 40 questions and every everyone in in these interment camps had to respond everyone over 17 years of age had to respond to this answer the questions of royalty questionnaire a 17-year-old girl or a 80-year-old immigrant lady all had to respond to this questionnaire there were two key questions that the government wanted answers to question 27 asked will you bear arms to defend the United States of America can you imagine this question being posed to an 88-year-old immigrant lady or a 17year old old girl question 28 and this was only one sentence but it had two ideas it said it asked will you swear your loyalty to the United States of America and foreswear your loyalty to the emperor of Japan now for a Japanese American someone born and raised here the word forear your loyalty to the emperor was very offensive because it assume that by birth you were ingrained with a inborn loyalty to the emperor I mean you know you can't forear something that doesn't exist so that the government assumed that there was an existing loyalty just because we look like this and so if you answered no meaning I don't have a loyalty to the emperor to foreswear they were you were also saying no to the first part will you swear your loyalty to the United States if you uh answered yes meaning yes I will be loyal you were aha fessing up that you had been loyal to the emperor and the government had uh was justified in in putting you in interment Camp it was uh it it turned all 10 camps into turmoil my father as I said was born in Japan and ineligible for citizenship by by government you know decree he said go to ask me this after they they've tap my property my home everything I am there's they T they've taken everything but they there's one thing that they can't take and that's my dignity I am not going to grubble before this government and he answered no to those two questions and my mother I mean you know she's uh a young mother with three young children want a baby you know they expect her to go off and carry a gun and fight no she said this is nonsense I'm not going to subject myself to it and she also answered no to those two key questions and because of that we were removed from the camp in Arkansas to the camp in Northern California and that's why they had three layers of barbir fence we were disloyal