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prologue 3 PROLOGUE Recollections Iwas born into the Japanese community in the heart of Chinatown, in Seattle. I grew up with it, was acculturated into it, and became a part of it. It was a bustling and hustling cohesive ethnic community, almost completely self-sustained, socially and economically. It had its own banks and a chamber of commerce, two Japanese-language newspapers , shops, fish markets, cleaners, hotels, restaurants, theaters, etc. The Nisei, my generation, the second generation, had its own Englishlanguage paper, its own athletic leagues, social functions, etc. In the thirties, then, it was an entirely different community than exists now, but this ethnic community was just as surely a ghetto as any other, even though not surrounded by stone walls. The community developed , as all immigrant communities do, because there was an internal need for people of a common language and custom and culture to band together in a strange land, and by doing so, they were buffered, isolated, and segregated, but protected from an alien, hostile, white American society. As a Nisei, I was a part of a marginal group, pushed by family and community attitudes to strive to achieve by educational means. The scholastic records of these times attest to this devotion to education . [A very rough estimate is that 14 percent of Seattle college-age Nisei and 11 percent of all other Seattle young people earned degrees at the University of Washington in the late 1930s. Min received a bachelor of science degree in 1936 and a master of science degree in 1938, both in pharmacy.] When Japan struck at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, we were filled with anger and dismay at the turn of events. On that Sunday morning, a group of us had gone skiing at Paradise Valley on Mount Rainier and heard the news on the noon radio after a great morning run. At the shocking, incredible news, we gathered up and headed home, each of us sober and quiet, wondering what it all meant. Why had Japan done this stupid thing? What would happen to our parents? What would happen to all of us? It was a time for reflection and anxiety about what lay in store for all of us. The FBI, from the evening of December 7, had begun to pick up and take away Japanese leaders in the community. In a matter of weeks, they had arrested dozens of our Japanese nationals—our Issei parents. Japanese language-school teachers, business leaders, Buddhist priests, and organization heads were among those suspected to be disloyal and taken away. I remember telling my father that since he was not a citizen—he couldn’t become one even if he wanted to—he might be taken away as the others, but for him not to worry about the family and the business (we ran a hotel in Japantown) because we—his sons—would keep the family and business together. I said that we were American citizens, that we couldn’t be touched, despite all the furor, because we were protected by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I shall never forget what he said: Wakarainai yo (I wouldn’t be too sure). Subsequent events were to prove that he had more wisdom than I in gauging the dark side of human nature. Things were becoming more critical. Shortwave sections of our radios were removed. We turned in articles considered to be weapons. Curfew was imposed from 8:00 pm to 6:00 am. But the real blow was the promulgation of the presidential exclusion order in February 1942. Now we were thrust onto the track that eventually led to incarceration. 4 prologue prologue 5 It is strange, isn’t it, and you will have to try somehow to understand this, how 110,000 people could so docilely and effectively organize themselves into being branded criminals and then to be led away to incarceration. When General DeWitt issued his order of March 2, 1942, saying that all those of Japanese ancestry would be evacuated from Military Area Number One [western Washington, Oregon, California , and southern Arizona], the Japanese American Citizens League had protested vigorously along with other groups such as church people, university scholars, some business people, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the NAACP; but these were as small voices crying in the wilderness, inundated by the great mass and might of America. If you combine this with the cultural attitudes of fatalism, the acceptance of adversities, and the...

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