The only people that were really targeted were folks who were in a community leader…similar to here…community leader powers who were educated; scholars, or who had some sort of power in either the business world or the community world. And I think besides my great-grandpa Arakaki, the other folks were able to lie low pretty well. I have heard of a story though from a group where there was a Japanese Peruvian person working in the…was it…in some government office, I don’t know if it was like an ambassador’s office or something like that, but he got a list of Japanese Peruvian folks who were supposed to be kidnapped and taken to the United States, and he was sort of like a “Schindler’s List” and he would take some of these folks and just sort of try to hide them as best as possible or try to find a way to make sure that they escaped or that they got fake IDs or fake whatever identification in order to stay. So I have heard stories like that.
Date: August 30, 2018
Location: California, US
Interviewer: Sharon Yamato
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
Journal feed
