Not relating to Japan Americans' experiences on the mainland

The Kona Island community Going to Japanese school Starting work at five years old Traveling the world seven times Remembering December 7, 1941 Being an American soldier and an "enemy alien" Volunteering to serve for the U.S. military in Japan Meeting Japanese Americans from the mainland in MIS Awareness of concentration camps as a Japanese American Not relating to Japan Americans' experiences on the mainland Visiting family in Japan Being stationed in Japan during the American occupation Rebuilding Japan Investigating labor movements in Japan Feeling closer to Japan as a Japanese American Serving as a lawyer to Americans in Japan To serve as a lawyer Defining the term Nikkei

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I was twenty-three, twenty-four. There was no realization or awareness of constitutional rights, civil rights, and those things. I was too young. And having come from Kona and Hawai`i, we had no problems like that. In all our communities, we were the dominant society and we were never the minority. And we didn’t feel as though we were the minority and the cast off, that we were discriminated against. So we couldn’t relate to what the Japanese Americans went through on the mainland. It was only after the war that I began to realize, as I traveled and got to know and heard about their experience and read books and reports.

Date: May 29, 2006
Location: Hawai`i, US
Interviewer: Akemi Kikumura Yano
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

discrimination hawaii racism