INTERVIEW WITH JACKIE YAMAHIRO

Jackie Yamahiro (JY) interviewed by Katrina Crosby (K) on Sunday, August 13 in San Mateo, California.

Katrina Crosby (K)

Jacqueline Yamahiro (JY)

Nancy Araki (NA)

Jackie Hutchison (JH)

K: So it is Sunday, August 13th at 10:40am, and I’m sitting here with Jackie in San Mateo. So, to begin with, can you state your name and where you were born?

JY: My name Jacqueline Yamahiro and I was born in Madison, Wisconsin. 1931.

K: Can you explain your connection to Japanese American Internment Camps in World War II?

JY: My connection was my husband. My husband was in camp and so I learned what I knew about the camp life from him. Unfortunately, he isn’t with us anymore to speak to it, which would be good, but I’ll try to share with you some of the information that he gave me.

K: How did you meet Roy?

JY: At the University of Wisconsin. We both were, at one point, Psych majors and so we were in a lot of classes together. Then in one of our classes, we were assigned a project, just the two of us. And so, we worked on that project most of the semester and when we were writing it up; why I lived in Madison and went to school there so I didn’t live in a dorm. So, he used to come over to my house and we would work on writing it up there. My parents were divorced so my mother really liked him a lot and he was very welcomed to our house at any point. So, after we turned in our paper we went out to celebrate and we went bowling. After that we just started dating. We got along fine and my mother adored him and she thought he was “cat’s meow” and so we continued dating and eventually got married.

K: Although Roy is not here, can you tell me a little about his story?

JY: Yeah. In order to do that I’d like to go back and tell you a little bit about his father, who was the most unusual person. He was number one son in Japan, who is really supposed to be responsible for the whole family. Well, at sixteen he ran away and went to Hawaii. He was there for a while and then he decided he wanted to come to the United States. So, he came to San Francisco and he went to… I can’t remember what grade, but he started in elementary school because he wanted to be 100% American. So, he went through grade school, high school, and then went to whatever the college was that was here in San Francisco. I don’t whether it was San Francisco State or what it was, but he went to college. And just an aside, which is not 100% proven, but my other daughter, Nancy, did some research and it appears he got married to a Caucasian during that time. What Nancy found out, was that this woman tended to marry new citizens to the United States from Japan and she was Caucasian. Apparently, she married a number of them and probably got some money from them and then moved on or something. But anyway, that was an unusual step for him to do. Then he, after he finished school, went up to Portland, Oregon and he, over the years, bought and owned a wholesale fruit and vegetable place. It did very well, they bought a house that was not in a Japanese community and, I think there’s a picture of this house on one page, and they lived there for some time. Then, his mother passed away and he, after his unsuccessful marriage with the Caucasian woman, he went back to Japan and got a wife and brought her back. The two of them spoke to each other in Japanese, but the children were not allowed to speak Japanese, nor were they allowed to go to that Saturday Japanese school that most children went to in order to learn Japanese. He wouldn’t allow his children to go because they were going to be 100% American, so they couldn’t go to the Japanese school. Also, he had a strange way of dealing with faith. He wanted his children to be exposed to everything so he, on Sundays, would drop one person off at the Methodist church, another at the Baptist church, another at the Unitarian Church, and then he and his wife went to the Buddhist church. So, their whole life was sort of like this; they couldn’t speak Japanese, they’re not in a community where are Japanese, and the only thing that he was really immersed in was his business. Of course, there were a lot of Japanese that were in the same kind of business that he was so that tell you what kind of a background my husband had that he really didn’t know much about Japanese, didn’t speak the language, and so forth. So, what happened, I’d had to tell you, was that his mother died first when he was about six maybe and a couple years later, when he was probably ten, his father died. And so, they were really without anyone because they didn’t associate with any Japanese so they didn’t come to be of assistance to him or to the family. So his sister moved in with the family next door, they had a girl the same aged that she played with. The boys, they didn’t know what to do with them so they were given to whatever Social Service that was operating at that time. They tried to keep the boys together but the first place they went, they called and said, “we can’t keep them anymore,” and this was up in Portland. Gradually, over the years, they lived with about four different families and all of them said that they can’t keep them anymore. One of them said, “we’ll keep Harry,” which was his younger brother but “Roy’s got to go because he’s getting into trouble all the time.” We used to laugh about how one of the children at the home that he lived in… he fed him rabbit poop and told him it was raisins. He was doing all kinds of things like that and he threw a baseball through a window and a few things like that. What happened was that they worked their way from Portland, Oregon to L.A.; from home to home to home until they were in Los Angeles. That is when the evacuation occurred. They were given their choice of either going into camp with the various families they were staying with at that time or they could go in as a family unit. So, they chose to do that and so, Helen, his sister who was thirteen at the time, became head of the household. And so, there was this thirteen year old…

JH: And she is this one in this picture?

JY: Yeah.

JH: and how old was Roy?

JY: She was thirteen, Roy was nine, and Harry was seven. They had one older sister, but she had TB and she was in a sanitarium. She died sometime during that period of time. Let’s see, where am I?

JH: So, you were telling us their ages, when they went into camp because they decided to go together…

JY: Right, so they were the most unlikely people to be in camp because they didn’t speak Japanese and Helen took her responsibility very seriously at thirteen and she tried to manage the boys. Harry, who was the younger one, was always easy to deal with but she always had a lot of problems with my husband. So that’s the kind of background that he came from so when I met him and forever, he never spoke Japanese and he knew some words from camp, he picked up a little but, you know. We went to visit Mary in Japan, Roy and I went, and she picked us up in the airport. In the taxi, Roy and I sat in the back and she sat next to the driver, to let him know where we were going and he said, “what is it with that guy in the back,” because he should be the one sitting up there giving directions and she said, “that’s my father from the United States,” and he said, “Oh American.”

K: How long was he in the camps for?

JY: He got out of camp when he was a junior in high school, whatever age that was.

K: Seventeen?

JH: Sixteen or seventeen?

JY: Yeah. What happened was that his sister, Yan, the older one who was head of the household, had gone to a Presbyterian church as she was raised and so this Presbyterian Minister who had worked with her in various summer camps and like that wrote and asked, “Whatever happened to the Yamahiro family?” And they located them and put him in touch with them and he took Helen, who he knew, out of camp. And he was a minister in Madison, Wisconsin. So he took her with him back and she finished school and then she went to secretarial school, that I don’t think they have anymore. But she got a job and then she took, Harry, the younger one, out of camp first. She found a farmer up in northern Wisconsin that wanted somebody to work so, you know, Harry got out of camp and he went to that farm and lived there for a number of years. Then she got Roy out of camp and Roy finished his last two years of high school in Madison. Then he joined the Marine Corps and when he got out, the three of them started the

University of Wisconsin together. His sister was like, “this isn’t going to beat us,” and so she made sure all three of them started and all three of them did finish school. His younger brother was a doctor and his sister became a teacher and my husband was a psychologist.

K: Where did you live during the time of World War II?

JY: I lived in Madison, Wisconsin. I had no relatives that were involved at all, but many friends whose families suffered a lot during that time with the dad gone and the mother working and things like that.

K: And you kind of answered that question but how did the war affect your life personally?

JY: Well, I guess the biggest affect was my husband coming to Wisconsin and I met him there.

K: Did he talk about what happened to him?

JY: He did. He talked about it but you have to understand that these were three kids in camp and so he had a ball. He learned how to smoke while he was there, he drove a truck, and he had this picture of him in a truck with a cigarette. He thought he was really hot stuff, you know, and so in many ways he had no responsibilities other than whatever he was assigned. He didn’t look upon it, I don’t think like, those families that were the whole family was in there together. He, I can’t say enjoyed his time in there, but he certainly had a good time and that was all he would ever talk about is: when he got caught smoking and that he got to drive a truck and these little pranks that they pulled. So that’s what he talked about mostly and I think that when he got out of camp and went into the Marine Corps, he had some problems because the war with Japan was just over and a lot of the people that he was with were a part of that and so they hated all Japanese. But he had a very pleasant personality and he made friends very easily and people depended on him for a lot of things because he was, obviously, a bright young man and could figure some things out that other people couldn’t.

JH: So, you said he drove a truck. Did they have jobs while they were there? What kind of stuff did they do during the day? Did they go to school?

JY: They had jobs. They went to school. Yeah actually front those papers that I got, that we were looking for, they had various jobs, they went to school, and the records I have are his grades in school.

NA: Also, jobs? But he was a teenager?

JY: Yep.

JH: He drove a truck that delivered newspapers or…what did it do?

JY: Yeah it. He drove a truck.

JH: Around the camps?

JY: Yes.

JH: Did the other two have jobs? Do you know?

JY: No, not that I know of. I just don’t know.

JH: Which camp was it?

JY: Minidoka.

JH: That’s in Idaho?

JY: Yep and we stopped by there when we took Nancy to school, my younger daughter went to school in Portland. And so, at that time, we not only stopped at the camp, which just deteriorated into nothing, and he took us around to show us where he lived. Then we…what was the question?

(Laughs)

JH: We just got off on a tangent. But you went back to visit? And he was happy to show you around? Or was it kind of like…

JY: Well, it was either dilapidated or falling down. The only thing recognized was, there this big stone gate out in front and that there was a guard, with a gun, who sat up there all the time. He remembered that. That is probably…

JH: Were there people who tried to escape?

JY: I don’t know.

JH: Or was that just kind of a precaution?

JY: I don’t know of anybody who tried to escape.

K: What do you think we can all learn from Roy’s experiences at camp, as a country?

JY: Well, I would hope that we could learn that…that was not a wise thing to do. Nor a necessary thing to do and we reacted too quickly and without thinking it through at all. I think that…I worry about right now, with the president we have; what could possibly happen.

K: Kind of going off of that, if you could give one piece of advice to the future generation, what would you give?

JY: One piece of advice for future generation? Well, I guess I would say, to go cognizant of the people and how basically good people are. I don’t really know.

JH: That was good.

K: Yeah that was really good. And what is your opinion on the restitution money that Reagan provided to those survivors? Do you think that was enough? What are your thoughts on that?

JY: I don’t really have any idea. I think it was seven thousand dollars. No?

NA: It was twenty thousand.

JY: Twenty thousand? Okay.

JH: She has the letter. She’ll try to find it and we can send you a copy.

JY: Yeah and I’m sure I have it too. But how can equate money with what does people had to go through…what they lost? Most of them…their homes, their money. Like with my husband’s family, they owned this house, he owned a big business, and do you know what the kids got? After they took care of all the things? They got six hundred and fifty dollars and that was their lifesavings. I’m sure that happened to many people. Some people were lucky and they had friends that would take over their house or business or whatever until they got out but I’m sure the average person wasn’t lucky enough to have that. I just can’t conceive that we did that. Obviously, we did but I would hope that it never happens again and I worry about our current President.

K: Is there anything I did not ask you that you’d like to share with me?

JY: Yeah, I would. We lived in Lexington, Kentucky for a while. My husband worked for the United Public Health Service Hospital there, which was the narcotics hospital, and he was a psychologist by that time. So, Lexington was a good place to be…now I forgot what I was going to talk about…

JH: Did you work at the hospital too?

JY: No, I worked at another mental hospital. I was a social worker for another mental hospital there. Oh, now I remember. I got pregnant by that time and when, Mary, was about to be born, it was right after the shift change, so a whole group of people from the early morning shift stayed over to see what it was going to look like.

JH: Was there stigma around interracial marriage?

JY: By the time we got married there were seventeen states where it was illegal. So, the first thing your grandpa did was to go to the law school and find out the situation was in Kentucky at the time. It was black and white was illegal, and black and Asian was illegal, but Asian and white was not. So, we checked that out and if were illegal, I would’ve gone back to Wisconsin and stayed with my mother and had the baby, but it was okay. But there were seventeen states though that it was still illegal, so we were lucky that we wouldn’t land up in one of them.

K: And what year was this?

JY: 1958 she was born, Mary was born.

K: These are some of the pictures you gave me, so these are pictures of the three siblings, right?

JY: Yes, and there was the older sibling that died, Mary.

JH: She here in the middle picture?

JY: Yeah.

JH: Mary, Helen, and the boys?

JY: Yep.

JH: And then this picture, when their older, is after camp?

JY: Yeah. I would probably guess, about the time they were all together, lived together, at the University. I think that’s the picture of that time.

K: And on the back, is it then pictures of him at the camp he was at?

JY: Yeah.

JH: These are pictures of Minidoka?

JY: Yeah.

K: What was the climate like there? Do you know?

JY: No, I don’t know. I would imagine it got cold there. I’m not really sure about that. I know that, Harry, the younger brother, lived in LA. He took us to the museum there and looked at the mock-up they had of the camp and he said they had something missing. He said it was the potbellied stove that was in the middle that kept them warm

NA: Now where the camps were chosen was where there was extreme weather. A potbellied stove meant you were in Manzanar, which would be in Owens Valley, or whatever. You would all have that one potbellied stove.

JY: Yeah.

JH: So, was there a limit of how much stuff you could bring?

JY: What you could carry. That’s why all these people, who didn’t have close friends who were Caucasian that could help them out, lost their things. See I don’t know what happened to their house and all the furniture that was in it.

K: What happened to their house after their parents died? Do you know? Because they were separated, they went down to California and the sister stayed around the home.

JY: Yeah, but I don’t know what happened to the home. They had an attorney, which gave them the six hundred and fifty dollars after selling the business and the home. I’m sure they sold it and made some money. I don’t know how much at that time houses ran for, maybe six hundred and fifty dollars would cover everything, but I don’t know. I feel like my husband survived it all well and I think the fact he went into psychology, that he was always trying to finish understanding everything. It did not leave him bitter or angry. On the other hand, he was very outgoing and was a fun person and everybody liked him. He worked at Martin Murrieta, which is now Lockheed. They used to have him be the master of ceremonies at the big events because he had such a humorous way about him. He could tease people and so I don’t think it beat him down. His brother, the younger one, Harry, was very quiet all his life. He became a doctor and was a very good internist but there was no fun in Harry and Roy was always getting into trouble even as an adult. He ran this program for Martin Murrieta Lockheed, he was in personnel department and he ran this training program and he wanted it to be “outward bound.” Are you familiar with “outward bound?”

K: I don’t think so.

JY: It’s a program where they go out in the wilderness and have to rely on each other.

JH: Like boy scouts?

JY: Yeah and so he did this for team building. He would take people from various segments and take them on this trip. They all came back and very positive about it. What happened was, as was common for him, he didn’t get approval of the powers at be to do this. He just went ahead and did it and the Today Show got in touch with him and said, “can we send somebody up with you on your next trip?” and he said “sure.” So, they came with all their cameras and all their equipment and spent all this time there and did the filming of it. When management found out what he had done, they were about ready to string him up by his heels. But they did show it at Martin Murrieta on the Today Show; there were T. V’s all over the place. So, Roy was watching it with president of the group. He said, “well that’s not so bad.” But they were concerned that people would think that they money they were paying for taxes and everything was being used for them to go out and have fun and that that was not the way to spend our tax money. Anyways those were the kinds of things he did. He just went ahead and did whatever he wanted and usually it turned out just fine.

K: That’s a great life motto to live by.

(Laughs)

JY: Yeah.

K: Thank you so much.

JY: You’re welcome.

K: And is there anything else?

JY: If I think of anything I’ll tell you.

K: Okay. Thank you again so much.