INTERVIEW WITH SATSUMA INA

Satsuki Ina (S) interviewed by Katrina Crosby (K) on Sunday, August 13 over email.

K: Can you please provide your name and where you were originally born?

S: Satsuma Ina/born Tule Lake Concentration Camp in Northern California.

K: What generation American are you?

S: I am a third generation (Sansei) Japanese American

K: Can you provide a little background on your parents and how your mother ended up in Camp Tule Lake, California, while your father was in Fort Lincoln, North Dakota?

S: The correct name of the prison camp where my family was held is “Tule Lake Segregation Center” (camp Tule Lake refers to another site). While held in the Topaz concentration camp, my parents answered “NO” to both questions 27 & 28 on the so called “Loyalty Questionnaire” and therefore designated as “disloyal” and segregated to Tule Lake Segregation Center where other “disloyals” were sent from the other camps. My father signed a petition requesting that the government grant prisoners their constitutional rights and allowed to be free and then would be willing to fight for democracy in Europe. When there was no meaningful response to the petition, despairing for the future of their children, my parents renounced their American citizenship with hopes that life in Japan would be better for children with “a Japanese face”. Once they renounced, they were automatically classified as “enemy aliens” and could be removed to Department of Justice internment camps. My father who had made a five sentence speech saying “we should ask the government to treat us equal to the free people” was arrested, placed in the Tule Lake jail, and then transferred to the Bismarck, North Dakota DOJ internment camp. It was the intention of the administration to remove dissidents and eventually deport them to Japan.

K: Although you were very young, do you remember anything about being in camp or the years after?

S: Just a faint memory of being on the train leaving the Crystal City, Texas internment camp.

K: Can you describe your early life and where you ultimately ended up growing up?

S: We moved to Cincinnati, Ohio where my father had an aunt who would help us out when we were released. My younger brother was born there and within a few years we returned to San Francisco. Grew up in Japan Town there – a safe harbor where neighbors helped and supported each other. Attended Pacific Heights Elementary School with other low-income African American, Chinese American and Japanese American kids. The one and only Japanese American teacher I ever had was Mr. Kaz Maruoka. He was the music teacher. Later realized that he too had been recently released from camp.

K: Did your parents ever talk about their experiences in camp or leading up to it?

S: My father never did. My mother spoke about it from time to time.

K: If so, why do you think it was important for them to share their personal story? If not, why do you think they decided to keep it hidden?

S: It was almost impossible living in Japan Town to “hide” the fact that we had all been in camp. As a psychotherapist, I understand that the prison incarceration was a traumatic experience for our entire community and the pressure post-camp to “fit-in”, and regain some semblance of belonging required that people move on. Many former incarcerees have said that life after camp was even more difficult in some ways because there was still rampant hate and discrimination. My mother shared parts of her prison camp experience at critical junctures in my life, often as a warning of the dangers and consequences of being “a nail that sticks up”.

Some people have said that they didn’t want to burden their children with the injustice of their incarceration. Some have said that they decided that it would be best to focus on the future and not linger in the past about things that couldn’t be changed. As a psychotherapist I also think that even when a person is innocent, being cast out and incarcerated implied guilt. It was a humiliating experience that led to deep feelings of unspeakable shame.

K: Did you have any siblings?

S: My brother Kiyoshi was born in the Topaz camp. Eighteen months later, I was born in Tule Lake. My younger brother Michael was born after camp in Cincinnati, Ohio.

K: Growing up after the war, did you experience racism and prejudice?

S: Yes. Occasional overt expressions of hate (name calling by adults) and more subtle experiences of prejudice - being ignored while standing in line at a restaurant, people mimicking my parents accented English, etc. And then there’s the experience of being invisible – in the textbooks, skin color of dolls and storybook heroes and heroines.

K: How do you think having the internment camps present in your family history shaped your personal identity?

S: It has been an ever present aspect of my life – searching for answers and trying to understand how and why it happened has been a major focus of my life and career.

K: Did having this family history shape the way you perceived the America that’s written about in history books?

S: I was at UC Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement of the 60’s. It was only then that I even began to have an inkling about the oppression and bigotry that was perpetrated against our Japanese American community. There was no Ethnic Studies department and at that time the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans never appeared in any history book I was assigned to read. So as a child, I grew up believing the “America, the beautiful…” myth that democracy had never been forsaken. Gradually, of course, I would realize what happened and understand that in my own family and with clients, I was witnessing the long-term effects of the unjust mass incarceration.

K: Later on, you became a psychotherapist, can you talk a little more about that and why that subject interested you?

S: I don’t think I was consciously aware of the fact that I was drawn to understanding human suffering and what it took to be a whole and healthy individual. Without being fully aware of the choices I was making, I always felt that I was in search of something that was going on inside of me. Something I couldn’t name. I’m deeply drawn to knowing people and hearing their stories. I realize now that my family, my community and I had all been victims of collective historical trauma, and for a long time it was never named or acknowledged as a serious factor in our lives.

K: You have also studied the long term effects of trauma and how people respond to it, how do you see the Japanese and Japanese Americans responding to the trauma that occurred during their incarceration during WWII?

S: Each subsequent generation gets a little more removed from the effects of the trauma of unjust mass incarceration, but the lasting effects are still evident. Primarily, what I have witnessed in myself, in my family, and in my clients is an anxious need to be successful and the need to prove one’s worth, at the expense of minimizing risk-taking and seeking security over creative expression or adventure. Pressures on children to do well in school as a marker of success and the fall out from the children who find this pressure a painful burden is a common pattern that I’ve seen. I think there has been an unconscious drive to avoid being viewed as “the enemy” so never posing a threat primarily to people in the mainstream. We were told, growing up, to just “ignore” any insults or racist acts. “Playing it safe” by being good students, good citizens, quiet neighbors, who never complain was the ticket to avoid losing one’s freedoms. We have had to be self-reliant because there is doubt that the government will always uphold the constitutional rights of the “other”. The out-marriage rate of Japanese Americans is the highest of all ethnic minorities in the US. It’s a complicated issue, but I think related to the pressure of blending in to belong.

K: You have produced a number of films on the Japanese American experience and the role of Internment camps, why do you think it’s important to use film to share history?

S: Film is one way to reach large audiences and to teach about complicated issues in depth. Our WWII Japanese American story has been minimized and distorted by euphemistic language and limited exposure in the schools. Our story is an important lesson about the human tragedy resulting from hysteria and hate that led to the bypassing of our constitutional rights in the name of “national security”. More than ever our story can enlighten people about the possibility of history repeating itself.

K: Through your immense amount of research on the subject, have you found anything that really stands out above the rest?

S: There are three myths that shrouded the truth of our experience: that anti-Japanese rhetoric and hate began as a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor, that the Japanese people as a whole didn’t protest and went into camp like willing sheep, and that answering No-No to the “loyalty questionnaire” was proof that a person was “disloyal”. All false.

K: You most recently were in a documentary, Resistance at Tule Lake, which came out in February of this year, can you talk about a little more about that experience.

S: The Tule Lake story as told through this important film gives clarity about the struggles and punishments suffered by those who protested. It upends the narrative by showing that “dissidence is not disloyalty”.

K: You also produced Children of the Camps and From a Silk Cocoon, can you briefly touch on the amount of work that must go into that?

S: Each doc took 5 years to come to fruition. Children of the Camps premiered in 2000 and From A Silk Cocoon was awarded a regional Emmy in 2005. We had a great team of filmmakers and supporters that made it all possible.

K: If you could give one piece of advice to future generations, what would it be?

S: Every voice matters. There were very few voices that stood up for us, that demonstrated and protested what was being done to us. Japanese Americans in particular, but everyone must do what they can to make sure that what happened to us amidst fear and hate, never happens again.

K: Is there anything that I did not mention that you would like to discuss?

S: No. Good questions...Thank you!