Interviews

1. Mother's immigration to U.S. as a treaty merchant

2. Ransacking of family home by FBI following the bombing of Pearl Harbor

3. Witnessing father's arrest through a child's eyes

4. Memories of trip to Japan on the exchange ships

5. Living in Japan during the war, preparing for U.S. bombings

6. Witnessing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima

7. Participating in military drills in school in Japan during the war

8. Hearing anti-American war propaganda from a teacher

9. The hardships of life in Japan during World War II

Marion Tsutakawa Kanemoto

(b. 1927) Japanese American Nisei. Family voluntarily returned to Japan during WWII.

Mother's immigration to U.S. as a treaty merchant

And so my mother had to come in a different status, which was called the treaty merchants. And from what I understand, to be a treaty merchant that had to mean that you were fairly comfortable. And so, though my father, being a young man, didn't have the funds, they had to pretend that they were wealthy enough and signed up for the first-class and my mother was told that she had to behave very properly, and that's how they came.

immigration migration treaty traders

Date: August 3 & 4, 2003

Location: Washington, US

Interviewer: Alice Ito

Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.

Interviewee Bio

Nisei female. Born December 30, 1927 in Seattle, Washington. Lived in Japan for fifteen months as a child, before returning to Seattle to attend junior high school. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, father was picked up by the FBI and taken to the Department of Justice camp at Missoula, Montana. Removed to the Puyallup Assembly Center, Washington, before being reunited with father at the Minidoka incarceration camp, Idaho. Family volunteered to leave for Japan in 1943 on the U.S. government's exchange ship, the USS Gripsholm. Attended high school in Japan, and participated in military and air raid drills. During the U.S.'s postwar occupation of Japan, attended Doshisha University and worked for a U.S. army station hospital library. Returned to the U.S. and enrolled at St. Mary's teaching hospital in Rochester, Minnesota. Denied redress because of expatriation to Japan, but succeeded in obtaining redress in 1996 after filing a class-action lawsuit.

*The full interview is available Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.