Interviews
Reaction of Japanese American community toward draft resistance stance
The treatment given to us, I think, severely by I think most means, is that they wanted to discourage any more resisters to come out of camp. That they wanted to make sure that we have a lot of people volunteering or entering the service to the JACL liking, or the administration's liking. And I think that's when they heard about us, they wound up with a name the “no-no boys,” also calling us the “draft dodgers” and “chicken” and anything, a “disloyal” and so on so forth. And this is one of the reasons why I thought I'd better speak up now to let the people know my reasons, my thoughts about why I had taken the stand that I did. Because all through these years, for some fifty years, nobody had asked me about why I've done it but they've all drawn their conclusion from what they read in the paper.
Date: July 25, 1997
Location: Washington, US
Interviewer: Larry Hashima, Stephen Fugita
Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.
Explore More Videos
525 Quartermaster Corps
(1919-2020) Member of the 1800th Engineering Battalion. Promoted Japan-U.S. trade while working for Honda's export division.
Fort McClellan soldiers
(1919-2020) Member of the 1800th Engineering Battalion. Promoted Japan-U.S. trade while working for Honda's export division.
Going to camp with the Terminal Island people
(1927-2010) Political Activist
Interned at age fifteen, I saw camp as an adventure
(1927-2010) Political Activist
Incarceration, Deportation, and Lawyers
(1938-2020) Japanese American attorney and civil rights activist
Father’s Optimism
(b. 1934) Award-winning Disney animation artist who was incarcerated at Topaz during WWII