Discover Nikkei

https://www.discovernikkei.org/en/interviews/clips/659/

Living conditions in prison while serving time for resisting the draft

And we thought, “Well, let's break the ice. One way to break the ice is let's start playing a little bit of sports.” And so came the spring, we decided, “Well, let's apply for, to play baseball. Let's form a team and play within the group there.” And to play with them we got up all the best players that we can find and we played against them and we came out the champs.

And that was the... it broke the ice and people started to get friendly and they found out... “Well, you guys are just average kids. What are you guys doing here?” And this is where the questions started up like, “What happened? How come you're here?” We tell 'em that they just marked us as enemy alien, undesirable, put us into camp and they told us to go to, get into the army and we refused so consequently we're here. And they say, “Oh my God, you guys are just playing a political ping-pong. You're just being bounced around.”

And many of them sympathized with us, and come the following spring, many of 'em wanted to play on the same team as us. So anyway, that's how we got to know the people in the, what they refer to us as the main line, that's the maximum-security group.


discrimination draft resisters interpersonal relations resisters World War II

Date: July 25, 1997

Location: Washington, US

Interviewer: Larry Hashima, Stephen Fugita

Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.

Interviewee Bio

Nisei male. Born 1925 in Seattle, Washington. Spent prewar childhood in Seattle's Nihonmachi. Incarcerated at Puyallup Assembly Center, Washington, and Minidoka incarceration camp, Idaho. Refused to participate in draft, imprisoned at McNeil Island Penitentiary, Washington, for resisting the draft. Resettled in Seattle. (July 25, 1997)

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Murakami,Jimmy

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Tashima,A. Wallace

Being Denied as a Japanese American Lawyer

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Takei,George

Asian Stereotypes

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Calloway,Terumi Hisamatsu

Discrimination faced in San Francisco (Japanese)

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Ito,Willie

Father’s Optimism

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Ito,Willie

Tanforan Assembly Center

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Yamamoto,Mia

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Racial discrimination prepared her in becoming the first transgender trial lawyer

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Ninomiya,Masato

Foreign language education was severely restricted during the war

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