Interviews

1. Duties of the Witness Chair

2. Too Ashamed to Tell

3. Don’t Make Waves

4. What to Do Next

Chaired the Chicago JACL's Redress Committee.

Too Ashamed to Tell

Many, many people mentioned it to me, and they said, "Gee, we didn't know what had happened to you," and you know, that's the thing. I have to tell you this. It's because when I first went to Chicago and to the University of Wisconsin, people would say, "Where are you from?" I never told them I was in camp. I was too ashamed to tell them that. And, but after this happened, of course, after the commission hearings, well, since everybody knew about it, then I was able to say, well, yeah, and describe to them what the situation was and what conditions we lived under and things like that. So it was... it kind of opened it all up for me.

I*: So you really changed a bit yourself during this whole process?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, it was a catharsis. Uh-huh.

*”I” indicates an interviewer (Becky Fukuda).

imprisonment incarceration Redress movement World War II World War II camps

Date: September 11, 1997

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Becky Fukuda

Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.

Interviewee Bio

Chiye Tomihiro was born and raised in Portland, OR. She was 16 years old when World War II broke out. The FBI detained her father shortly thereafter because he was a former president of the Japanese American Chamber of Commerce. Tomihiro was first held at the Portland Assembly Center and later incarcerated at Minidoka in Idaho. Her father meanwhile, was placed in a jail camp in New Mexico for the next three years.

After the war, her family was reunited and resettled first in Denver, CO and later in Chicago, IL. Tomihiro became an active member of the Chicago chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League. In 1981, Chicago was one of the sites for federal hearings by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Chairing the Chapter’s Redress Committee, Chiye Tomihiro mobilized local volunteers to speak about their experiences. In 1983, the CWRIC concluded that the incarceration of Japanese Americans had not been justified by military necessity, but instead was based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership." (April 15, 2008)