{"id":1687,"date":"2019-08-01T09:03:33","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T09:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/?page_id=1687"},"modified":"2020-07-01T19:32:23","modified_gmt":"2020-07-01T19:32:23","slug":"aiko-herzig-yoshinaga-on-japanese-internment-1942-1994","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/24-world-war-ii\/aiko-herzig-yoshinaga-on-japanese-internment-1942-1994\/","title":{"rendered":"Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga on Japanese Internment (1942\/1994)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga\u00a0was born in 1924 in Sacramento, California and moved to Los Angeles at the age of nine. A second-generation (\u201cNisei\u201d) Japanese American, she was incarcerated at the Manzanar internment camp in California and later at other internment camps in Arkansas. Her she describes learning about Pearl Harbor, her family\u2019s forced evacuation, and her impressions of her internment camp.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

EO: Do you remember what you were doing when you heard about\nthe attack on Pearl Harbor?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: When the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, I was at a\nparty of my high school friends, and it was, we were just shocked. It was hard\nto believe that this had happened. \u2026 The party broke up, we all went home. And\nI think our parents took it much harder because, as you know, as most —\nperhaps a lot of people don’t know — that persons of Japanese ancestry who\nwere immigrants were not permitted to become American citizens at that time, in\n1942. \u2026 My father and mother had been here a number of years, but by law, they\nwere, could not become naturalized citizens. So, of course, we were concerned as\nto what would happen to the immigrant parents who were considered aliens. \u2026 We\ndid not think — at least I didn’t, and I think many of us who were\nsecond-generation Japanese, Nisei<\/em> — didn’t think much about\nwhat would be happening to us. We were concerned about our parents. We thought\nwe were American citizens, therefore we were protected. We were protected by\nthe Constitution to continue to have the freedom, the liberty that we, all\nAmericans have a right to <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EO: And did you go back to school the next day?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: We, as I recall, we did go back to school. Things had\nchanged, though. I think our friends, non-Japanese friends, didn’t really know\nhow to treat us. I think they knew that we would be hurt if they ostracized us.\nOn the other hand, just like our neighbors who lived around us, I believe that\nthey felt if they were too friendly with us, they would be labeled\n“Jap-lovers.” \u2026 We were treated with a sort of disdain. I think we\nwere stigmatized simply because of, of our ethnicity. And I think that that’s\none of the most painful experiences, the feelings about the entire wartime\nexperience. That we were judged, not on our own character as people and\npersons, but simply because of our ethnicity, something that I think goes\nagainst the grain of democracy, of the Constitution and every right and\nprivilege that we’re supposed to enjoy as American citizens. It was very\ndifficult to accept being non-Caucasian at the, at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EO: So tell me, now, about having to move. How long did you\nhave, and what did you decide to take, and how did you dispose of things?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: Oh. I was all of seventeen years old, ready to graduate\nhigh school, madly in love with this young Nisei<\/em> man, a young\nman, who lived on the other side of town, other side of Los Angeles. We were\nall frantic about where each one of us would be moving to. \u2026Each family started\nto roll, to get rid of, to sell or to store their household goods. And then\ntrying to separate out what they thought they would need and what they thought\nthey could either store or sell. It was a hectic, frantic time for all the\nJapanese families. In our family, my father, as a matter of fact, destroyed all\nof his Japanese language books because rumors spread that if the FBI came to\nyour home and found Japanese language books, your father or uncle, or mother\nwould be taken away and fear just gripped the community over things like that\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EO: \u2026What did you do with your things?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: \u2026 Many families owned their homes, so they had a lot\nmore problems in terms of their economic situation and property. We were so\npoor, we didn’t own the home, we were renting, so that, that was not as big a\nproblem for us. Our problem was what to take, what to destroy, what to sell.\nAnd the neighbors, the persons, the non-Japanese who were not moving, being\nasked to move, knew that the shorter time we had to leave, the more willing we\nwould be to lower our prices. So there were “vultures” all around,\nhanging around for days, waiting for the day that we would move, and that we\nwould literally have to give things away. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EO: And when you got to Manzanar, how did you get there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: We first boarded a train in Los Angeles, went north and\nwe were, we came off the train and buses were there to take us to this\ndesolate, desert area, to this camp called Manzanar \u2026 The day we arrived was\nhot, dusty. When we got off the bus we were, we lined up and were told which\nbarrack we should go to, to leave our suitcases, then told to go to a certain\narea where we were issued a sack, long sack which served as the mattress cover,\ntold to fill it with hay, which was, served as our mattress for the period that\nwe were in the camps. It was devastating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EO: Tell me a little about the landscape and conditions,\nweather conditions at Manzanar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: Manzanar was, of course, a desert, and all around us was\nsagebrushes. \u2026 The area was known for… what do they call it? Dust storms\nwhere it looked like a tornado, shaped like an upside-down cone. We were\nbesieged by these dust storms day after day after day. The summers were\ndesperately hot and winters were quite cold. The ill, those persons who were\nill, the people who were senior citizens, and mothers with little infants, the\ninfants, these persons were the ones who suffered the most because of the\nunavailability of water in the barracks, the unavailability of food, immediate,\nwhich was of such importance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EO: Can you recall how you felt when you saw this place?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: Yes. As I got off the bus, I could not believe that\npeople were going to live in a place like that. I’d never seen a desert before\nand there was no civilization. It was just barren, sagebrush-filled area. And\nit was so depressing. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EO: Describe to me your living space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: When we first were assigned to barracks, I was sharing a\nroom, there were seven of us. The room size, I believe, was 16 x 20 feet. \u2026 We\nseparated our living quarters by putting up slats and putting blankets or\nsheets, I think it was blankets, GI-issued blankets, to give us a little\nprivacy. That’s the second thing, privacy. We just didn’t know what it meant\nanymore. These barracks were built so quickly and with poor quality wood \u2026. If\nsomebody sneezed in apartment 1, you could hear it in apartment 5. If you\nsnored loudly it could be heard. [Laughs] Which now it stands to reason that if\nsomething like carried, like that carried… conversations were never private\nbecause you could hear everything. The lack of privacy did a lot of damage in\nthe camps, I think. You couldn’t, you had to go outside if you wanted to carry\non a confidential, private conversation. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: Aiko Herzig-YoshinagaInterview, March 20, 1994, Courtesy\nof Emiko and Chizuko Omori, via Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project (https:\/\/densho.org\/<\/a>). Available via Densho: The\nJapanese American Legacy Project (http:\/\/ddr.densho.org\/interviews\/ddr-densho-1002-8-1\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga\u00a0was born in 1924 in Sacramento, California and moved to Los Angeles at the age of nine. A second-generation (\u201cNisei\u201d) Japanese American, she was incarcerated at the Manzanar internment camp in California and later at other internment camps in Arkansas. Her she describes learning about Pearl Harbor, her family\u2019s forced evacuation, and her impressions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":815,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1687","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1687"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1830,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1687\/revisions\/1830"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}