Izumi Taniguchi interview
Item
Title
eng
Izumi Taniguchi interview
Description
eng
Talks about growing up and farming in Brentwood, California, attending grammar school, the impact of the Great Depression and his father being labeled a "subversive" by the FBI after Pearl Harbor and arrested. He discusses Executive Order 9066, dropping out of school to help his family prepare for evacuation, his father's arrest and being sent to the Silver Avenue Detention Center in San Francisco, and then his family being sent to the Turlock Assembly Center and Gila River War Relocation Center. He recalls playing basketball and baseball in the camp, and his family deciding to join his father at the Crystal City Internment Camp. He discusses the loyalty questionnaire and ironically being treated better in a camp for enemy aliens than one for U.S. citizens. He talks about how his brother was eventually able to get him out of the Crystal City camp and attending college in Detroit. He discusses his parents being released from camp after the war, and his father scouting out possible farms in the Rio Grande Valley. He talks about deciding to join the army after the war to get the GI Bill to pay for college, helping his parents move to Texas and being sent to Japan as an interpreter. He discusses attending the University of Houston and changing his focus from engineering to economics and earning a masters degree and then later his Ph.D. He discusses getting married in 1960, and moving to Fresno and teaching at Fresno State. He discusses traveling to Japan on sabbatical in 1975 with his father and getting to meet the Crown Prince. He discusses the death of his parents and becoming involved in the JACL, including his stance on the UFW and becoming the Vice-President of National JACL. He talks about the campaign for redress, his academic career and serving on the Fresno grand jury.
Creator
eng
Taniguchi, Izumi
eng
Taniguchi, Nancy
Relation
eng
JACL-CCDC Japanese American Oral History Collection
Coverage
eng
Fresno, California
Date
eng
3/1/2000
Format
eng
Microsoft Word 2003 document, 62 pages
Rights
eng
Copyright has been transferred to Fresno State
Identifier
eng
SCMS_jacl_00009
extracted text
NARRATOR:
IZUMI TANIGUCHI
INTERVIEWER:
NANCY TANIGUCHI
DATE:
March 1, 2000
NT:
We are recording today in Fresno. This is Dr. Izumi Taniguchi in his home and it is
March 1, 2000. And Dr. Taniguchi could you tell me a little bit about your family?
When and where you were born and a little bit about your family background please?
IT:
I was born in Stockton, California when the family was living in Brentwood. Brentwood
is in East Contra Costa County and Stockton is about thirty miles east of Brentwood. The
family moved to Brentwood about 1924. And before that they were involved in farming
in San Joaquin Delta. Actually my grandfather came here first in 1904 and he worked in
different jobs at the outset but eventually it went into farm labor and working in and
around the San Joaquin Delta. And in 1914 he called my father here and at that time my
father was sixteen years old. And he helped on my grandfather’s farm work and so on
and felt that there was no future in it so he went off to Los Angeles and went to an auto
mechanics school and received a certificate after one year. Then he returned to the
Stockton area and worked in farms but again he got together with a number of people,
four other people and in partnership bought one of the very first Caterpillar Tractors.
They Caterpillar tractor was first built in Hoyt, California which is just west of Stockton
and they were practically known as Hoyt tractors and they financed the purchase from
Spreckels Sugar Company who was located in Modesto because Spreckels Sugar
Company wanted somebody to get off land and work and trees and so on in (inaudible)
County and with the tractor they disked and plowed and cleared the land for sugar beet
farming. Then after that he had an offer from somebody in Mexicali to develop land for
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cotton growing and so he and his partners took the tractor down to Mexicali to develop
the land and open up the land for cotton farming. However while he was there he became
ill. I think he had an appendix attack. And so he had to leave and go to Los Angeles.
While he was in Los Angeles and after he recovered from his illness he worked as a
delivery boy for the produce houses in Los Angeles for about a year and then returned to
the Stockton area.
Then he began going into farming and let’s see. My grandfather and he went
together to do some farming growing onions on land that Mr. Ushigima had the rights to
the land on Bacon Island in the Delta. They did that for a while and they moved around
to Union Island to farm onions and beans and so on. In the meantime, my grandfather
called my grandmother from Japan. I am not sure what year she arrived. Somewhere
around 1918, 1919 or something and then my grandmother was here, they decided to start
a hotel in Stockton known as Kishiu-kan the word Kishiu refers to the area around
Wakayama Prefecture Japan. And bought the hotel from the Quioma family and in 1921
my father went back to Japan to marry my mother and brought my mother here. Upon
my mother’s arrival she lived at the hotel Kishiu-ken that was run by my grandmother
and did some domestic work and went to English school to learn English.
After three years or so they sold the hotel, however while they had the hotel my
father visited my mother since he was farming on Union Island probably on weekends.
Then in 1924 they decided to move to Brentwood because they observed that the tomato
was being grown in Brentwood and they decided the family would become united by
moving to Brentwood and leased land from the Pirelli family. This was 1924. My
brother was born in 1922 while they had the hotel in Stockton. And then of course the
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whole family lived in one house in Brentwood while farming in Brentwood. I was born
in 1926 and while in Brentwood my father did intensive farming raising all kinds of
vegetables from cauliflower, lettuce, tomatoes, melons and various things and he sold his
produce to markets in Contra Costa County from anywhere from Antioch to Pittsburgh to
Martinez and every morning I can remember every morning he loaded up his truck of
produce and delivered them to markets like Safeway.
I started school at Brentwood Deer Valley Grammar School in Brentwood. And
went there through the fifth grade and then in 1932 the family moved to another farm in
close to a town called Knightsen which is between Brentwood and Knightsen and
because our residence was located in the Knightsen School District I had to transfer from
Brentwood Grammar School to the Knightsen Elementary school and finished up my
elementary education that is through eighth grade at the Knightsen Elementary School.
From the Knightsen Grammar School I went to Liberty Union High School in
Brentwood. Now while growing up in and attending the Knightsen Grammar School I
participated in the 4H Club and the Cub Scouts. However there were some things that
restricted my membership in these organizations, because when the Cub Scouts or the 4H
Club went out on a outing to public parks there was a place called Marsh Creek Springs
at the foot of Mt. Diablo which did not permit Asians, and consequently, I was not able to
fully participate in all the activities of the Cub Scouts or 4H Club.
Then in high school as the case with many Japanese-American families my
parents wanted me to prepare for an academic course, in other words you would prepare
to go to college so I pursued the college prep courses. Now I am going back a little bit.
My uncle who is my father’s brother came to the US in 1921 also and since the family
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owned the hotel in Stockton he went to high school in Stockton to learn English. And
played baseball for the Stockton Yamato Baseball Team but before he was able to
graduate the family moved to Brentwood so he graduated high school from the Liberty
Union High School in Brentwood. Now while in high school I participated in basketball
and track and because the high school was a very small rural high school where the total
enrollment was only about two hundred and fifty students we were all males were
recruited to participate in athletics. (laughs) And so whether we were very talented or not
we had the opportunity to play basketball and whatever, track and baseball and so on.
However, Brentwood I mean the Liberty Union High School did have a fairly good
facility in terms of gymnasium and track and so on. And so we did pretty well and got to
travel to other high schools to compete.
Of course the 1930’s were Depression years and times were very hard but I can
remember that the because of the drought and the Depression in the dust bowl area we
had a huge migration of people from Arkansas, Texas, and Kansas and so on into the San
Joaquin Valley and I can remember that our schools became impacted with new students
and so on. However when I look back it is amazing how we were able to cope with the
big increase in enrollment and nobody talked about the lack of money to accommodate
the new increased enrollment and so on.
Now as far as the family making it through the Depression a couple of very
fortunate things happened. One is that back in 1931, by accident, my father was growing
two or three different varieties of tomatoes and by accident they cross pollinated so that
by 1932 he was making his own seed from the tomato that he grew. And so when he
planted this seed they had cross pollinated he had a tremendous yield in 1932 and 1933.
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Despite the very low Depression prices because of the heavy yield which approached
forty-five or fifty tons per acre he did quite well at the bottom of the Depression. This
made it possible for him to think about organizing an association of tomato growers and
so he was able to get five other farmers to join in and they formed the Brentwood
Produce Association and started a business of growing tomatoes what we refer to as
green-wrap tomatoes to be shipped to the Eastern market. And by 1936, 1937 it became
quite a profitable business building up their reputation for the quality of the tomatoes that
were shipped to the Eastern market. And so despite the Depression and hard times the
family faired pretty well. I can remember going on outings during the Depression. We
went out to the coast and so on but joining in with the Association members and camping
out on the coast for a week at a time and also because of the business itself, the business
was able to contribute and associate with colleges like the University of California and
Stanford and so the manager of the association they would acquire tickets to football
games and so on and they always took us kids along. And in addition to that for
participating in athletics at the high school level the University of California used to
invite us to the football games to serve as ushers at the football games and so these are
some of the good memories that I have. Now, Brentwood being a small town the make
up of the population there were actually only fourteen Japanese families in the area not
just Brentwood but Byron, Knightsen, Oakley and that whole area of East Contra Costa
County. There were very few African-Americans maybe one or two but quite a lot of
Hispanics at that time. And so I grew up without facing too much prejudice except for
the like I mentioned about not being allowed to go to certain public facilities because
during the 1930’s Japan was at war with China and the United States was siding with
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China so there was some hostility with the United States. But as far as playmates and so
on most of our friends were Caucasian friends.
And although my father specialized in the growing of tomatoes during off season
he also grew celery, even grew seeds for Ferrymore Seed Company, carrot seeds and
onion seeds. He also grew a pickling cucumber for Heinz 57. And although his main
crop was green-wrap tomatoes he also grew tomatoes for the cannery which is—so it was
a very diversified farming. At one time he farmed close to four hundred acres (pause).
Then with the bombing of Pearl Harbor soon after that because of my father’s
involvement in the Japanese-American community he was Vice-President of the Japanese
Association in Stockton and also because of the immigration laws and Alien Land Laws
and so on he was not eligible for naturalization and since he was an immigrant he
remained a subject of Japan. And because of his age he was subject to the military draft
in Japan. However Japan permitted the Isseis who are the immigrant Japanese here to
work off their military obligation in some other way than going back to Japan and serving
in the Army. And so my father was involved in organizing an association in Japanese
referred to as Heimushakii-H-E-I-M-U-S-H-A-K-I-I to raise funds to help Japan in its
war effort And so because of his activities with the Japanese association which often
hosted Japanese government officials and so on he was labeled as a subversive by the
FBI and was targeted for arrest by the FBI following Pearl Harbor.
Actually he was not arrested until March 7, 1942. The reason was some red tape
was involved and the fact that we lived in Contra Costa County and his activities were in
San Joaquin County and due to my father’s activities in the community and so on there
was some—from what I heard there was some problem the FBI getting the local
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constable to cooperate and arrest my father. Of course my father was acquainted with the
local authorities and the county sheriff and so when they finally got everything together
they came and arrested my father on March 7 and that involved searching our house for
contraband. And of course right after Pearl Harbor we were required to register and turn
in all things that was considered as contraband which included rifles, swords, short wave
radios, cameras and so on which we did turn into the local constable. We never did
recover them after we returned. Now I understand that the FBI did have informers in the
region to watch out for the activities of my father and all the people who were arrested by
the FBI did receive some sort of a hearing. And at the hearing my father heard some of
the charges which were kind of ridiculous and some were comical.
In addition to farming tomatoes and row crops my father had almonds and
apricots in some orchards and in the winter time we have to prune the trees. And we had
an incinerator that was pulled behind a tractor to burn all the pruned brush. In the hearing
it was—we found out that he was accused of sending smoke signals from burning the
brush. Also in growing tomatoes we had to start the planting of the seeds early in
February still when there is a threat of frost. So we had these hot beds covered with
white muslin sheets and these beds were six feet by twenty-five feet or so and we had
many of these hot beds for starting the tomato plants then after they get to be about six
inches tall they are transplanted out into the fields. He was accused or arranging like
muslin hot beds in an arrow type figure like towards military installations which there
weren’t any around Brentwood. (laughs) Another thing is my father grew lettuce for the
Thanksgiving and holiday market and after the Thanksgiving market you harvest all the
heads of lettuce that are mature and in late December or in January the leftover he has in
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the field are plowed under or disked and one of my chores was to drive a tractor after
school hours or on weekends and I remember that in January I was disking this field of
lettuce that had already been harvested and so in the hearing he was accused, my father
was accused of sabotaging the food crop (laugh). So these are some of the things that
hysteria generates in wartime so.
Now then on February 18, 1942 President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066
which is an order to evacuate all Japanese from the West Coast. And soon after that my
father, I mentioned that my father was picked up by FBI, arrested by FBI on March the
seventh and so knowing that we had to be into prepare for being evacuated and not only
that because the government slapped a curfew on us where after December eighth we
were not permitted to go more than five miles from our home between 8 pm and 6am. Of
course that had an affect on my activities at school since I was playing basketball for the
school team I could not travel outside the five mile radius (laughs) and things like that.
So as things became very restrictive I dropped out of school and I think it was in midMarch or so to help work things out since my father had been picked up and taken away.
Actually my older brother assumed the responsibility for taking care of things now
because my mother was not too proficient in English.
Now I should go back a little bit and mention my grandparents. (pause) They as I
mentioned earlier that the family faired pretty well during the Depression years and so
my great grandparents visited Japan back in 1937 and toured Japan and they were quite
impressed with what they saw. So they decided to retire in 1940 and went back to Japan.
My mother did take a trip back to Japan for a visit in 1935. And brought back with her—
well while she was in Japan she was able to visit a temple which was being shut down so
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she bought all of the flower arranging equipment that was owned by that temple and they
were solid bronze vases. Actually during WWII when the government confiscated many
of those kinds of vases and melted them down for the war effort but so my mother had
acquired this whole set of flower arrangements and throughout most of the 1930’s my
mother commuted to Stockton to a Buddhist church to take lessons in flower arrangement
and received a certificate to teach flower arrangement. And my father was very
supportive of this kind of activity so he was—he committed the job of providing
materials for the flower arrangement classes so they were off to Stockton two or three
times a month in their activities both cultural and my father’s involvement with the
Japanese Association. (pause) Can I take a break? (laughs)
NT:
Okay.
IT:
When the FBI came to arrest my father actually because many of my father’s friends in
Stockton and elsewhere who were involved in similar activities were already arrested by
the FBI. He had expected it to happen but we didn’t know when it was going to happen
and when the FBI did come, the constable was a friend of the family and he accompanied
the FBI agent. There were two of them, one was a pretty poised, experienced agent and
the other one was a younger and somewhat short tempered. And when they arrived, we
were having lunch. And after they explained the purpose and so on, the younger agent
looked at our lunch table and of course, we were having Japanese food and so on and he
started to spout out that we would never become Americans because we had to have our
Japanese food, fish, rice and so on. At that point we had a boarder who was also farming
by himself and having lunch, who was older than my brother and I and he said, “Well
you are no different than us, with your red hair and temper, your Irish temper and you
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have your corn beef and cabbage and so on.” And so there was an exchange and so at
that point, the senior agent excused this other agent and told him to cool it. So they went
through the house, searched the things and as many Japanese-Americans had done in
reaction to what was happening, my father had taken some of the documents that he
thought would be threatening and some of the things like things that were in the family a
long time. He had stuffed them into a fifty gallon metal barrel, welded it shut and buried
it in advance. And so when this guy went through the house he didn’t find anything
because we had already turned in our contraband and so on. But never the less he was
taken away. They took him to Stockton because as I mentioned his activities were in San
Joaquin County. And he had to spend a night in the Stockton jail but the next day they
took him to the Silver Avenue Detention Center in San Francisco and when they were
transporting him from Stockton to San Francisco, they passed by my uncle’s farm and so
my father was able to ask the driver to stop and the agent to stop and let him say goodbye to his brother who was out in the field. So he was able to get out of the car and wave
to my uncle good-bye and tell the rest of the family that he was okay and so on. And so
we had that experience, then he was taken to the Silver Avenue Detention Center in San
Francisco.
Now having left the farm to my brother who was still a minor, actually he was
nineteen years old, my brother had a lot of questions as to what to do and so on and so I
had to apply for a permit to visit my father in San Francisco and he was able to obtain the
permit to visit my father and my father gave him some instructions further. But then a
couple of weeks, several weeks later we received the notice for the mass evacuation and
we had to take care of the house and the land and so forth. Suddenly a person showed up
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at the door and he offered to look after our farm in our absence. And so my brother still
not being very naïve and not knowing too much, engaged a lawyer in Brentwood to draw
up an agreement for this person (inaudible) to look after the farm in our absence and that
agreement included that he was to take care of the house and all the farm implements and
he was able to farm the land but that he would have to be sure that our taxes are paid.
Now actually because of the Alien Land Law the land was in the name of M.
Hayashi and M. Hayashi was a Nisei, American citizen who my uncle had befriended and
had played baseball with in Stockton became a very close family friend and so my father
had borrowed his name to purchase the land and do all of his business in that name which
was getting around the Land Law illegally but, (pause) and actually this M. Hayashi
became the first manager of the Railroad Produce Association my father had engaged
him to become the manager. But then in 1939, he passed away. And so Mr. Hayashi’s
wife became the legal owner of the land and so; however she was very accommodating.
Actually, her brother was the person who was the boarder in our house and was farming
on his own and the person I mentioned when the FBI came to our house.
And then with the evacuation order besides taking care of the house we had to get
rid of our car and the main things so people came by and we sold our car and household
things at very low price. For example, I recall the car was less than one year old and I
think we sold it for something like a hundred dollars. Now in trying to clean up things
before we had to leave for the camps, I was gathering up all the farm implements in other
words my father was farming and as I mentioned earlier close to four hundred acres and
we had little plots of forty, fifty acres here and there scattered out with farm implements
at various places so my brother and I were gathering them up to bring them back to the
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home place and in that process, I fell off the truck onto an implement and injured my
chest right before we had to leave for camp. And when we had to evacuate, I was not
able to carry much or anything when we entered camp.
We were first, well we had to assemble in a place called Byron, B-Y-R-O-N,
California and we had some Caucasian friends who volunteered to drive us there for the
to the assembly area where we boarded buses and were taken to Turlock Stanislaus
County Fairgrounds where the Turlock Assembly Center was located. We—that also,
my father had a colleague who was picked up by the FBI the same day that my father was
arrested and so his wife was left alone and because they had two daughters, both of them
had been sent to Japan to go to school and they were stranded in Japan. So we decided to
take Mrs. Mikami into our family for the evacuation.
Then we arrived in the Turlock Assembly Center of course we were all put into
one room with no partitions or anything and I often wondered how Mrs. Mikami felt with
not being a member of the family but we had taken her in and she must have felt lack of
privacy and so on. And then from Turlock, we were in Turlock Family Center from April
to Mid-April to the Mid-July. While in the Turlock Assembly Center I got a job
delivering mail within the camp and so I sorted mail and delivered them to certain areas
of the camp. For that, we were paid eight dollars a month. To pass the time away, we
did, engaged in athletic programs or played baseball and did some body building type of
exercise.
Now we were ordered to go to the Gila River, Arizona camp located between
Phoenix and Tucson and I can remember how hot it was because we were traveling in
Mid-July from Turlock to Arizona. And the train that we were taken in we had to go into
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the siding every time some other train came by and then you knew troop trains were
going by so I think it took us three or four days to go from Turlock to Arizona. Then we
arrived at Casa Grande, Arizona we were taken by bus to the camps. And in Gila there
are two camps. One they labeled as Canal Camp and the other was Butte Camp. When
we arrived there, the camp was not finished yet. There were many trenches so that utility
pipes and so on. And my first surprise as I peered into the trench, the first thing I saw
was a number of rattlesnakes running around in the bottom of the trench. And we were
taken to Canal Camp which is also known as Camp One. I don’t know for what reason
but we decided, we volunteered, my family volunteered to move to Camp Two, Butte
Camp after the first week. I am not sure for what reason. And I can remember that we
lived in Block 66 in Butte Camp.
While in camp in order to avoid boredom, we organized athletic teams and
competed either by blocks or by region from where we came. I remember playing
basketball with a group from my home town Brentwood. Baseball we joined a group of
people from Vacaville and Suisun. And our baseball team was labeled as Block 66
baseball team. We were able to build a baseball field and it became known as the Block
66 baseball field. One of our main competitors in baseball was the Block 28 team and the
Block 28 also built a baseball field. That team was headed by a Mr. Zenimura from
Fresno and currently a Carey Nakagawa is doing the history of the baseball teams in the
Japanese-American community. And one significant part is a story about the Zenimura
family who were outstanding baseball players.
Now in the Gila Camp at the time of evacuation, I mentioned that I dropped out of
high school in March. In March I was a junior in high school but due to the fact that I
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participated in athletics, I did not have to enroll in physical education and therefore I had
an extra period. And so I took, each year, I took a course in wood shop or home
economics as electives. And even though I was a junior I only lacked one unit from
graduating. And so in the Gila Camp I went to Butte High School just for the fall
semester. And earned enough credits which I had sent back to Liberty Union High
School and so the Liberty Union High School graduated me on schedule in 1943.
Although I had enough credits, I did not have all my English and Math requirements
which affected my admission to college. Then in April of 1943 the family decided to
join my father in a family camp in Crystal City, Texas.
Now the family camp in Crystal City, Texas came about because a number of
internees in Missoula, Montana Detention Center had called to attention to the Red Cross
that they were being forced to do hard labor and under the Geneva Treaty, internees like
those arrested by the FBI were protected from having to do hard labor and they protested
that. And so the Red Cross in Spain investigated or were chosen to investigate the
conditions of the internees in the Justice Camps. And told the US government that they
were in violation of the treaty so the US government decided to, well another factor is
that they, in the war, the US Army was able to get very few prisoners of war, Japanese
prisoners of war, whereas in the Philippines and so on, many American GI’s were taken
as prisoners. And during the war, United States was concerned about how Japan would
treat the American prisoners of war and realized that unless the United States treated
Japanese subjects here humanely that the Americans there would be tortured and so on.
So the US government decided to build a family camp and permit the unification of the
families of the internees and the internees were able to indicate whether they wanted the
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families to join them or not, so many of the internees like my father opted to have the
family join them in the camp in Crystal City. And since I was a minor, I had no choice
but to go along with my mother and go to the Crystal City camp. And the Crystal City
internment camp run by the United States Department of Justice was labeled as a camp
for dangerous enemy aliens.
In the meantime in the camps like in Gila, Manzanar and all the others, because
the Japanese-American Citizens League was negotiating with the US government to give
us the opportunity to prove our loyalty despite the fact that we were interned in these
camps. The government decided to find out who was loyal and who was not loyal and
we were given a questionnaire, a loyalty questionnaire. There were two main questions.
Questions 27 and 28 and question 27 was whether we would be willing to serve the US
Armed Forces, in the US Armed Forces. And question 28 was whether we swore our
allegiance to the United States and of course any allegiance to Japan and if we answered
both of those questions yes we were considered loyal and if we answered them no we
were considered disloyal and the United States designated the Tule Lake, California
camp the camp for disloyals and we referred to those who answered no as “no-no boys”.
And this was taking place in the Gila Camp before I left for Crystal City and I remember
that in January of 1943, my mother, my brother and I received permission to visit my
father in the Lordsburg, New Mexico Camp, internment Camp. And at that time my
father had directed my brother and I that under no circumstances should we volunteer for
the Armed Forces given the situation. Of course I was only sixteen years old and my
brother was nineteen so it applied to my brother more than it did to myself which made it
very difficult for my brother because having been put into camps, we didn’t know where
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we stood. We had gone through public school pledging allegiance to the American flag
and singing all of the national anthem and God Bless America and so on and been in the
Cub Scouts and well, we felt like we were abandoned by our country. We felt that we
were persons without a country. And when we were given this questionnaire although I
didn’t have to answer it because I left for Crystal City technically before the
questionnaires were brought to us and I wasn’t seventeen yet so I wasn’t required to
answer it until later when I turned seventeen. But we felt insulted since we were
American citizens and my brother and I were not dual citizens, we were just American
citizens and we did not have any connections to Japan. I have never been there. And the
irony is that while the war in Europe was going on, and Japan was at war with China and
so on, both my brother and I were volunteers in the community. We were kind of trained
to distinguish between American aircraft and enemy aircraft, aircraft spotting, training
and so on and we were volunteers for that so having gone through all of this, it was very
confusing to us what was going on.
Now, when my mother and I left for the Crystal City Camp also Mrs. Mikami
who was in our unit together, left for Crystal City Camp. My brother decided to stay
behind and remain in Gila because he had thoughts of leaving the camp and going back to
school. His education at the University of California was interrupted by the evacuation.
Although my brother probably would have answered yes, yes to those loyalty questions.
Because of the directive from my father, he tried to qualify his reply by saying that, you
know, unless his rights were restored and my father released from internment and so on
he could not answer the questionnaire yes, yes but he did not want to answer it no, no. So
when he applied to leave the camp, they would not release him right away. He had to go
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through a series of hearings before he was permitted to leave the Gila Camp. He did
eventually get out in late 1943 and he went to Detroit, entered Detroit Tech and worked
for the city of Detroit.
Now in the Crystal City, Texas Camp, we found that the living conditions were
much nicer than in the Gila Camp. In the Gila Camp we lived in a barrack which was
divided into four to six units and each family lived in a single unit with no partitions.
Then we had to go to the mess hall for our meals and so three times a day, we lined up at
the mess halls. And also the lavatory and bathing facilities were outside and we had to
walk about a block to our showers and rest rooms. Our mothers had to do the laundry by
hand in a washroom. (inaudible)
The fact is that in the mess hall well in the Gila Camp, the food was prepared by
evacuees, volunteer people, nobody was trained as cooks or anything but they learned
how to cook in the mess hall and so the food although was tolerable, was not to the liking
of every person at each meal. We used to refer to the food as slop suey. And as I
mentioned earlier I went to the high school for the fall semester and while I was going to
school, I took a job as time keeper for the Block 66 mess hall and in the Spring of 1943
the first lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited our camp and I had the privilege of being the time
keeper at the door and checking people were qualified to come into our mess hall and so
and meeting Mrs. Roosevelt as she inspected our mess hall.
Somehow, various block mess halls were kind of labeled I mean as good mess
halls or bad ones and so people in other blocks would sometimes try and sneak into the
better mess halls and so on and my job as time keeper was not only to keep time of the
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people working in the mess hall so that they could get their sixteen dollars a month pay,
but also to check the meal tickets to be sure the people in our block only were admitted.
Now in the camp some people worked doing other things. There was a
camouflage net factory where people worked to produce camouflage nets for the US
Army and then some people worked at security guards and police and there were each
block had a block manager and assistant block manager and then there were people who
were recreation supervisors and people who delivered food by truck to the mess hall and
delivered milk and ice to the mess hall so all the work within the camps were done by the
inmates. The governing system went through the block manager who had an association
that met with the outside administration which was the WRA-War Relocation Authority.
Now in the Crystal City Camps, we lived in little mini apartments. And we were
issued tokens which could be spent at the commissary and the canteen and so my mother
and my friends would go shopping to the commissary everyday to buy the ingredients to
cook the meals and she was able to cook our own meals in our own apartments.
Although our shower facility was outside in another building our toilet and kitchen and so
on plumbing was all inside the apartment. And in contrast to how our laundry was done
in the WRA Camps in Crystal City, we had a central laundry and once a week we would
put all our laundry bedding sheets and whatever else needed to be washed and cleaned
into a big laundry bag and we delivered it, took it to the laundry and at the end of the day
we would get it back all folded and pressed. So it is kind of ironic that American citizens
were treated worse than dangerous enemy aliens.
In the Crystal City Camp again we organized activities athletic activities to keep
ourselves occupied. We had competitive sports as well as Martial Arts and in the Crystal
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TANIGUCHI
City Camp, we had two school systems. Actually, a great many of internees in Crystal
City were Japanese language school teachers from the US mainland and Hawaii and so
the INS or Justice Department permitted creating a Japanese Language School K-12 as
well as a regular public school and since I had graduated from high school or completed
my requirements, I attended the Japanese Language School and spent two years full time
in the Japanese Language School.
NT:
(inaudible) We left off with you telling me about the two different schools at camp and
that you decided to attend the Japanese Language School and you ended up attending it
for two years.
IT:
The, as I mentioned, the Japanese Language School there were many Japanese Language
School teachers who were also Buddhist Church Ministers from Hawaii and from the
United States mainland and the Japanese Language School was instructed pretty much
like a regular school like in high school and we learned the language in various subject
matter such as Geography, History, Ethics, Mathematics and then Language itself. We
learned the grammar of the Japanese language and not only that, there was a special
course in Japanese, Chinese characters how we could convert Chinese into Japanese.
And also I had some calligraphy and so we went to the school from eight to three
everyday. Each hour a different subject matter and therefore I learned enough Japanese
to the point that later on, when I entered the US Army I qualified for the Military
Intelligence Service. So ironic that being interned, internee as a native (inaudible) to
learn the language there and then work for the United States Military Intelligence.
Getting back to the Crystal City Camp, I also participated in Judo and Sumo. I
did injure myself in a Sumo tournament and therefore, I did stop at one point. Now also
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TANIGUCHI
in the Crystal City Camp we had a medical doctor who was very talented as a surgeon as
well and so at the camp hospital medical services were very good. We had a number of
registered nurses in the camp and the doctors and so we received very good medical and
dental treatment there. Now with regard to my stay in the camp, the fact that my father
having been interned by the FBI, he was intent on repatriating to Japan because having
been treated as he was, not eligible for naturalization, Alien Land laws and so on and had
lost everything he had developed economically, he hell-bound to be repatriated.
During WWII there were two exchanges that took place, the first one in 1942 and
the second one in 1943. The exchange took place by way of the Swedish Ship
(inaudible) and the way the exchange took place is if your (inaudible) took people from
New York to India and then a Japanese ship met the (inaudible) in India and the exchange
took place there. I mentioned earlier that a Mrs. Mikami we took in as part of our family,
well she and her husband repatriated to Japan on the first exchange in 1942 and make that
1943, the second exchange I think it was September 1943.
NT:
Did she remarry?
IT:
No she and her husband. She joined her husband in Crystal City and then went to Japan.
Now as I mentioned earlier in the Gila Camp, people in the Gila Camp had to answer to
the loyalty questionnaire and my brother who remained in Gila had to answer to those
loyalty questionnaires and because my father was so adamant of him not serving in the
US Army while he was interned, and under the circumstances where we lost everything
in the evacuation, he could not answer yes, yes to the questions 27 and 28 and so he
refused to answer so they automatically made him a no, no. And because of that he had
difficulty getting security clearance to leave the Gila Camp and had to go through a series
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TANIGUCHI
of hearings and eventually he was permitted to leave the Gila Camp and went to Detroit,
Michigan. And in Detroit he entered Detroit Tech and worked for the city of Detroit. In
the meantime he became very concerned for my status in Crystal City where my father
was volunteering to be repatriated. And so he visited Crystal City Camp with the
intention of getting permission to take me out of the Crystal City Camp and therefore he
talked to the director of the camp, Mr. Rourke, and as he made these plans, he was in
conflict with my father and the word got out about what my brother was trying to do and
so my father’s friends in the camp called a meeting and called my brother on the red
carpet to try and help my father. They told my brother that he was disloyal to his father
and so on and put pressure on my brother however my brother felt that there was no place
for us in Japan since we had never been there, we were American citizens. Eventually, as
the war progressed, my father’s position softened and my brother was able to get me
released from the Crystal City Camp and I joined my brother in Detroit in August of 1945
just before the very beginning of August just before the end of the war.
I enrolled at Wayne University in Detroit and completed one semester. As the
war ended, the government agreed to release my father and so we waited until the end of
my semester at Wayne University and in February of 1945, February of 1946 my brother
and I drove to Crystal City, Texas to get my parents released from the camp. And while
we were in Crystal City, Texas my father had to start thinking about what he was going to
do. We still had the property, forty acres in Brentwood, California; however my father
remembered that in shipping tomatoes to the Eastern market, there were some years
which the lower Rio Grande Valley tomatoes competed in the Eastern market so he
wanted to investigate the possibilities in the lower Rio Grande Valley. So while we were
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TANIGUCHI
visiting Crystal City waiting for my parents release from the camp, my brother drove my
father down to San Benito, Texas to scout out farming possibilities there. While there my
father met a number of other Japanese-Americans who were farming there and they
invited my father to move down there. However, we first because of the farm in
Brentwood my father decided to go back to Brentwood and we helped him pack and put
them on the train to Los Angeles and my brother and I drove to Los Angeles where we
met my parents there. In Los Angeles we had friends and so we met at our friend’s house
in Los Angeles. These friends were from the same province in Japan.
NT:
What was that?
IT:
Wakayama. Then after staying there for a couple of days, we went on back to
Brentwood. Now we had a little difficulty getting back into our house in Brentwood
because during the war, there was a housing shortage and due to that, you could not evict
anybody and then the person who agreed to look after our house and the farm, refused to
move out and he claimed that he had made some improvements in our absence and
therefore unless we paid him for the improvements, he was not going to move out. So
we had to pay cash and the thing is, in the agreement the lawyer of course didn’t
understand either and he had indicated that the agreement would be for the duration of
the war. Although the war technically ended in August of 1945, the peace treaty was not
signed until 1947 and so there was a question of the term, duration of the war. And so
Mr. (inaudible) held us to that and he said he would not move out unless we paid cash up
front. That embittered my brother very much but nevertheless, we moved back into our
house and my father farmed for a year for the 1946 season.
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TANIGUCHI
However, he felt very uncomfortable. He felt like he was not welcome back in
that he after his hearing, he became aware of who the informers were and so not only that
there was a labor shortage and he had difficult time the first year farming back in
Brentwood. And therefore his business to the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas where
the people there were so hospitable and inviting and so on, he decided he was just going
to pick up and move to Texas. In the meantime I had left Wayne University and
returned to Brentwood and since I left camp I was no longer classified 4C by the selective
service and reclassified as 1A and received a notice for a physical exam. But then my
future was very uncertain. My father told me that there was no way he could finance my
going to college and he was very uncertain about the future and so I thought about it and
at that time the Army was recruiting heavily offering the GI Bill and so I decided that I
would volunteer for three years and get four years of GI Bill and so that is what I did.
I volunteered and at that time when you volunteered, you were able to chose your
service and so I chose the Quarter Master Corps instead of the infantry and was inducted
at Camp Beale, California and assigned to Fort Lee or Camp Lee, Virginia for my basic
training. And then after I finished my basic training in July of 1946 I was assigned to the
Adjutant General School in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. (pause) There I was assigned to
the Postal Unit where we were trained to become mail clerks. And while I was in Fort
Oglethorpe, Georgia, I wired through our company commander about the Military
Intelligence Service since I had become bilingual and was recommended by the company
commander. I finished my Postal Course in Fort Oglethorpe and then I received notice
that I was accepted to the MIS, Military Intelligence Service and therefore I was sent to
Monterey, California to the Army Language School. When I arrived in Monterey, I was
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TANIGUCHI
cycled into an existing language class, Japanese language class that was to graduate in
November of that year and so I attended this Japanese language class for about three
months, September, October, November and received a certificate of graduation from the
language class in Monterey and was promoted from private to Tech Three Sergeant and
then I was given a furlough and on my furlough because my father had decided to move
to Texas and in the meantime my brother had been readmitted to the University of
California and it was during his Christmas break and my furlough that we were both able
to help my father move to Texas from Brentwood.
We loaded all his farm equipment into a rented box car and shipped it off to Texas
and my brother and my mother and my father we drove the truck and the car to Texas.
When we arrived in San Benito, Texas the people who my father had met on his visit
there had arranged for a vacant house although it was vacant because it was abandoned,
no windows, and really broken down. So we had to board up the windows and so on to
where my parents moved in and we had two days in which to make it like a camp and
livable and it was very cold at that time, in fact it snowed while we were there. But
nevertheless, they got moved in. My brother and I returned to California and I had to go
back to Monterey, the city of Monterey and my brother had to go back to University of
California.
And somehow despite the hardship my mother survived and they were able to
settle in Texas. People in Texas were very hospitable and very kind to my parents and
were able to establish themselves. In the meantime I was sent overseas to Japan and the
occupation of Japan as an interpreter-translator-interrogator. And I spent two years in
Japan interrogating Japanese prisoners who were returning from Siberia in the Soviet
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TANIGUCHI
Union. As you know the Soviet Union entered the WW, the WWII just the last couple of
weeks of the war and they took hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers as prisoners
in the surrender and they took them, they assigned them to labor battalions all over the
Soviet Union and worked them in factories and the construction of railroads
reconstruction from the war that is after Hitler’s Army had ravaged the European part of
the Soviet Union and much reconstruction had to be done. So the Japanese soldiers were
recruited into labor battalions and forced to do hard labor in the reconstruction as well as
some of the German soldiers. But as they became ill and could not work anymore they
were returned, repatriated into Japan. And so we were assigned to interrogate these
people for the atrocities committed by these Russians however while we were doing that
Winston Churchill coined the term Iron Curtain and we got involved in a cold war and
although the United States and the Soviet Union were allies during WWII, we became
enemies and so we were sent back to Tokyo from the field for a refresher course. And
the refresher course was to give us a new set of vocabulary because our assignment
changed. While we were interrogating to identify atrocities committed by the Soviet
Union, we now had to interrogate to identify targets to bomb in case a hot war was to
break out and that was our assignment.
I was assigned to Masore, Japan from April 1947 to November 1947 returned to
Tokyo for December and January and was sent to Hakodate Hokkaido in February of
1948 where we continued interrogating Japanese prisoners. While assigned to Hakodate
I had—well we were in assigned to temporary duty in a detachment and while after the
first two months in Hakodate the first sergeant or the administrator of our detachment
was reassigned to a commission and as I was a ranking non-commissioned officer, I was
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TANIGUCHI
asked to become the administrator or first sergeant of that detachment. So I did some
administrative work as well as interrogation.
Then in February of 1949 my three year term was up and although I enlisted in
April of 1946 for a three year term because well I was recruited and offered a
commission to sign up for another term. However since I refused that, I was released at
the convenience of the government in February of 1949 and discharged. Of course, there
were two factors that influenced my decision not to sign up for another term because I
originally entered the Army so I could get the GI Bill and go back to college. But in the
interrogation we were very much aware of the tension that was built up between North
Korea and South Korea and through our interrogation those of us that were doing the
interrogating were convinced that something was going to happen between North Korea
and South Korea and given that situation wanting to go back to school and although when
I was discharged, they, I was pressured to sign up for the reserves. But when I thought
about it if war should break out then being in the reserve I knew I would be called back
and so I did not sign up for the reserves.
NT:
Good decision.
IT:
So I got discharged in February of 1949 at Fort Lewis, Washington, received my
transportation money and mustering out pay and I returned, well I joined my parents in
Texas, San Benito, Texas. And I immediately applied for admission to the University of
Houston. I debated between the University of Texas and the University of Houston but
then I opted for the University of Houston because of the booming conditions in Houston,
the oil industry and the job opportunities that were there since I had started as an
engineering major in Wayne and the job opportunities would be better in Houston. So I
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TANIGUCHI
began at the University of Houston in Sept. 1949. And at the time over half of the
students at—
(end of first tape)
IT:
I was kind of worried about how I would do studying in college again after the break
three years in the Army and so on. However things went pretty well but I found the
engineering curriculum very boring. But I did get my mathematics and science courses
in as an engineering major and after the first semester at the University of Houston, I
decided to change my major and went into economics. And I found out that the chairman
of the economics department took a liking to me and became very helpful and I finished
the first year the first semester the fall semester in engineering and the spring semester in
economics. After taking that one course in economics the beginning of the fall semester
of 1950, the chairman of the department asked me to grade papers, if I’d be willing to
grade papers, and I said I would and so I took on that chore and so he advised me
throughout the rest of my college bachelor’s degree. (pause) I graduated from the
University of Houston in 1952 which is three years after going there and received the
Wall Street Journal Student Achievement Award and my the chairman of the department
who became my advisor helped me into my master’s degree. And gave me a research
assistanceship to work on the master’s degree and this coupled with my GI Bill stipend
and the research assistanceship, I felt quite comfortable working on my master’s degree.
I completed my masters in 1954; also during the summers I worked as a research
associate in the Bureau of Business Research and so I had a degree in Economics with an
emphasis in statistics. So upon receiving my master’s degree, I took a job with Anderson
Clayton and Company as a statistical analyst and worked at Anderson Clayton for two
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TANIGUCHI
years. And then I was offered a part-time teaching position in the University of Houston
night school in statistics. So besides working at Anderson Clayton, I was teaching
statistics in the evenings at the University of Houston. All the time, all the time I was
working for Anderson Clayton, my economics department advisor continued to push me
towards going back to graduate school and along with the other professors in the
economics department, they guaranteed me a teaching assistant ship at the University of
Texas if I were to go back to graduate school. Because one of the professors was from
the University of Texas and had gone to the University of Houston to teach and so he
escorted me to the Austin Campus and showed me around and introduced me to the
professors of economics at the University of Texas.
Now I mentioned earlier how Texas people were very hospitable and so on and I
feel very fortunate that all these people took an interest in me and helped me out. Just on
Monday night, here at the California State University at Fresno, there was a program
showing a video called the “Children of the Camps”. And that video showed individuals
telling their story about their growing up after leaving the camps and they sounded
somewhat embittered by that camp experience. However, in my case, having come out
of the camp and being helped by so many people, I felt very fortunate and changed the
whole plan of my life from being an engineer to going into academia and so on.
Now at the University of Texas, being a teaching assistant, I taught two classes
and each semester took a nine unit load in classes with the graduate program. I finished
my course requirements in 1959 and then—then I was offered an electorship to teach
statistics in the economics department for the 1959-1960 economic year because I had
my graduate work with an emphasis and major in economics and minor in statistics.
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TANIGUCHI
Beginning of the fall of 1960 I took a job as assistant professor at the University of
Missouri, but I had not completed my Ph.D and was still working on my dissertation.
Now going back onto my personal life when I pointed out that when we took my
parents out of the Crystal City Camp and went to Los Angeles and stayed with friends in
Los Angeles, I got married in 1960 right after accepting a job with the University of
Missouri; it was during the summer of 1960. My wife Barbara was from the family of
the friend we stayed with in Los Angeles going from Crystal City back to Brentwood.
NT:
Did you know her before you went to Los Angeles that time or was that the first you met
her?
IT:
No the family knew her in fact we visited that family in 1932 but Barbara was not born
yet. I was a child just six years old. We went to the 1932 Olympic Games in Los
Angeles and visited with the family then.
NT:
So you actually met Barbara right after the war?
IT:
Yes.
NT:
How did this romance develop? Did you write letters? Did you go see her again? Did
she come to Texas?
IT:
Well, actually while I was in the Army I was dating her sister. But when I got back from
the Army, I was committed to finishing my college and so we called it off. And while I
was traveling back and forth between California and Texas and so on, I always visited
them in Los Angeles and that’s how I met Barbara.
NT:
Now you didn’t talk very much about traveling back and forth between California and
Texas. Once you moved your family out to Texas, what kept pulling you back to
California?
30
IT:
TANIGUCHI
Well, first of all, they had, after my parents moved to Texas and go back to Monterey and
we all stopped in Los Angeles and then when I got discharged from the Army before I
moved to Washington going back to Texas, I stopped in Los Angeles and then in 1949
after I went back to Texas, I went back to San Francisco to my brother’s wedding and
then while I was in college, I came back to California for a visit.
NT:
What was the main reason? Was it your brother? Was it Barbara? Was it just you
missed California or was it a combination?
IT:
No, all my friends were in California, camp friends and so on, however when I visited
California, it was typical to visit my friends. You know, they had returned from camp
and so they were busy reestablishing themselves so some of them were holding down two
and three jobs. And so then they had no time to visit so I always look back and think of
those people who came back here to California stayed here in California and those of us
who settled outside of California, it seemed like I was looking in the inside from the
outside. And I felt that the Japanese-Americans who stayed in California had a very
competitive environment even to go to college. Had I gone to the University of
California, I think I would have faced a lot of stiff competition. But at the University of
Houston, as I pointed out, the chairman of the department and the professors all pushed
me along like you know so I had, as a student, I had friends among the faculty, since I
had gone to the Army I was not no eighteen year old or nineteen year old. And so there
were faculty members who were just one or two years older than I and so it was quite a
different experience for me in Texas than many of my friends who came back to
California.
NT:
How did you and Barbara decide to get married? What pushed the process along?
31
IT:
TANIGUCHI
Well I had finished my course work at the University of Texas and I think we were ready.
(laughs) It was not a long courtship actually. It was about a year. I came here in 1959,
well actually when I dated her sister, I was still in the Army and her sister had some—she
was going to UCLA and she had an engagement and then I visited Los Angeles from
Monterey when I was in the army, I took Barbara with me to a movie and so after her
sister and I broke off, (inaudible) we didn’t get together until 1959 when I was a student
at (inaudible) school and so one year, after that we got married.
NT:
Where did you get married?
IT:
In Los Angeles.
NT:
Did your family come out from Texas and is your brother still in San Francisco and did
he come down too?
IT:
No, all my family was in Texas.
NT:
Oh your brother too?
IT:
And my parents came.
NT:
And Barbara’s whole family was in Los Angeles?
IT:
Yes, in fact her whole family is still in Los Angeles. She is the only one that left.
NT:
Okay.
IT:
And my brother after graduating from the University of California and getting married
and after working two years in the Bay Area, he is an architect, was an architect, moved
to Texas because my father kept pushing him and his family because you know how the
oldest son has to. And my brother moved to Texas, opened his practice in Arlington,
Texas while he was engaged in this practice, I went to Austin, University of Texas and I
met somehow I don’t recall the circumstance, but I met an architect from the architect
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TANIGUCHI
department at the University of Texas. And then my brother remembered that his former
professor had moved from University of California to the University of Texas to take
over the architect program there. And so somehow I got my brother back in contact with
the architect department at the University of Texas. And right after I left the University
of Texas, the University of Texas offered my brother a teaching job in architecture and in
the second year as I said the University of Texas architecture they liked him and he
became Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Texas. And also he
received a design award from the Texas Institute of Architecture for some of his work
that he did in lower (inaudible). But then in the 1960’s during the student movement my
brother (inaudible) design architect and the University of Texas is a very football-minded
school and they, the Board of Regents decided to expand the stadium of the University of
Texas and in order to do that, they had to cut down some oak trees on the creek alongside
the stadium and my brother was dean at the time and his students climbed up on the oak
trees to prevent the booms from cutting down the trees so they got into Life Magazine.
(laughs).
And then the University, the State of Texas was semi-dry state and so they had
these private clubs so to serve alcohol you had to go to a private club. Well my brother
became a member you know as dean and he entertained people and so he joined the
private clubs and the Chairman of the Board of Regents was also in the same club and in
the club, they often had their conflicts but the person that hired my brother as dean was
the President of the University was a close friend and also a close friend of my brother
was the Dean of the Law School of the University of Texas. And in that turmoil period,
when all this took place, the president got fired and the law school dean was under
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TANIGUCHI
pressure, but when the President got fired then he got hired on as President of the Rice
University in Houston. Because of my brother’s confrontations with the regents and club
and so on, he along with the president got released so my brother went with the president
to Rice and became head of the architect department at Rice.
NT:
Meanwhile you were at the University of Missouri, newly married to Barbara?
IT:
Well no I was back in Fresno, here in Fresno. I came here in 1963.
NT:
Oh, why did you leave Missouri? Or what made you?
IT:
Well Barbara being a native Californian and didn’t adjust too well to the Midwestern
market and I had not finished my dissertation and so I was under pressure to get that done
if I would have stayed in Missouri. And a colleague of mine from the graduate school in
Texas had came here one year before I did, and we were very close friends and he is my
neighbor back here now, and he continued to a, talked me into coming to Fresno State.
And so I was able to come to Fresno State from inside connections you know. Not only
that but the Chairman of the Economic Department at the University of Texas was a close
friend of the Chairman here and they both belonged to the Shokinbach Foundation out of
New York and so to that connections and so on, it was easy to come to Fresno State and
because Barbara wanted to get out of Missouri, I had applied to University, I mean
Portland State University in Fresno. I did not apply to the Bay Area or Los Angeles
because under our system, you had the salary schedule, and you get paid the same
whether you are here or there.
NT:
Right.
IT:
And the cost of living here is much less so it’s a lot more money to be here than it is to be
in the Bay Area. So I came to Fresno.
34
TANIGUCHI
NT:
I see. Were you still ABD?
IT:
ABD yeah. I was ABD until 1970 and teaching twelve units and so on and kind of
delayed my finishing up. I did while I was in Austin I applied to the Ford Foundation for
a grant to go to Japan to finish my research but circumstances didn’t come out right, in
other words, in applying for (inaudible) in Chicago, it was winter time and snow and so
on my flight got grounded in Oklahoma City, and I arrived three hours before my
interview in Chicago and I had, although I had a reservation at the hotel, I arrived in
Chicago at 5AM and my interview was at 8:30 AM and so I had to go to my interview
without shaving. Well that probably didn’t apply into it anyway, so I did not get my
grant to go to Japan so I had to finish up my research with whatever I could get here.
And then in 1975 I did take a sabbatical to complete my research and went to Japan. And
while I was at the University of Houston there was several Japanese students from Japan
and one of the students was a descendant of the major oligarchy that I was including in
my Ph.D dissertation and we became friends and we are still in contact but since her
family was a political family and a member of the (inaudible) party and so she had many
connections and so when I went to Japan to do my research in 1975, she introduced me to
the minister of telecommunications and the minister of finance and when I told her what I
was looking for in (inaudible), I didn’t have to go to a library and do my research the
minister handed me a package of materials. (laughs)
NT:
You need to explain how you and your father came to meet with the Crown Prince? Was
that the same trip? How did all that come about?
IT:
Well I think we should—
NT:
Stop for a minute?
35
TANIGUCHI
IT:
Stop for a minute.
NT:
Okay. All right.
IT:
My father retired from farming in 1967 and when he retired, my brother was living in
Austin, Texas and through his practice and connection at the University, he became
involved in the city and was the architect for the Town Lake Project in Austin which is
the Colorado River has a low level dam and so the landscaping and designing for the use
of that Town Lake was designed by my brother and he came to know the city people
quite a bit.
And then my father retired in 1967 and moved to Austin because my brother’s
family was there and then in the retirement being so active all his life he didn’t have
much to do. So my brother arranged for him to landscape a Japanese garden in the city
park known as Zoka Park and my father proposed that he would landscape and do the
garden for no cost to the city and no out of pocket cost to the city. What he did is the city
has a motor pool for equipment and so on and a casual labor pool. And so all he had to
do was requisition the use of bulldozers or skip loaders or whatever from the city pool
and the location is on the side of a hill and so he landscaped the Japanese garden which
included a stream and a pond and so on and became part of the project of the Greater
Austin Garden Club Project. And because Lady Bird Johnson was a member of the
Garden Club and when the garden was finished, it became one of the city attractions. In
addition to the garden itself, right alongside of the Colorado River he built a lotus pond
and through his connection in Japan, he was able to obtain lotus rhizomes that were given
to the Emperor as diplomatic gifts as with the lotus plant is a symbol of peace in Asia and
so the lotus plants came from the Palace collection of plants. Currently-well the garden
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TANIGUCHI
in Zoka Park is named Taniguchi Oriental Gardens, and landscaped completely out of
native plants. Also my father had problems planting cherry trees in the garden because
the cherry trees that he planted were susceptible to disease and insects so my father found
a native plant that is in the cherry family and he grafted Japanese flowering cherries to
the native root stock and that turned out pretty well and so they have cherry trees that
blossom in the springtime in the Japanese garden. And so the garden club named the
garden Taniguchi Oriental Garden and it has become an attraction to visitors to Austin
and so on.
But in 1975 when I got my sabbatical to go to Japan, I invited my father to go
with us and I took my whole family, and my father to Japan so at that time Lady Bird
Johnson asked my father to deliver a letter of thank you for the lotus plants to the Crown
Prince and so when we were in Japan, we got an appointment and had an audience with
the Crown Prince and Princess. And at that time I was a Vice-President of Research and
Services for National JACL and so the Crown Prince became very interested and wanted
to know all about how the Japanese-Americans were fairing here in the United States and
he had many questions for me. We thought maybe we would get five or ten minutes with
the Crown Prince but we ended up about an hour with the Crown Prince. And they
served us tea and sembei cookies and so on and offered my father cigarettes from the
Palace although my father really didn’t smoke. (laughs) So it was a very interesting visit
there.
NT:
What did your father have to say about that interview or about the visit or about Japan?
IT:
Oh he was very surprised that we were there with the Prince for so long a period. He
thought we would have about five or ten minutes and he felt the Prince and Princess were
37
TANIGUCHI
very gracious. They didn’t seek then they kind of put us at ease and so on and of course
the secretary that accompanied the Crown Prince was very accommodating. I was kind
of at first a little uneasy, the way things that are done at that level are so formalized so it
wasn’t that bad then.
NT:
Was your mother on the trip as well?
IT:
No, she was not able to go because of her health.
NT:
What did you do for the remainder of the trip and how long were you there?
IT:
We were there three months and in order to make it possible to stay that long if we had to
stay in hotels all that time it would have been very expensive but I had a cousin in Osaka
who was working for Kanebo Cosmetics but he was quartered in Tokyo and his home
was in Osaka. In Japan if you rent out your house or anything, you cannot evict them so
rather than not having a place to go back to by renting it out, he just left it vacant so he
invited us to stay at his house in Osaka, well actually it was a she, my cousin she and her
husband. I had met them back when I was in the occupation of Japan and I had been in
contact with them at that time so we had a whole house to ourselves in Osaka and stayed
there. And also when we were in Tokyo, we had a family that I mean, the son visited the
US and we were the host family here in Fresno and so they invited us, they had enough
apartment project that they lent out and at that time they had one vacant apartment so
they invited us to stay there while we were in Tokyo for three weeks. Plus the fact that
my friend that I had from being at the University of Houston who was in—whose family
is in politics and so on, she put us up at the Pacific Hotel in Tokyo for five days. And so
on that trip, having met a couple of the ministers of the cabinet and so on it was quite an
interesting trip to Japan. Other than that we kind of—outside of that we kind of acted
38
TANIGUCHI
like tourists and went sight seeing. We were guests of my friend in Hakone. We visited
Kyoto many times and saw many temples and we went to Nara, we went to Nikko and so
and then our two boys we had to take them out of school since we left here in early April.
And then we were able to work it out with the school principal that if they were to write a
report on their trip to Japan, that would suffice to make up for the time they were out.
One thing that we regretted that when we were in Japan they are so strict in the
schools that we were not able to visit schools. They will not allow strangers to visit the
schools. However we had a family friend who owned the private school in Misaka so we
were taken on a private tour of the school in Misaka. And also when I was at the
University of Missouri there was a visiting professor from Osaka Agricultural College at
the University of Missouri and we were their guests for a couple of days in Misaka.
NT:
How did your father become a Nuclear Peace Activist?
IT:
Because of the, all that he read about the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki of course he
read it all in Japanese and although my father was not too highly educated, being a high
school, he only graduated from high school, but it seems that the Isseis who finished high
school in Japan during the Meiji period really had intensive education. They had a lot of
(inaudible) because many of them had a lot of top talent and somehow he became
interested in Rousseau’s social contract theory and influenced his thinking about peace
and he vowed that he wanted to go on a pilgrimage in Japan to advocate for peace but he
never did accomplish that. Financially, he was not able to do it himself but he wrote
many papers in Japanese and spread it among his friends. But then, my mother, while in
Texas, took an interest in poetry and became a student of poetry through correspondence
with a well known poet in Japan and she received a ranking among poets when she
39
TANIGUCHI
finished her program. And so because my mother kept writing these poems and
publishing them in the Poetry Magazine Monthly, my father would read them and he
became interested in writing poetry also. And he wrote the, what we call Kanka’s it is a
loose form of Haiku and so he wrote poems advocating peace and also in Texas, the
churches like the Baptist Church every year would come around trying to raise funds and
would come to the farmers and ask them to donate money and so my father always used
to get into conversations with these ministers that came around and asking for donations
about the horrors of a nuclear war and all that and so although my father was not that
proficient in English, I mean he had his English was broken and he mixed it with
Japanese and some Spanish, Mexican Spanish, but he managed to communicate with the
people and I guess he enjoyed talking to the different people about his mission of peace.
Also I mentioned earlier how my mother had received a certificate to teach
Ikebana and because of mother, my father used to take my mother to the Ikebana classes
and provided all the raw materials for these classes and so on and he also became a
student of the Ikebana and he did mainly the large ones cutting down a tree and so on
rather than just cut flowers and so on. And so together my father and my mother used to
do all the flower arrangements for President Johnson at his receptions in Austin at the
Convention Center and so on and my mother had all the equipment, big equipment of
Ikebana and I have some of them here now. So they became pretty close friends with the
Johnsons. And when they got older and their activities became restricted, they moved
into the Rebecca Baines Johnson Senior Housing Project.
NT:
What happened to your mother’s bronze vases during WWII, the ones that she had gotten
from the temple in Japan?
40
IT:
TANIGUCHI
We stored those. We managed to get that back because I guess people didn’t know what
to do with them. (laughs)
NT:
So you stored them in Brentwood?
IT:
Yes.
NT:
What happened to the fifty-five gallon drum?
IT:
We never found. We were never able to reclaim that. My father buried it somewhere
and he thought he knew where he buried it, but we dug everywhere and couldn’t find it.
NT:
So it’s probably still there?
IT:
Could be there.
NT:
When did your parents pass away?
IT:
My mother passed away in 1983 and my father in 1993.
NT:
Were they both in Texas?
IT:
Both in Texas, they are both buried in Austin and so I have two nephews in Austin. The
older one took over my brother’s architectural practice and doing quite well and the
younger one is an attorney in private practice.
NT:
What were your parent’s full names?
IT:
My mother was Sadayo- S-A-D-A-Y-O and my father was Isanu, I-S-A-N-U.
NT:
And your mother’s family name?
IT:
Maiden name was Miyagi-M-I-Y-A-G-I.
NT:
And they were both from Wakayama?
IT:
Wakayama.
NT:
Tell me a little bit about your involvement in the JACL? How did you get started and
how did you get to be the Vice-President?
41
IT:
TANIGUCHI
Okay I first joined JACL with the St. Louis chapter when I was with the University of
Missouri and since Columbia, Missouri is about a hundred and twenty miles from St.
Louis, I only got—I was only able to participate in social functions but I was a member
there and then when I came to Fresno I transferred my membership to the Fresno
Chapter. And I learned more about what JACL was doing and since it is a civil rights
organization, when I was in Texas and Houston and in Austin I got involved in politics
and was with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. I participated in precinct and
county conventions and so on and was very—became pretty much involved in the civil
rights movement and when I was at the University of Missouri, I participated in a sit-in at
the restaurant and things like that. And so when I came to Fresno, I was already aware of
some of the things the JACL was working on and the first thing I was aware that the
JACL was very involved in the McCarran Immigration Act and getting concessions on
immigration and naturalization rights and so on and then in the 1960’s began a movement
to, well first there was anti-miscegenation at the court and rescinding of the Alien Land
Laws and so that’s the reason why I got more and more involved into JACL and I guess it
was about 1968 or 1969 when I first became a member of the Fresno Chapter board and
as a member of the Fresno Chapter board and also—
(tape goes dead)
NT:
You were telling me about getting involved on the Fresno Board of the JACL.
IT:
I think it was about 1968 or 1969 I became a member of the Fresno JACL Chapter Board
and with my connections at the University, the Central District, the Central California
District Council has an annual installation banquet and it used to be a two day thing. We
used to get together on Friday evening and have a business meeting where the officers for
42
TANIGUCHI
the new year would be elected and then we’d spend the Saturday in workshops and
actually in 1969 I, because of two Chinese-Americans girls at the University came to me
and wanted to know why we couldn’t start an Asian-American studies program and they
had gone to the administration first but they apparently hit a stone wall. And so they
came to me and asked how we might start it. And so I proposed that because we had a
program at the University known as Experimental Studies where faculty members can
test out courses and if there is a demand for it, we can put it into the regular curriculum. I
proposed that we start a class in Asian-American studies under the Experimental College
and I volunteered to teach the first Asian-American studies class and since my
department was willing to let me teach one course, that’s what we did and got an
enrollment of sixty students in the one class and so the administration agreed to put it into
the schedule and I was able to start the Asian-American studies program. And I went to
the Dean and he gave me authorization to go out and hire a full time person for the next
year. And in conjunction with teaching the Asian-American studies class, I proposed that
at these Central California District Council workshop, that we should bring in some
speakers and so that is what I arranged to do. We had workshops on the Identity
Question and some of the JACL issues on civil rights.
And at about the same time, Caesar Chavez was starting the United Farm Workers
Union here and because most of the members of the JACL in the Central Valley are
farmers, there was a lot of controversy between Caesar Chavez Union and the farmers.
So we organized workshops on those lines. And we got—I got more and more involved
in bringing to this rural community, what is going on in the urban centers like Los
Angeles and Bay Area with regard to civil rights and so on and started bringing speakers
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TANIGUCHI
in from that area. And what I did with the authority to hire a full time person in AsianAmerican studies, I hired a Bill Tsugi, who had a Master’s Degree from Los Angeles
State, California State University of Los Angeles and he had his contacts with people in
the Los Angeles area so we were able to get some speakers. And from the Bay Area we
had people like Edison Uno to come in. And at that time Edison Uno was proposing the
repeal of Title Two of the Internal Securities Act of 1950 which was put there by Joe
McCarthy. Now on the Title Two of that law empowered the government or the
President to intern subversives and so on.
NT:
How successful was he?
IT:
We were successful in the mid 1970’s. The Title Two of the Internal Securities Act of
1950 was repealed and signed by President Ford. Another project of the JACL in the
1970’s was to get Executive Order 9066 rescinded. And another project of JACL was
that we felt that Iva Tagori, the person we labeled as Tokyo Rose, was not guilty as
charged and so we had a project to get her pardoned.
NT:
Were all of these successful?
IT:
All of these were successful.
NT:
What was your personal role in all three of these? The Title Two, the rescinding of 9066
and the Iva Tagori case?
IT:
They were to educate the people of the local areas of these were National JACL Projects
and the chapters and districts were trying to educate the people and to lobby local
politicians and the community people to give us support on these projects. And that is
what we do is use the JACL network for such things.
44
NT:
TANIGUCHI
Coming out of the late sixties with the workshops between the Chavez United Farm
Workers and the Nisei farmers, how close was your relationship, your personal
relationship with for example the Nisei Farmers League? Did you have any direct
contact with the League or was it individuals or what?
IT:
With individuals because they were JACL members and actually when I first came to
Fresno in 19—I came here in 1963, in 1964 was an election year and having been active
in the Democratic Party in Texas, however the majority of Nisei here are registered
Republicans. And when the Caesar Chavez started the union movement I suggested, well
the JACL, the President of the Chapter used to have a election orientation night in which
we reviewed the propositions and the candidates and gave presentations on both sides
because JACL being non-profit, cannot be partisan and we used to have those programs.
And at that time I remember telling the people that to deal with union organizations, the
farmers need to organize also. And before that you know the farmers used to complain
about the governments agricultural policy and they complained about how prices were
not high enough and wages were going up too fast and all these types of things. And
being an economist, I advised them they need to organize as a farmers association of
some kind but they didn’t believe in that. Farmers are independent (laughs) individuals.
But when Caesar Chavez organized the union, it forced them to form the Nisei Farmer’s
League.
NT:
Oh, what was their immediate purpose when they formed the Nisei Farmer’s League?
IT:
To counteract I mean the UFW I mean although they were not recognized by the
(inaudible) at that time, they individual members of the organization engaged in some
violence like vandalism on the farms, damaging equipment of the farmers and things like
45
TANIGUCHI
that and consequently they organized, they had to organize to help each other out. In fact
I think there were some farmers who patrolled the farms at night to watch out for any
vandalism and so on. And in order to do that, they had to organize to see who is on duty
and this and that.
NT:
Were the Nisei also organizing with farmers of other ethnic backgrounds at this time?
IT:
Yes, when the Nisei farmers got organized, other farmers in the region joined in and in
fact now, I think there are very few Japanese in the organization. Most of them are nonJapanese because the Sanseis have not taken over the farms.
NT:
Is it still called the Nisei Farmer’s League?
IT:
I—it is still there. There is an office here but there is a Stockton branch of the Nisei
Farmer’s League also.
NT:
Populated by a lot of other?
IT:
A lot of other people and they have an annual banquet in February, I think.
NT:
How did this kind of activity helping the farmer or encouraging the farmers to organize in
the face of the farm worker pressure, how did that square in your own mind with your
civil rights activities back in Missouri and Texas?
IT:
Okay, now in the late 1960’s when the college campuses or students became very active,
the young people and urban tenors were very sympathetic with the union. And actually
the JACL hired some youth into their regional offices like in Los Angeles. And they, I
don’t know whether you heard of the name Warren Furutani, he became—he was
employed by the Los Angeles Pacific Southwest District office, regional office and
because he was sympathetic, he had a banner of the United Farm Workers on his office
wall, as a result the Central California District Council here called him on the carpet and
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TANIGUCHI
tried to educate him on some of the problems some of the JACL members were farmers
were having. And so we had several meetings here by bringing those young staff
members and trying to educate them but at the same time, they were educating us about
the civil rights movement.
NT:
Did this have any resolution or was there just tension?
IT:
It was quite a bit of tension at the time but there was a resolution where the JACL had to
ask them to take down their banners and be more considerate. And then we had to—well
some of JACL chapters and districts of the urban centers passed resolutions in support of
the UFW and the Central California District Council objected to that, for example, at the
Chicago Convention.
NT:
Did that have—what affect did that have on the JACL as a national force, for example, in
trying to get Executive Order 9066 rescinded or anything like that? It seems that the
split was taking place at the same time of these national projects. Is that true?
IT:
Yes, but then because we were all involved in the evacuation rescinding of 9066 and so
on, I mean, I think we were above the UFW controversy because that was only between
mainly the Central California JACL and all the rest of the National JACL.
NT:
What about your other experiences? You said that you were active as a liberal Democrat
in Houston and Austin, that you were involved in the civil rights movement and at the
University of Missouri and sit-ins at restaurants. First of all, were those activities to aid
the civil rights of others or were you still discriminated against as a Japanese-American?
IT:
No, I was supporting the African-American and the NAACP and so on because when I
was in Houston as a grad—when I was a research assistant at the University of Houston,
the Bureau of Business Research received a grant from CBS to do a study within
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TANIGUCHI
Houston, Harris County of the situation I don’t exactly remember the actual title of that
project but being involved in that project, I found out that the segregated school system,
the black schools many of the teachers in the black schools had only an eighth grade
education. And I began to see the inequities in the schools. I mean there is no such thing
as equal, separate but equal, and all that so I got involved in trying to support the civil
rights movement.
NT:
In what ways was that similar and different from the UFW movement here which also
was in depth civil rights?
IT:
UFW only overlapped in civil rights. It was really a labor management situation. And,
well when I was at the University of Houston getting my Master’s Degree, my Master’s
Degree emphasized labor economics. And I was familiar with the labor laws, the
National Labor Relations Act and the Wagner Act and all that and therefore I was very
sympathetic with the farm workers, their living conditions and wages were way out of
line. I guess my economics kind of tied into that situation and I felt that how they
discrimination and segregation in the labor market was a total waste as far as American
economy was concerned, we were wasting human resources.
NT:
How much of that could you communicate to the farmers in the CCDC?
IT:
I tried to communicate but at the JACL meetings, I was kind of labeled.
NT:
What was your label?
IT:
As a pinko. (laughs)
NT:
I think you’ve come a long way from that. You are certainly one of the most respected
individuals in the CCDC today.
IT:
Well I don’t know about that.
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TANIGUCHI
NT:
No, I was there when you got the Ruby Pin. How has this transition taken place?
IT:
Well, I’m not one that goes for confrontation. I am a strong believer in education. So I
continue to kind of bring about the people on both sides together and discuss and talk and
so and so every year when they had the CCDC, Central District Council Conventions, I
was involved in organizing workshops to bring speakers in who will talk about the other
side and try to reconcile the differences and follow the path where we had common
grounds. We always agreed when there were differences we tried to work it out by
talking about it in the workshops and so on.
NT:
Who were some of the speakers you brought in at this particular sensitive time when the
UFW was organizing?
IT:
Well, present day we had Warren Furutani, Edison Uno, Ray Okamura. Ray Okamura at
the time, he was the chair of the National JACL Committee to have Title Two repealed.
And they were all activists. In fact Jim Matsuoka who was sort of an artist who does
caricatures and so on was also on that too. And then when I hired Bill Tsugi he was
friends of all of these activists in the Los Angeles area and then because Bill Tsugi only
had a Masters again the administration said that he could not stay on unless he got his
doctorate so he had to move on. And then I hired Steven Tom from again LA State. He
also had a Master’s and was here for two or three years. And then the Department of
Anthropology hired James—the name slipped my mind. James Jen and he served it for
one year but he was an anthropologist and not really an Asian-American scholar so he
served for one year and then we went out and made a search and we hired Franklin Ng
and we hired Franklin Ng in 1975. Then and actually he arrived here when I was on
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TANIGUCHI
sabbatical in Japan. But I was able to be involved in the search before I left on the
sabbatical and then he’s been here practically ever since.
NT:
Yes.
IT:
Then back at in those days one year when we had Edison Uno here as a speaker at one of
the workshops, he had mentioned about redress, reparations so we had an informal
conversation and so at that time I became a supporter of reparations having gone through
the 1959 Evacuation Claims Act, my father applied for some of that. But then under the
Claims Act we were required to supply evidence of our losses. And all of our evidence
was lost in the situation of everything so I mean it was like a catch 22 situation and I felt
there had to be something done about the fact that attention be brought to the fact that our
Constitutional Rights were violated in evacuation but left it at that. But then Edison Uno
introduced the resolution at National JACL Convention in Washington D.C. and I think
that was 1970 and in concept the resolution passed but nothing was done about it. And
each year another resolution was passed 1972, 1974 and it was not until the 1976
National Convention that a resolution was finally passed to form a reparations committee
at the National level.
NT:
Were you involved in that?
IT:
No, I was not directly involved, although let’s see. In 1972, I became the Governor of
the Central California District Council and went on the National Board and while I was
on the National Board, we had some problems. We had the governors were automatic
members of the National Board and then we had elected officers of National to make up
the rest of the National Board. And the executive director and the national officers would
have an executive council caucus before our National Board meetings and they would
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TANIGUCHI
come to the National Board meetings with all of these recommendations and somebody
would make a motion but the governors was not aware of what was going on yet. And so
we, the governors got together and I proposed that we create a governors caucus so that
we can block vote on the board if we are not ready to vote. And so I mean that is when
we formed the Governor’s Caucus of the National Board.
NT:
Was it successful in meeting your objectives?
IT:
At the time it was and some people are objecting to it now that the Governor’s Caucus
has too much power. But at least it, you know, provided us with a voice to give us a
chance to study whatever resolutions or proposals are being made by the National
Council. And while I was Governor of the Central California, we did not have a regional
office yet. And I found that it was difficult as governor to keep in communication and so
although we did have a small budget from National for stationary and things like that, we
did not have an office and telephone and so on. So I wrote a proposal to create a
regional office here in Central California.
NT:
Okay.
IT:
And at the same time I felt it would be nice if we used the regional office to have a dropin center for the senior citizens.
NT:
What would be the function for the senior citizens?
IT:
Well, we would help—I mean the service center. Right now we call it the Nikki Service
Center here to provide service to the Issei, we still had Isseis at that time who were
Japanese speaking so when it comes to social security issues and medical problems and
someone at the service center would help them out. So I wrote up a proposal and took it
to the National Board and at the 1974 Convention we were allocated seventeen thousand
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TANIGUCHI
five hundred dollars to establish a regional office and the service center, to open a service
center. And so we searched for a location and found out this place 912 F street was open
and we can get that for a nominal rental fee so we took some of that money and put in
new lighting, carpeting and so on and made it into the regional office. But before we did
that, this address became the regional office of Central California and Barbara was the
secretary for the regional office until we were able to move into our regional office.
NT:
How long did this house serve that purpose?
IT:
Almost a year until we were able to get the place refurbished and set up for, get furniture
and air conditioning and so on.
NT:
And as soon as the office was ready did you hire a staff? Who did you hire?
IT:
Yes, the first Regional Director of the service center was Rita Yee who was a student in
Asian-American studies program at Fresno State. And then about a year after that we
hired Yokota, I can’t think of her first name who was, who had a lot of ideas. Well, I am
not sure whether Rita Yee or Yokota who started the monthly birthday program but I
know Yokota is the one who started the hot lunch program for the seniors and we got and
also she applied for at that time the CETA Grant, C-E-T-A and we received about fortyfive thousand dollars each year on the CETA Grant so we were able to get a van for
transportation through the Older American’s Act and we had a staff of about four people
in the service center. And actually the CETA Grant permitted us to really get the service
center started but when President Reagan was elected and we went to Block Grants the
CETA was eliminated and we had to cut things back because we didn’t, we could not hire
people from the grant. And then when Ms. Yokota left Sachi Kuwamota became the
Regional Director and Director of the Service Center. You know, through that activity in
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TANIGUCHI
the 1972-1974 period, I got talked into running for Vice-President of National JACL so I
became Vice-President for National JACL, Vice President for Research and Services, at
the 1974 convention, served ‘til 1976. And while I was on the National Board, I became
a member of the JACL National Education Committee and that committee, well we
had—we got a grant and got what was that? Well a grant from the U.S. Department of
Education so we published a teacher’s manual on the Japanese-American experience in
1975. And ever since that time, I’ve been involved as a district—Central California
District representative on the education program of the National JACL. And then in the
JACL I have served on many National Committees such as the, right now known as the
Nikkei Biennium, the National Scholarship Committee, Nominations Committee and of
course, the Education Committee so ever since becoming Governor, I’ve been involved at
the National level.
NT:
Is that something typical for a Governor or are you just a more active person?
IT:
Well, it is not typical and most people serve the term, their Governor’s term and then they
drop out. They don’t continue on in National affairs. Some of them stay on another term
or two and go to National Conventions but only a few people stayed involved or continue
like Fred Hirasuna, Frank Nishio.
NT:
What do you feel has been your greatest personal satisfaction from your JACL
involvement?
IT:
The greatest personal satisfaction was the success in the redress movement and I strongly
believe and the fact when I was evacuated, feeling like a person without a country and
losing faith somewhat, and in getting redress passed, I learned a whole lot about how our
system really works. And in order to make it work, you have to be involved. You got to
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TANIGUCHI
lobby, you got to raise funds. You got to lobby, you have to find out the contacts, make
contacts and so right now I am involved in these teacher education—teacher training
workshops to tell our story about the Japanese-American experience and how we were
able to get redress, being a very small minority and getting all the support in Congress
was a lot of hard work but then we really learned how to do it and so it has restored faith
in the system that if you work at it, you can accomplish something.
NT:
What role did you personally fulfill in the redress campaign?
IT:
Mainly, the District and Chapter level, helping to raise funds when National needed funds
for lobbying purposes. I served as the fundraising chair of the chapter most of the years.
At the District level, well my first National Board meeting as Governor, I roomed, my
roommate was James Sujimura who was going to become, who was Governor of the
Pacific Northwest District and he eventually became President of National JACL. But
there was a small group of people in Seattle who from the outset organized a proposal for
going for redress. Their proposal was not approved as it was but they contributed a lot to
the education of how to go for redress and so on. But James Sujimura came to the
National Board Meeting and he was asked by that committee in Seattle to feel out the
National Board about how they feel about redress. And he asked me and I told him about
my meeting with Edison Uno who talked about redress and told him that I was very
sympathetic but we have a lot of educating to do in JACL because most of the Niseis
were opposed for going for reparations.
NT:
Why?
IT:
By the mid 1960’s then Japanese-Americans had successfully recovered from the
evacuation and Newsweek Magazine labeled them as the model minority and statistically
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TANIGUCHI
if you calculate average income per capita, we were above that average and so most of
the Nisei were saying “Don’t rock the boat.” And culturally it is not in the books for
Niseis to demand reparations. But that was because they focused on reparations only, not
on the Constitutional aspect of evacuation. And the twenty thousand dollars that we
received is earnest money, it is really not reparations, I mean. If it were reparations, we
should have been paid a whole lot more. But it was just a token thing to go along with
the apology from the government to make the apology meaningful. Even it were one
thousand dollars, it would have been just as meaningful because we lived in a different
(inaudible) society.
NT:
What specific steps did you take to try and educate the Nisei about the reparation
campaign?
IT:
We had workshops annually at the convention on redress year after year. At the Chapter
levels, we spoke to people and in the community from the mid 1960’s I was going to high
schools and Pacific College and so on to tell the story about evacuation and redress and
so on whereas there are many Nisei who are unwilling to talk about it. And I wondered
whether the severe competition that the Niseis faced in California in recovering from the
evacuation had anything to do with not wanting to talk too much about it to their kids and
so on. But I have no feelings about that. I told our two boys and whatever and they knew
about the situations. In fact when I went to National Conventions, they always went
along with us. We took the whole family to Convention and I think, I feel the older son
Neal now living in San Francisco, he is pretty much involved; in fact, he went to work for
JACL at the National Headquarters for a couple of years and then he became VicePresident of Operations for JACL and not only that, during this a, 1970’s Barbara and I
55
TANIGUCHI
were senior advisors for JAY, the Japanese American Youth JACL youth arm. We had a
chapter here and we advised them and took them on field trips and took them to
conferences and so on. So I was kind of involved in that and Barbara became President
of the Fresno chapter. And in the community we have done things like, we’ve sponsored
specific Philharmonic Concerts. We sponsored exhibits and Barbara was really involved
when she was President. And so I’ve always felt that JACL not only did we, should we
engage in things for the Japanese-American community but we also need to support
(inaudible).
Then getting to the end now, I taught at Fresno State for thirty years. Served as
Department Chair for sixteen of the thirty years and right upon my retirement, I was
asked to serve on the grand jury, county grand jury, and spent one year on the grand jury.
And since my retirement I’ve worked with the Friends of the County Library and was
involved in getting and increase in sales tax for the benefit of the library last year.
NT:
What year did you retire?
IT:
Nineteen ninety-three. And while, also in terms of education, I got involved in mid
1970’s I got involved with the State Department of Education and served on legal
compliance handles to clean up public school text books on the presentations you know
and derogatory terms that were used in text books about American Indians being savages
and name calling at minority people and so on that were in print. I served, I headed in
fact I chaired panels to review text books and then recommended (inaudible) all that and
then recommending to the State Curriculum Commission what the problems with some of
the books were and so on. Then I was appointed to a State Commission--The
Educational—Innovation—no, Education and Innovational Planning Commission which
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TANIGUCHI
involved Title Four. Then I served on the Asian-Pacific American Advisory Council to
the Superintendant of Instruction.
NT:
For how long?
IT:
What was that, a couple years ago—for about two or three years on that after—well after
and during the time I was on the Education and Innovation Planning Commission which
was Title Four and when President Regaan got elected and went to block grants, the
whole Title Four was wiped out so. And then I was appointed to the Jesse Unruh
Assembly Fellowship Executive Board.
NT:
Is that the one that chooses?
IT:
Chooses the Fellows to the State Assembly.
NT:
And how long did you serve on that?
IT:
Two years.
NT:
So you have been very involved in education.
IT:
That’s right. Also I served at the Advisory—on the Advisory Council for School of
Education and Human Development at Fresno.
NT:
I want to go back to a couple of questions that I had. From when you were speaking
earlier and I guess the easiest way to do that would be to start at the beginning. You told
me a lot about your brother but you never told me his name.
IT:
Oh, before evacuation before we went to camp he was known as Yamato-Y-A-M-A-T-O.
and he took on the name Alan-A-L-A-N while he was in camp.
NT:
Why did he do that?
IT:
I’m not sure what the reason was. I guess too many people. It may have been because he
was planning to go to Detroit and leave the camp and he needed an Anglo name.
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NT:
TANIGUCHI
And you also mentioned that your uncle, your father’s brother came to the United States
and what was his name?
IT:
Katsuji-K-A-T-S-U-J-I. But then he took on the name Edward.
NT:
You said he was about a few years older than you?
IT:
No, he was just a few years younger than my father.
NT:
Oh okay. Did you do anything in particular with him, with your uncle? Or was he just a
farm laborer or was he part of the family and took you fishing?
IT:
Yeah, we used to go fishing all together. He loved to go fishing.
NT:
Where did you go?
IT:
Oh this was in Texas. We used to go to the Gulf of Mexico. Port Isabel.
NT:
When you were back living in Brentwood and you said the whole family lived in the one
house, who was living there?
IT:
My grandparents.
NT:
Okay.
IT:
My parents and my brother and I.
NT:
And your uncle?
IT:
No, he married and had his own home. He had two children, a son and a daughter. And
my cousin Edward, Jr. lives in Arlington, Texas. And my cousin Yuri Shida, S-H-I-D-A
lives in Mission, Texas and then we had a, I grew up with another cousin which is a
second cousin in Brentwood and she became quite well-known, Michi Reagan.
NT:
Oh yeah, that’s your second cousin? (laughs) So she was one of the—you said there were
about fourteen Japanese families?
IT:
Right, the Nishiura family was her maiden name was Nishiura, N-I-S-H-I-U-R-A.
58
NT:
TANIGUCHI
In Brentwood. When the, in the thirties, with the drought and all the Dust Bowl migrants
coming to Brentwood, what were the attitudes expressed towards the newcomers?
IT:
My mother was a very sensitive person and she, I probably shouldn’t say she felt sorry
for them, but she empathized with them a great deal and so many of them came to the
farm to ask for jobs and so on but most of our workers were all Filipino workers who
lived in—we had housing for them and everything. But then, there was a couple of
families whose car broke down on one corner of our farm and they just camped there so
my mother said leave them alone.
NT:
Did you employ them?
IT:
Well they did little odd chores around and (inaudible).
NT:
How long were they around?
IT:
Well just less than a year I think they finally found a job somewhere.
NT:
The Filipinos you had working on the farm, how did you—how did you originally hire
them?
IT:
In the 1930’s many Filipinos came here to work on the farms and I think one, hiring one
or two of them lead to bringing in their friends so they tended to have clans and so if you
hire one, they bring the whole clan.
NT:
And then did their children go to school with you?
IT:
Yes, those that had families, in fact one girl that lives in Freemont now Rose (inaudible),
her family did all the cooking for the Filipino workers.
NT:
Are you still in touch with her?
IT:
No.
NT:
Did you hire any other ethnicities to work on the farm?
59
IT:
TANIGUCHI
Some Mexican workers during the harvest season or planting season when we had to
have a little extra. The Filipinos were more—well many of them were seasonal but then
we had a number of Filipinos that were year round. And so we had this—I mean we
housed and fed all the Filipino workers and before we hired this family to do the cooking
and feeding them, my mother used to do the cooking and fed all the workers.
NT:
How many were there? How many workers?
IT:
During the peak of season we had sixty, seventy workers but year round, we had about
six.
NT:
How did your mother and father meet?
IT:
They are from the same village.
NT:
Oh I see.
IT:
And in Japan most of the marriages are arranged by family.
NT:
Right.
IT:
And actually way back there, Barbara’s family were family relatives of my greatgrandparents, her great-grandparents and my great-grandparents were probably relatives.
NT:
What were your grandparent’s names?
IT:
My grandfather’s name was Yunosuke, Y-U-N-O-S-U-K-E and my grandmother’s name
was Kinu, K-I-N-U.
NT:
And her maiden name?
IT:
Yuasa, Y-U-A-S-A. And Barbara’s great grandparents were from the Yuasa house clan.
NT:
I see. Well it sounds like your grandfather was a very innovative man to learn about auto
mechanics and—
IT:
No, my father.
60
NT:
TANIGUCHI
Your father—your father was very innovative to learn about auto mechanics in 1914.
That is a little early on. Was that one of his traits, would you say?
IT:
Well he went to a trade school in Los Angeles. And it came in handy because when they
bought that Caterpillar tractor and did and he knew something about the internalcombustion engine.
NT:
That partnership that he formed the five farmers? Were they all Japanese?
IT:
One was Caucasian. There were six members all together in the association. He was the
sixth one.
NT:
I see. (pause) Oh, you talked about the business association that your father formed in
Brentwood, the Produce Association?
IT:
Uh-huh.
NT:
And that they had an association with the California Berkeley and Stanford that resulted
in getting tickets to sporting events. How did that association develop?
IT:
No, it was just the business manager’s connection. The business manager who became—
who founded the Watsonville Strawberry Cooperative after the war, his name was Ted
Tomita, T-O-M-I-T-A.
NT:
Okay.
IT:
And through the success of the Strawberry Cooperative in Watsonville, he was appointed
by the—I think it was during the Kennedy Administration as an Agricultural Consultant
to Puerto Rico. Also, the Brentwood Produce Association was the very first shipper of
green-wrap tomatoes to wax the tomato; in other words, it contracted with the Food and
Machinery Corporation out of San Jose to invent the machinery conveyor belts and tubs
61
TANIGUCHI
to wash the tomatoes that come from the fields and dry it through a roller mechanism and
wax it automatically before it was packed for shipping.
NT:
Who was doing all the packing or was it done mechanical?
IT:
We hired seasonal workers for the packing. We hired seasonal workers who were
specialists in making boxes to pack the tomatoes in and stuff.
NT:
What did you have to do personally on the farm?
IT:
On the farm? I just drove the truck and hauled the tomatoes to the packing shed or drove
the tractor and things like that.
NT:
You mentioned earlier that your dad also gardened. Did the gardens in Brentwood, right?
IT:
Well that was his own personal garden.
NT:
Did he garden for others?
IT:
No.
NT:
But how much did you do on the garden?
IT:
I mean?
NT:
Did you have any specific chores or just sort of helped out?
IT:
Oh just chores like watering the plants or something like that but see Brentwood is still in
the valley so it is quite dry.
NT:
Oh, and you mentioned that your grandparents visited Japan in 1937 and that they retired
there in 1940. What part of Japan?
IT:
Wakayama.
NT:
Were they still there when you went back after—?
IT:
In the occupation?
NT:
In the occupation?
62
IT:
TANIGUCHI
I went back to look them up after I got to Japan and they were there. In fact they came to
visit me in (inaudible) Japan when I was in the service.
NT:
What did you tell your grandparents about the internment?
IT:
I didn’t tell them very much about the internment. I told them our family was fine. I
always tried to help them out. I mean things in Japan were really horrible after the
bombing and destruction and when I first arrived in Tokyo, the whole city was leveled.
And people were living under bridges and so on and they were very hungry and that
was—when I first got there and I got worried about my grandparents and friends and
worried about how they were so when I first visited them, I found out that they were on a
farm and so, they were much better off.
NT:
How much did the destruction of Japan affect your father? I understand he got his peace
activist ideas from reading about the war in Japanese? What kind of literature or what
was—what was the major theme perhaps of his literature as opposed to what you might
have gotten in English?
IT:
Well, of course we have Japanese language magazines here in San Francisco, Los
Angeles and he subscribed to all of them. And also, he subscribed to Japanese magazines
and literature after the war. I can remember when things settled down.
NT:
Did he ever discuss with you what he was reading?
IT:
Not specifically but I know that he was receiving various kinds of magazines in Japan.
NT:
What language did you speak at—
(tape ends abruptly)
IZUMI TANIGUCHI
INTERVIEWER:
NANCY TANIGUCHI
DATE:
March 1, 2000
NT:
We are recording today in Fresno. This is Dr. Izumi Taniguchi in his home and it is
March 1, 2000. And Dr. Taniguchi could you tell me a little bit about your family?
When and where you were born and a little bit about your family background please?
IT:
I was born in Stockton, California when the family was living in Brentwood. Brentwood
is in East Contra Costa County and Stockton is about thirty miles east of Brentwood. The
family moved to Brentwood about 1924. And before that they were involved in farming
in San Joaquin Delta. Actually my grandfather came here first in 1904 and he worked in
different jobs at the outset but eventually it went into farm labor and working in and
around the San Joaquin Delta. And in 1914 he called my father here and at that time my
father was sixteen years old. And he helped on my grandfather’s farm work and so on
and felt that there was no future in it so he went off to Los Angeles and went to an auto
mechanics school and received a certificate after one year. Then he returned to the
Stockton area and worked in farms but again he got together with a number of people,
four other people and in partnership bought one of the very first Caterpillar Tractors.
They Caterpillar tractor was first built in Hoyt, California which is just west of Stockton
and they were practically known as Hoyt tractors and they financed the purchase from
Spreckels Sugar Company who was located in Modesto because Spreckels Sugar
Company wanted somebody to get off land and work and trees and so on in (inaudible)
County and with the tractor they disked and plowed and cleared the land for sugar beet
farming. Then after that he had an offer from somebody in Mexicali to develop land for
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TANIGUCHI
cotton growing and so he and his partners took the tractor down to Mexicali to develop
the land and open up the land for cotton farming. However while he was there he became
ill. I think he had an appendix attack. And so he had to leave and go to Los Angeles.
While he was in Los Angeles and after he recovered from his illness he worked as a
delivery boy for the produce houses in Los Angeles for about a year and then returned to
the Stockton area.
Then he began going into farming and let’s see. My grandfather and he went
together to do some farming growing onions on land that Mr. Ushigima had the rights to
the land on Bacon Island in the Delta. They did that for a while and they moved around
to Union Island to farm onions and beans and so on. In the meantime, my grandfather
called my grandmother from Japan. I am not sure what year she arrived. Somewhere
around 1918, 1919 or something and then my grandmother was here, they decided to start
a hotel in Stockton known as Kishiu-kan the word Kishiu refers to the area around
Wakayama Prefecture Japan. And bought the hotel from the Quioma family and in 1921
my father went back to Japan to marry my mother and brought my mother here. Upon
my mother’s arrival she lived at the hotel Kishiu-ken that was run by my grandmother
and did some domestic work and went to English school to learn English.
After three years or so they sold the hotel, however while they had the hotel my
father visited my mother since he was farming on Union Island probably on weekends.
Then in 1924 they decided to move to Brentwood because they observed that the tomato
was being grown in Brentwood and they decided the family would become united by
moving to Brentwood and leased land from the Pirelli family. This was 1924. My
brother was born in 1922 while they had the hotel in Stockton. And then of course the
3
TANIGUCHI
whole family lived in one house in Brentwood while farming in Brentwood. I was born
in 1926 and while in Brentwood my father did intensive farming raising all kinds of
vegetables from cauliflower, lettuce, tomatoes, melons and various things and he sold his
produce to markets in Contra Costa County from anywhere from Antioch to Pittsburgh to
Martinez and every morning I can remember every morning he loaded up his truck of
produce and delivered them to markets like Safeway.
I started school at Brentwood Deer Valley Grammar School in Brentwood. And
went there through the fifth grade and then in 1932 the family moved to another farm in
close to a town called Knightsen which is between Brentwood and Knightsen and
because our residence was located in the Knightsen School District I had to transfer from
Brentwood Grammar School to the Knightsen Elementary school and finished up my
elementary education that is through eighth grade at the Knightsen Elementary School.
From the Knightsen Grammar School I went to Liberty Union High School in
Brentwood. Now while growing up in and attending the Knightsen Grammar School I
participated in the 4H Club and the Cub Scouts. However there were some things that
restricted my membership in these organizations, because when the Cub Scouts or the 4H
Club went out on a outing to public parks there was a place called Marsh Creek Springs
at the foot of Mt. Diablo which did not permit Asians, and consequently, I was not able to
fully participate in all the activities of the Cub Scouts or 4H Club.
Then in high school as the case with many Japanese-American families my
parents wanted me to prepare for an academic course, in other words you would prepare
to go to college so I pursued the college prep courses. Now I am going back a little bit.
My uncle who is my father’s brother came to the US in 1921 also and since the family
4
TANIGUCHI
owned the hotel in Stockton he went to high school in Stockton to learn English. And
played baseball for the Stockton Yamato Baseball Team but before he was able to
graduate the family moved to Brentwood so he graduated high school from the Liberty
Union High School in Brentwood. Now while in high school I participated in basketball
and track and because the high school was a very small rural high school where the total
enrollment was only about two hundred and fifty students we were all males were
recruited to participate in athletics. (laughs) And so whether we were very talented or not
we had the opportunity to play basketball and whatever, track and baseball and so on.
However, Brentwood I mean the Liberty Union High School did have a fairly good
facility in terms of gymnasium and track and so on. And so we did pretty well and got to
travel to other high schools to compete.
Of course the 1930’s were Depression years and times were very hard but I can
remember that the because of the drought and the Depression in the dust bowl area we
had a huge migration of people from Arkansas, Texas, and Kansas and so on into the San
Joaquin Valley and I can remember that our schools became impacted with new students
and so on. However when I look back it is amazing how we were able to cope with the
big increase in enrollment and nobody talked about the lack of money to accommodate
the new increased enrollment and so on.
Now as far as the family making it through the Depression a couple of very
fortunate things happened. One is that back in 1931, by accident, my father was growing
two or three different varieties of tomatoes and by accident they cross pollinated so that
by 1932 he was making his own seed from the tomato that he grew. And so when he
planted this seed they had cross pollinated he had a tremendous yield in 1932 and 1933.
5
TANIGUCHI
Despite the very low Depression prices because of the heavy yield which approached
forty-five or fifty tons per acre he did quite well at the bottom of the Depression. This
made it possible for him to think about organizing an association of tomato growers and
so he was able to get five other farmers to join in and they formed the Brentwood
Produce Association and started a business of growing tomatoes what we refer to as
green-wrap tomatoes to be shipped to the Eastern market. And by 1936, 1937 it became
quite a profitable business building up their reputation for the quality of the tomatoes that
were shipped to the Eastern market. And so despite the Depression and hard times the
family faired pretty well. I can remember going on outings during the Depression. We
went out to the coast and so on but joining in with the Association members and camping
out on the coast for a week at a time and also because of the business itself, the business
was able to contribute and associate with colleges like the University of California and
Stanford and so the manager of the association they would acquire tickets to football
games and so on and they always took us kids along. And in addition to that for
participating in athletics at the high school level the University of California used to
invite us to the football games to serve as ushers at the football games and so these are
some of the good memories that I have. Now, Brentwood being a small town the make
up of the population there were actually only fourteen Japanese families in the area not
just Brentwood but Byron, Knightsen, Oakley and that whole area of East Contra Costa
County. There were very few African-Americans maybe one or two but quite a lot of
Hispanics at that time. And so I grew up without facing too much prejudice except for
the like I mentioned about not being allowed to go to certain public facilities because
during the 1930’s Japan was at war with China and the United States was siding with
6
TANIGUCHI
China so there was some hostility with the United States. But as far as playmates and so
on most of our friends were Caucasian friends.
And although my father specialized in the growing of tomatoes during off season
he also grew celery, even grew seeds for Ferrymore Seed Company, carrot seeds and
onion seeds. He also grew a pickling cucumber for Heinz 57. And although his main
crop was green-wrap tomatoes he also grew tomatoes for the cannery which is—so it was
a very diversified farming. At one time he farmed close to four hundred acres (pause).
Then with the bombing of Pearl Harbor soon after that because of my father’s
involvement in the Japanese-American community he was Vice-President of the Japanese
Association in Stockton and also because of the immigration laws and Alien Land Laws
and so on he was not eligible for naturalization and since he was an immigrant he
remained a subject of Japan. And because of his age he was subject to the military draft
in Japan. However Japan permitted the Isseis who are the immigrant Japanese here to
work off their military obligation in some other way than going back to Japan and serving
in the Army. And so my father was involved in organizing an association in Japanese
referred to as Heimushakii-H-E-I-M-U-S-H-A-K-I-I to raise funds to help Japan in its
war effort And so because of his activities with the Japanese association which often
hosted Japanese government officials and so on he was labeled as a subversive by the
FBI and was targeted for arrest by the FBI following Pearl Harbor.
Actually he was not arrested until March 7, 1942. The reason was some red tape
was involved and the fact that we lived in Contra Costa County and his activities were in
San Joaquin County and due to my father’s activities in the community and so on there
was some—from what I heard there was some problem the FBI getting the local
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TANIGUCHI
constable to cooperate and arrest my father. Of course my father was acquainted with the
local authorities and the county sheriff and so when they finally got everything together
they came and arrested my father on March 7 and that involved searching our house for
contraband. And of course right after Pearl Harbor we were required to register and turn
in all things that was considered as contraband which included rifles, swords, short wave
radios, cameras and so on which we did turn into the local constable. We never did
recover them after we returned. Now I understand that the FBI did have informers in the
region to watch out for the activities of my father and all the people who were arrested by
the FBI did receive some sort of a hearing. And at the hearing my father heard some of
the charges which were kind of ridiculous and some were comical.
In addition to farming tomatoes and row crops my father had almonds and
apricots in some orchards and in the winter time we have to prune the trees. And we had
an incinerator that was pulled behind a tractor to burn all the pruned brush. In the hearing
it was—we found out that he was accused of sending smoke signals from burning the
brush. Also in growing tomatoes we had to start the planting of the seeds early in
February still when there is a threat of frost. So we had these hot beds covered with
white muslin sheets and these beds were six feet by twenty-five feet or so and we had
many of these hot beds for starting the tomato plants then after they get to be about six
inches tall they are transplanted out into the fields. He was accused or arranging like
muslin hot beds in an arrow type figure like towards military installations which there
weren’t any around Brentwood. (laughs) Another thing is my father grew lettuce for the
Thanksgiving and holiday market and after the Thanksgiving market you harvest all the
heads of lettuce that are mature and in late December or in January the leftover he has in
8
TANIGUCHI
the field are plowed under or disked and one of my chores was to drive a tractor after
school hours or on weekends and I remember that in January I was disking this field of
lettuce that had already been harvested and so in the hearing he was accused, my father
was accused of sabotaging the food crop (laugh). So these are some of the things that
hysteria generates in wartime so.
Now then on February 18, 1942 President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066
which is an order to evacuate all Japanese from the West Coast. And soon after that my
father, I mentioned that my father was picked up by FBI, arrested by FBI on March the
seventh and so knowing that we had to be into prepare for being evacuated and not only
that because the government slapped a curfew on us where after December eighth we
were not permitted to go more than five miles from our home between 8 pm and 6am. Of
course that had an affect on my activities at school since I was playing basketball for the
school team I could not travel outside the five mile radius (laughs) and things like that.
So as things became very restrictive I dropped out of school and I think it was in midMarch or so to help work things out since my father had been picked up and taken away.
Actually my older brother assumed the responsibility for taking care of things now
because my mother was not too proficient in English.
Now I should go back a little bit and mention my grandparents. (pause) They as I
mentioned earlier that the family faired pretty well during the Depression years and so
my great grandparents visited Japan back in 1937 and toured Japan and they were quite
impressed with what they saw. So they decided to retire in 1940 and went back to Japan.
My mother did take a trip back to Japan for a visit in 1935. And brought back with her—
well while she was in Japan she was able to visit a temple which was being shut down so
9
TANIGUCHI
she bought all of the flower arranging equipment that was owned by that temple and they
were solid bronze vases. Actually during WWII when the government confiscated many
of those kinds of vases and melted them down for the war effort but so my mother had
acquired this whole set of flower arrangements and throughout most of the 1930’s my
mother commuted to Stockton to a Buddhist church to take lessons in flower arrangement
and received a certificate to teach flower arrangement. And my father was very
supportive of this kind of activity so he was—he committed the job of providing
materials for the flower arrangement classes so they were off to Stockton two or three
times a month in their activities both cultural and my father’s involvement with the
Japanese Association. (pause) Can I take a break? (laughs)
NT:
Okay.
IT:
When the FBI came to arrest my father actually because many of my father’s friends in
Stockton and elsewhere who were involved in similar activities were already arrested by
the FBI. He had expected it to happen but we didn’t know when it was going to happen
and when the FBI did come, the constable was a friend of the family and he accompanied
the FBI agent. There were two of them, one was a pretty poised, experienced agent and
the other one was a younger and somewhat short tempered. And when they arrived, we
were having lunch. And after they explained the purpose and so on, the younger agent
looked at our lunch table and of course, we were having Japanese food and so on and he
started to spout out that we would never become Americans because we had to have our
Japanese food, fish, rice and so on. At that point we had a boarder who was also farming
by himself and having lunch, who was older than my brother and I and he said, “Well
you are no different than us, with your red hair and temper, your Irish temper and you
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have your corn beef and cabbage and so on.” And so there was an exchange and so at
that point, the senior agent excused this other agent and told him to cool it. So they went
through the house, searched the things and as many Japanese-Americans had done in
reaction to what was happening, my father had taken some of the documents that he
thought would be threatening and some of the things like things that were in the family a
long time. He had stuffed them into a fifty gallon metal barrel, welded it shut and buried
it in advance. And so when this guy went through the house he didn’t find anything
because we had already turned in our contraband and so on. But never the less he was
taken away. They took him to Stockton because as I mentioned his activities were in San
Joaquin County. And he had to spend a night in the Stockton jail but the next day they
took him to the Silver Avenue Detention Center in San Francisco and when they were
transporting him from Stockton to San Francisco, they passed by my uncle’s farm and so
my father was able to ask the driver to stop and the agent to stop and let him say goodbye to his brother who was out in the field. So he was able to get out of the car and wave
to my uncle good-bye and tell the rest of the family that he was okay and so on. And so
we had that experience, then he was taken to the Silver Avenue Detention Center in San
Francisco.
Now having left the farm to my brother who was still a minor, actually he was
nineteen years old, my brother had a lot of questions as to what to do and so on and so I
had to apply for a permit to visit my father in San Francisco and he was able to obtain the
permit to visit my father and my father gave him some instructions further. But then a
couple of weeks, several weeks later we received the notice for the mass evacuation and
we had to take care of the house and the land and so forth. Suddenly a person showed up
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at the door and he offered to look after our farm in our absence. And so my brother still
not being very naïve and not knowing too much, engaged a lawyer in Brentwood to draw
up an agreement for this person (inaudible) to look after the farm in our absence and that
agreement included that he was to take care of the house and all the farm implements and
he was able to farm the land but that he would have to be sure that our taxes are paid.
Now actually because of the Alien Land Law the land was in the name of M.
Hayashi and M. Hayashi was a Nisei, American citizen who my uncle had befriended and
had played baseball with in Stockton became a very close family friend and so my father
had borrowed his name to purchase the land and do all of his business in that name which
was getting around the Land Law illegally but, (pause) and actually this M. Hayashi
became the first manager of the Railroad Produce Association my father had engaged
him to become the manager. But then in 1939, he passed away. And so Mr. Hayashi’s
wife became the legal owner of the land and so; however she was very accommodating.
Actually, her brother was the person who was the boarder in our house and was farming
on his own and the person I mentioned when the FBI came to our house.
And then with the evacuation order besides taking care of the house we had to get
rid of our car and the main things so people came by and we sold our car and household
things at very low price. For example, I recall the car was less than one year old and I
think we sold it for something like a hundred dollars. Now in trying to clean up things
before we had to leave for the camps, I was gathering up all the farm implements in other
words my father was farming and as I mentioned earlier close to four hundred acres and
we had little plots of forty, fifty acres here and there scattered out with farm implements
at various places so my brother and I were gathering them up to bring them back to the
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home place and in that process, I fell off the truck onto an implement and injured my
chest right before we had to leave for camp. And when we had to evacuate, I was not
able to carry much or anything when we entered camp.
We were first, well we had to assemble in a place called Byron, B-Y-R-O-N,
California and we had some Caucasian friends who volunteered to drive us there for the
to the assembly area where we boarded buses and were taken to Turlock Stanislaus
County Fairgrounds where the Turlock Assembly Center was located. We—that also,
my father had a colleague who was picked up by the FBI the same day that my father was
arrested and so his wife was left alone and because they had two daughters, both of them
had been sent to Japan to go to school and they were stranded in Japan. So we decided to
take Mrs. Mikami into our family for the evacuation.
Then we arrived in the Turlock Assembly Center of course we were all put into
one room with no partitions or anything and I often wondered how Mrs. Mikami felt with
not being a member of the family but we had taken her in and she must have felt lack of
privacy and so on. And then from Turlock, we were in Turlock Family Center from April
to Mid-April to the Mid-July. While in the Turlock Assembly Center I got a job
delivering mail within the camp and so I sorted mail and delivered them to certain areas
of the camp. For that, we were paid eight dollars a month. To pass the time away, we
did, engaged in athletic programs or played baseball and did some body building type of
exercise.
Now we were ordered to go to the Gila River, Arizona camp located between
Phoenix and Tucson and I can remember how hot it was because we were traveling in
Mid-July from Turlock to Arizona. And the train that we were taken in we had to go into
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the siding every time some other train came by and then you knew troop trains were
going by so I think it took us three or four days to go from Turlock to Arizona. Then we
arrived at Casa Grande, Arizona we were taken by bus to the camps. And in Gila there
are two camps. One they labeled as Canal Camp and the other was Butte Camp. When
we arrived there, the camp was not finished yet. There were many trenches so that utility
pipes and so on. And my first surprise as I peered into the trench, the first thing I saw
was a number of rattlesnakes running around in the bottom of the trench. And we were
taken to Canal Camp which is also known as Camp One. I don’t know for what reason
but we decided, we volunteered, my family volunteered to move to Camp Two, Butte
Camp after the first week. I am not sure for what reason. And I can remember that we
lived in Block 66 in Butte Camp.
While in camp in order to avoid boredom, we organized athletic teams and
competed either by blocks or by region from where we came. I remember playing
basketball with a group from my home town Brentwood. Baseball we joined a group of
people from Vacaville and Suisun. And our baseball team was labeled as Block 66
baseball team. We were able to build a baseball field and it became known as the Block
66 baseball field. One of our main competitors in baseball was the Block 28 team and the
Block 28 also built a baseball field. That team was headed by a Mr. Zenimura from
Fresno and currently a Carey Nakagawa is doing the history of the baseball teams in the
Japanese-American community. And one significant part is a story about the Zenimura
family who were outstanding baseball players.
Now in the Gila Camp at the time of evacuation, I mentioned that I dropped out of
high school in March. In March I was a junior in high school but due to the fact that I
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participated in athletics, I did not have to enroll in physical education and therefore I had
an extra period. And so I took, each year, I took a course in wood shop or home
economics as electives. And even though I was a junior I only lacked one unit from
graduating. And so in the Gila Camp I went to Butte High School just for the fall
semester. And earned enough credits which I had sent back to Liberty Union High
School and so the Liberty Union High School graduated me on schedule in 1943.
Although I had enough credits, I did not have all my English and Math requirements
which affected my admission to college. Then in April of 1943 the family decided to
join my father in a family camp in Crystal City, Texas.
Now the family camp in Crystal City, Texas came about because a number of
internees in Missoula, Montana Detention Center had called to attention to the Red Cross
that they were being forced to do hard labor and under the Geneva Treaty, internees like
those arrested by the FBI were protected from having to do hard labor and they protested
that. And so the Red Cross in Spain investigated or were chosen to investigate the
conditions of the internees in the Justice Camps. And told the US government that they
were in violation of the treaty so the US government decided to, well another factor is
that they, in the war, the US Army was able to get very few prisoners of war, Japanese
prisoners of war, whereas in the Philippines and so on, many American GI’s were taken
as prisoners. And during the war, United States was concerned about how Japan would
treat the American prisoners of war and realized that unless the United States treated
Japanese subjects here humanely that the Americans there would be tortured and so on.
So the US government decided to build a family camp and permit the unification of the
families of the internees and the internees were able to indicate whether they wanted the
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families to join them or not, so many of the internees like my father opted to have the
family join them in the camp in Crystal City. And since I was a minor, I had no choice
but to go along with my mother and go to the Crystal City camp. And the Crystal City
internment camp run by the United States Department of Justice was labeled as a camp
for dangerous enemy aliens.
In the meantime in the camps like in Gila, Manzanar and all the others, because
the Japanese-American Citizens League was negotiating with the US government to give
us the opportunity to prove our loyalty despite the fact that we were interned in these
camps. The government decided to find out who was loyal and who was not loyal and
we were given a questionnaire, a loyalty questionnaire. There were two main questions.
Questions 27 and 28 and question 27 was whether we would be willing to serve the US
Armed Forces, in the US Armed Forces. And question 28 was whether we swore our
allegiance to the United States and of course any allegiance to Japan and if we answered
both of those questions yes we were considered loyal and if we answered them no we
were considered disloyal and the United States designated the Tule Lake, California
camp the camp for disloyals and we referred to those who answered no as “no-no boys”.
And this was taking place in the Gila Camp before I left for Crystal City and I remember
that in January of 1943, my mother, my brother and I received permission to visit my
father in the Lordsburg, New Mexico Camp, internment Camp. And at that time my
father had directed my brother and I that under no circumstances should we volunteer for
the Armed Forces given the situation. Of course I was only sixteen years old and my
brother was nineteen so it applied to my brother more than it did to myself which made it
very difficult for my brother because having been put into camps, we didn’t know where
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we stood. We had gone through public school pledging allegiance to the American flag
and singing all of the national anthem and God Bless America and so on and been in the
Cub Scouts and well, we felt like we were abandoned by our country. We felt that we
were persons without a country. And when we were given this questionnaire although I
didn’t have to answer it because I left for Crystal City technically before the
questionnaires were brought to us and I wasn’t seventeen yet so I wasn’t required to
answer it until later when I turned seventeen. But we felt insulted since we were
American citizens and my brother and I were not dual citizens, we were just American
citizens and we did not have any connections to Japan. I have never been there. And the
irony is that while the war in Europe was going on, and Japan was at war with China and
so on, both my brother and I were volunteers in the community. We were kind of trained
to distinguish between American aircraft and enemy aircraft, aircraft spotting, training
and so on and we were volunteers for that so having gone through all of this, it was very
confusing to us what was going on.
Now, when my mother and I left for the Crystal City Camp also Mrs. Mikami
who was in our unit together, left for Crystal City Camp. My brother decided to stay
behind and remain in Gila because he had thoughts of leaving the camp and going back to
school. His education at the University of California was interrupted by the evacuation.
Although my brother probably would have answered yes, yes to those loyalty questions.
Because of the directive from my father, he tried to qualify his reply by saying that, you
know, unless his rights were restored and my father released from internment and so on
he could not answer the questionnaire yes, yes but he did not want to answer it no, no. So
when he applied to leave the camp, they would not release him right away. He had to go
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through a series of hearings before he was permitted to leave the Gila Camp. He did
eventually get out in late 1943 and he went to Detroit, entered Detroit Tech and worked
for the city of Detroit.
Now in the Crystal City, Texas Camp, we found that the living conditions were
much nicer than in the Gila Camp. In the Gila Camp we lived in a barrack which was
divided into four to six units and each family lived in a single unit with no partitions.
Then we had to go to the mess hall for our meals and so three times a day, we lined up at
the mess halls. And also the lavatory and bathing facilities were outside and we had to
walk about a block to our showers and rest rooms. Our mothers had to do the laundry by
hand in a washroom. (inaudible)
The fact is that in the mess hall well in the Gila Camp, the food was prepared by
evacuees, volunteer people, nobody was trained as cooks or anything but they learned
how to cook in the mess hall and so the food although was tolerable, was not to the liking
of every person at each meal. We used to refer to the food as slop suey. And as I
mentioned earlier I went to the high school for the fall semester and while I was going to
school, I took a job as time keeper for the Block 66 mess hall and in the Spring of 1943
the first lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited our camp and I had the privilege of being the time
keeper at the door and checking people were qualified to come into our mess hall and so
and meeting Mrs. Roosevelt as she inspected our mess hall.
Somehow, various block mess halls were kind of labeled I mean as good mess
halls or bad ones and so people in other blocks would sometimes try and sneak into the
better mess halls and so on and my job as time keeper was not only to keep time of the
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people working in the mess hall so that they could get their sixteen dollars a month pay,
but also to check the meal tickets to be sure the people in our block only were admitted.
Now in the camp some people worked doing other things. There was a
camouflage net factory where people worked to produce camouflage nets for the US
Army and then some people worked at security guards and police and there were each
block had a block manager and assistant block manager and then there were people who
were recreation supervisors and people who delivered food by truck to the mess hall and
delivered milk and ice to the mess hall so all the work within the camps were done by the
inmates. The governing system went through the block manager who had an association
that met with the outside administration which was the WRA-War Relocation Authority.
Now in the Crystal City Camps, we lived in little mini apartments. And we were
issued tokens which could be spent at the commissary and the canteen and so my mother
and my friends would go shopping to the commissary everyday to buy the ingredients to
cook the meals and she was able to cook our own meals in our own apartments.
Although our shower facility was outside in another building our toilet and kitchen and so
on plumbing was all inside the apartment. And in contrast to how our laundry was done
in the WRA Camps in Crystal City, we had a central laundry and once a week we would
put all our laundry bedding sheets and whatever else needed to be washed and cleaned
into a big laundry bag and we delivered it, took it to the laundry and at the end of the day
we would get it back all folded and pressed. So it is kind of ironic that American citizens
were treated worse than dangerous enemy aliens.
In the Crystal City Camp again we organized activities athletic activities to keep
ourselves occupied. We had competitive sports as well as Martial Arts and in the Crystal
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City Camp, we had two school systems. Actually, a great many of internees in Crystal
City were Japanese language school teachers from the US mainland and Hawaii and so
the INS or Justice Department permitted creating a Japanese Language School K-12 as
well as a regular public school and since I had graduated from high school or completed
my requirements, I attended the Japanese Language School and spent two years full time
in the Japanese Language School.
NT:
(inaudible) We left off with you telling me about the two different schools at camp and
that you decided to attend the Japanese Language School and you ended up attending it
for two years.
IT:
The, as I mentioned, the Japanese Language School there were many Japanese Language
School teachers who were also Buddhist Church Ministers from Hawaii and from the
United States mainland and the Japanese Language School was instructed pretty much
like a regular school like in high school and we learned the language in various subject
matter such as Geography, History, Ethics, Mathematics and then Language itself. We
learned the grammar of the Japanese language and not only that, there was a special
course in Japanese, Chinese characters how we could convert Chinese into Japanese.
And also I had some calligraphy and so we went to the school from eight to three
everyday. Each hour a different subject matter and therefore I learned enough Japanese
to the point that later on, when I entered the US Army I qualified for the Military
Intelligence Service. So ironic that being interned, internee as a native (inaudible) to
learn the language there and then work for the United States Military Intelligence.
Getting back to the Crystal City Camp, I also participated in Judo and Sumo. I
did injure myself in a Sumo tournament and therefore, I did stop at one point. Now also
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in the Crystal City Camp we had a medical doctor who was very talented as a surgeon as
well and so at the camp hospital medical services were very good. We had a number of
registered nurses in the camp and the doctors and so we received very good medical and
dental treatment there. Now with regard to my stay in the camp, the fact that my father
having been interned by the FBI, he was intent on repatriating to Japan because having
been treated as he was, not eligible for naturalization, Alien Land laws and so on and had
lost everything he had developed economically, he hell-bound to be repatriated.
During WWII there were two exchanges that took place, the first one in 1942 and
the second one in 1943. The exchange took place by way of the Swedish Ship
(inaudible) and the way the exchange took place is if your (inaudible) took people from
New York to India and then a Japanese ship met the (inaudible) in India and the exchange
took place there. I mentioned earlier that a Mrs. Mikami we took in as part of our family,
well she and her husband repatriated to Japan on the first exchange in 1942 and make that
1943, the second exchange I think it was September 1943.
NT:
Did she remarry?
IT:
No she and her husband. She joined her husband in Crystal City and then went to Japan.
Now as I mentioned earlier in the Gila Camp, people in the Gila Camp had to answer to
the loyalty questionnaire and my brother who remained in Gila had to answer to those
loyalty questionnaires and because my father was so adamant of him not serving in the
US Army while he was interned, and under the circumstances where we lost everything
in the evacuation, he could not answer yes, yes to the questions 27 and 28 and so he
refused to answer so they automatically made him a no, no. And because of that he had
difficulty getting security clearance to leave the Gila Camp and had to go through a series
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of hearings and eventually he was permitted to leave the Gila Camp and went to Detroit,
Michigan. And in Detroit he entered Detroit Tech and worked for the city of Detroit. In
the meantime he became very concerned for my status in Crystal City where my father
was volunteering to be repatriated. And so he visited Crystal City Camp with the
intention of getting permission to take me out of the Crystal City Camp and therefore he
talked to the director of the camp, Mr. Rourke, and as he made these plans, he was in
conflict with my father and the word got out about what my brother was trying to do and
so my father’s friends in the camp called a meeting and called my brother on the red
carpet to try and help my father. They told my brother that he was disloyal to his father
and so on and put pressure on my brother however my brother felt that there was no place
for us in Japan since we had never been there, we were American citizens. Eventually, as
the war progressed, my father’s position softened and my brother was able to get me
released from the Crystal City Camp and I joined my brother in Detroit in August of 1945
just before the very beginning of August just before the end of the war.
I enrolled at Wayne University in Detroit and completed one semester. As the
war ended, the government agreed to release my father and so we waited until the end of
my semester at Wayne University and in February of 1945, February of 1946 my brother
and I drove to Crystal City, Texas to get my parents released from the camp. And while
we were in Crystal City, Texas my father had to start thinking about what he was going to
do. We still had the property, forty acres in Brentwood, California; however my father
remembered that in shipping tomatoes to the Eastern market, there were some years
which the lower Rio Grande Valley tomatoes competed in the Eastern market so he
wanted to investigate the possibilities in the lower Rio Grande Valley. So while we were
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visiting Crystal City waiting for my parents release from the camp, my brother drove my
father down to San Benito, Texas to scout out farming possibilities there. While there my
father met a number of other Japanese-Americans who were farming there and they
invited my father to move down there. However, we first because of the farm in
Brentwood my father decided to go back to Brentwood and we helped him pack and put
them on the train to Los Angeles and my brother and I drove to Los Angeles where we
met my parents there. In Los Angeles we had friends and so we met at our friend’s house
in Los Angeles. These friends were from the same province in Japan.
NT:
What was that?
IT:
Wakayama. Then after staying there for a couple of days, we went on back to
Brentwood. Now we had a little difficulty getting back into our house in Brentwood
because during the war, there was a housing shortage and due to that, you could not evict
anybody and then the person who agreed to look after our house and the farm, refused to
move out and he claimed that he had made some improvements in our absence and
therefore unless we paid him for the improvements, he was not going to move out. So
we had to pay cash and the thing is, in the agreement the lawyer of course didn’t
understand either and he had indicated that the agreement would be for the duration of
the war. Although the war technically ended in August of 1945, the peace treaty was not
signed until 1947 and so there was a question of the term, duration of the war. And so
Mr. (inaudible) held us to that and he said he would not move out unless we paid cash up
front. That embittered my brother very much but nevertheless, we moved back into our
house and my father farmed for a year for the 1946 season.
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However, he felt very uncomfortable. He felt like he was not welcome back in
that he after his hearing, he became aware of who the informers were and so not only that
there was a labor shortage and he had difficult time the first year farming back in
Brentwood. And therefore his business to the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas where
the people there were so hospitable and inviting and so on, he decided he was just going
to pick up and move to Texas. In the meantime I had left Wayne University and
returned to Brentwood and since I left camp I was no longer classified 4C by the selective
service and reclassified as 1A and received a notice for a physical exam. But then my
future was very uncertain. My father told me that there was no way he could finance my
going to college and he was very uncertain about the future and so I thought about it and
at that time the Army was recruiting heavily offering the GI Bill and so I decided that I
would volunteer for three years and get four years of GI Bill and so that is what I did.
I volunteered and at that time when you volunteered, you were able to chose your
service and so I chose the Quarter Master Corps instead of the infantry and was inducted
at Camp Beale, California and assigned to Fort Lee or Camp Lee, Virginia for my basic
training. And then after I finished my basic training in July of 1946 I was assigned to the
Adjutant General School in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. (pause) There I was assigned to
the Postal Unit where we were trained to become mail clerks. And while I was in Fort
Oglethorpe, Georgia, I wired through our company commander about the Military
Intelligence Service since I had become bilingual and was recommended by the company
commander. I finished my Postal Course in Fort Oglethorpe and then I received notice
that I was accepted to the MIS, Military Intelligence Service and therefore I was sent to
Monterey, California to the Army Language School. When I arrived in Monterey, I was
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TANIGUCHI
cycled into an existing language class, Japanese language class that was to graduate in
November of that year and so I attended this Japanese language class for about three
months, September, October, November and received a certificate of graduation from the
language class in Monterey and was promoted from private to Tech Three Sergeant and
then I was given a furlough and on my furlough because my father had decided to move
to Texas and in the meantime my brother had been readmitted to the University of
California and it was during his Christmas break and my furlough that we were both able
to help my father move to Texas from Brentwood.
We loaded all his farm equipment into a rented box car and shipped it off to Texas
and my brother and my mother and my father we drove the truck and the car to Texas.
When we arrived in San Benito, Texas the people who my father had met on his visit
there had arranged for a vacant house although it was vacant because it was abandoned,
no windows, and really broken down. So we had to board up the windows and so on to
where my parents moved in and we had two days in which to make it like a camp and
livable and it was very cold at that time, in fact it snowed while we were there. But
nevertheless, they got moved in. My brother and I returned to California and I had to go
back to Monterey, the city of Monterey and my brother had to go back to University of
California.
And somehow despite the hardship my mother survived and they were able to
settle in Texas. People in Texas were very hospitable and very kind to my parents and
were able to establish themselves. In the meantime I was sent overseas to Japan and the
occupation of Japan as an interpreter-translator-interrogator. And I spent two years in
Japan interrogating Japanese prisoners who were returning from Siberia in the Soviet
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Union. As you know the Soviet Union entered the WW, the WWII just the last couple of
weeks of the war and they took hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers as prisoners
in the surrender and they took them, they assigned them to labor battalions all over the
Soviet Union and worked them in factories and the construction of railroads
reconstruction from the war that is after Hitler’s Army had ravaged the European part of
the Soviet Union and much reconstruction had to be done. So the Japanese soldiers were
recruited into labor battalions and forced to do hard labor in the reconstruction as well as
some of the German soldiers. But as they became ill and could not work anymore they
were returned, repatriated into Japan. And so we were assigned to interrogate these
people for the atrocities committed by these Russians however while we were doing that
Winston Churchill coined the term Iron Curtain and we got involved in a cold war and
although the United States and the Soviet Union were allies during WWII, we became
enemies and so we were sent back to Tokyo from the field for a refresher course. And
the refresher course was to give us a new set of vocabulary because our assignment
changed. While we were interrogating to identify atrocities committed by the Soviet
Union, we now had to interrogate to identify targets to bomb in case a hot war was to
break out and that was our assignment.
I was assigned to Masore, Japan from April 1947 to November 1947 returned to
Tokyo for December and January and was sent to Hakodate Hokkaido in February of
1948 where we continued interrogating Japanese prisoners. While assigned to Hakodate
I had—well we were in assigned to temporary duty in a detachment and while after the
first two months in Hakodate the first sergeant or the administrator of our detachment
was reassigned to a commission and as I was a ranking non-commissioned officer, I was
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TANIGUCHI
asked to become the administrator or first sergeant of that detachment. So I did some
administrative work as well as interrogation.
Then in February of 1949 my three year term was up and although I enlisted in
April of 1946 for a three year term because well I was recruited and offered a
commission to sign up for another term. However since I refused that, I was released at
the convenience of the government in February of 1949 and discharged. Of course, there
were two factors that influenced my decision not to sign up for another term because I
originally entered the Army so I could get the GI Bill and go back to college. But in the
interrogation we were very much aware of the tension that was built up between North
Korea and South Korea and through our interrogation those of us that were doing the
interrogating were convinced that something was going to happen between North Korea
and South Korea and given that situation wanting to go back to school and although when
I was discharged, they, I was pressured to sign up for the reserves. But when I thought
about it if war should break out then being in the reserve I knew I would be called back
and so I did not sign up for the reserves.
NT:
Good decision.
IT:
So I got discharged in February of 1949 at Fort Lewis, Washington, received my
transportation money and mustering out pay and I returned, well I joined my parents in
Texas, San Benito, Texas. And I immediately applied for admission to the University of
Houston. I debated between the University of Texas and the University of Houston but
then I opted for the University of Houston because of the booming conditions in Houston,
the oil industry and the job opportunities that were there since I had started as an
engineering major in Wayne and the job opportunities would be better in Houston. So I
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TANIGUCHI
began at the University of Houston in Sept. 1949. And at the time over half of the
students at—
(end of first tape)
IT:
I was kind of worried about how I would do studying in college again after the break
three years in the Army and so on. However things went pretty well but I found the
engineering curriculum very boring. But I did get my mathematics and science courses
in as an engineering major and after the first semester at the University of Houston, I
decided to change my major and went into economics. And I found out that the chairman
of the economics department took a liking to me and became very helpful and I finished
the first year the first semester the fall semester in engineering and the spring semester in
economics. After taking that one course in economics the beginning of the fall semester
of 1950, the chairman of the department asked me to grade papers, if I’d be willing to
grade papers, and I said I would and so I took on that chore and so he advised me
throughout the rest of my college bachelor’s degree. (pause) I graduated from the
University of Houston in 1952 which is three years after going there and received the
Wall Street Journal Student Achievement Award and my the chairman of the department
who became my advisor helped me into my master’s degree. And gave me a research
assistanceship to work on the master’s degree and this coupled with my GI Bill stipend
and the research assistanceship, I felt quite comfortable working on my master’s degree.
I completed my masters in 1954; also during the summers I worked as a research
associate in the Bureau of Business Research and so I had a degree in Economics with an
emphasis in statistics. So upon receiving my master’s degree, I took a job with Anderson
Clayton and Company as a statistical analyst and worked at Anderson Clayton for two
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TANIGUCHI
years. And then I was offered a part-time teaching position in the University of Houston
night school in statistics. So besides working at Anderson Clayton, I was teaching
statistics in the evenings at the University of Houston. All the time, all the time I was
working for Anderson Clayton, my economics department advisor continued to push me
towards going back to graduate school and along with the other professors in the
economics department, they guaranteed me a teaching assistant ship at the University of
Texas if I were to go back to graduate school. Because one of the professors was from
the University of Texas and had gone to the University of Houston to teach and so he
escorted me to the Austin Campus and showed me around and introduced me to the
professors of economics at the University of Texas.
Now I mentioned earlier how Texas people were very hospitable and so on and I
feel very fortunate that all these people took an interest in me and helped me out. Just on
Monday night, here at the California State University at Fresno, there was a program
showing a video called the “Children of the Camps”. And that video showed individuals
telling their story about their growing up after leaving the camps and they sounded
somewhat embittered by that camp experience. However, in my case, having come out
of the camp and being helped by so many people, I felt very fortunate and changed the
whole plan of my life from being an engineer to going into academia and so on.
Now at the University of Texas, being a teaching assistant, I taught two classes
and each semester took a nine unit load in classes with the graduate program. I finished
my course requirements in 1959 and then—then I was offered an electorship to teach
statistics in the economics department for the 1959-1960 economic year because I had
my graduate work with an emphasis and major in economics and minor in statistics.
29
TANIGUCHI
Beginning of the fall of 1960 I took a job as assistant professor at the University of
Missouri, but I had not completed my Ph.D and was still working on my dissertation.
Now going back onto my personal life when I pointed out that when we took my
parents out of the Crystal City Camp and went to Los Angeles and stayed with friends in
Los Angeles, I got married in 1960 right after accepting a job with the University of
Missouri; it was during the summer of 1960. My wife Barbara was from the family of
the friend we stayed with in Los Angeles going from Crystal City back to Brentwood.
NT:
Did you know her before you went to Los Angeles that time or was that the first you met
her?
IT:
No the family knew her in fact we visited that family in 1932 but Barbara was not born
yet. I was a child just six years old. We went to the 1932 Olympic Games in Los
Angeles and visited with the family then.
NT:
So you actually met Barbara right after the war?
IT:
Yes.
NT:
How did this romance develop? Did you write letters? Did you go see her again? Did
she come to Texas?
IT:
Well, actually while I was in the Army I was dating her sister. But when I got back from
the Army, I was committed to finishing my college and so we called it off. And while I
was traveling back and forth between California and Texas and so on, I always visited
them in Los Angeles and that’s how I met Barbara.
NT:
Now you didn’t talk very much about traveling back and forth between California and
Texas. Once you moved your family out to Texas, what kept pulling you back to
California?
30
IT:
TANIGUCHI
Well, first of all, they had, after my parents moved to Texas and go back to Monterey and
we all stopped in Los Angeles and then when I got discharged from the Army before I
moved to Washington going back to Texas, I stopped in Los Angeles and then in 1949
after I went back to Texas, I went back to San Francisco to my brother’s wedding and
then while I was in college, I came back to California for a visit.
NT:
What was the main reason? Was it your brother? Was it Barbara? Was it just you
missed California or was it a combination?
IT:
No, all my friends were in California, camp friends and so on, however when I visited
California, it was typical to visit my friends. You know, they had returned from camp
and so they were busy reestablishing themselves so some of them were holding down two
and three jobs. And so then they had no time to visit so I always look back and think of
those people who came back here to California stayed here in California and those of us
who settled outside of California, it seemed like I was looking in the inside from the
outside. And I felt that the Japanese-Americans who stayed in California had a very
competitive environment even to go to college. Had I gone to the University of
California, I think I would have faced a lot of stiff competition. But at the University of
Houston, as I pointed out, the chairman of the department and the professors all pushed
me along like you know so I had, as a student, I had friends among the faculty, since I
had gone to the Army I was not no eighteen year old or nineteen year old. And so there
were faculty members who were just one or two years older than I and so it was quite a
different experience for me in Texas than many of my friends who came back to
California.
NT:
How did you and Barbara decide to get married? What pushed the process along?
31
IT:
TANIGUCHI
Well I had finished my course work at the University of Texas and I think we were ready.
(laughs) It was not a long courtship actually. It was about a year. I came here in 1959,
well actually when I dated her sister, I was still in the Army and her sister had some—she
was going to UCLA and she had an engagement and then I visited Los Angeles from
Monterey when I was in the army, I took Barbara with me to a movie and so after her
sister and I broke off, (inaudible) we didn’t get together until 1959 when I was a student
at (inaudible) school and so one year, after that we got married.
NT:
Where did you get married?
IT:
In Los Angeles.
NT:
Did your family come out from Texas and is your brother still in San Francisco and did
he come down too?
IT:
No, all my family was in Texas.
NT:
Oh your brother too?
IT:
And my parents came.
NT:
And Barbara’s whole family was in Los Angeles?
IT:
Yes, in fact her whole family is still in Los Angeles. She is the only one that left.
NT:
Okay.
IT:
And my brother after graduating from the University of California and getting married
and after working two years in the Bay Area, he is an architect, was an architect, moved
to Texas because my father kept pushing him and his family because you know how the
oldest son has to. And my brother moved to Texas, opened his practice in Arlington,
Texas while he was engaged in this practice, I went to Austin, University of Texas and I
met somehow I don’t recall the circumstance, but I met an architect from the architect
32
TANIGUCHI
department at the University of Texas. And then my brother remembered that his former
professor had moved from University of California to the University of Texas to take
over the architect program there. And so somehow I got my brother back in contact with
the architect department at the University of Texas. And right after I left the University
of Texas, the University of Texas offered my brother a teaching job in architecture and in
the second year as I said the University of Texas architecture they liked him and he
became Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Texas. And also he
received a design award from the Texas Institute of Architecture for some of his work
that he did in lower (inaudible). But then in the 1960’s during the student movement my
brother (inaudible) design architect and the University of Texas is a very football-minded
school and they, the Board of Regents decided to expand the stadium of the University of
Texas and in order to do that, they had to cut down some oak trees on the creek alongside
the stadium and my brother was dean at the time and his students climbed up on the oak
trees to prevent the booms from cutting down the trees so they got into Life Magazine.
(laughs).
And then the University, the State of Texas was semi-dry state and so they had
these private clubs so to serve alcohol you had to go to a private club. Well my brother
became a member you know as dean and he entertained people and so he joined the
private clubs and the Chairman of the Board of Regents was also in the same club and in
the club, they often had their conflicts but the person that hired my brother as dean was
the President of the University was a close friend and also a close friend of my brother
was the Dean of the Law School of the University of Texas. And in that turmoil period,
when all this took place, the president got fired and the law school dean was under
33
TANIGUCHI
pressure, but when the President got fired then he got hired on as President of the Rice
University in Houston. Because of my brother’s confrontations with the regents and club
and so on, he along with the president got released so my brother went with the president
to Rice and became head of the architect department at Rice.
NT:
Meanwhile you were at the University of Missouri, newly married to Barbara?
IT:
Well no I was back in Fresno, here in Fresno. I came here in 1963.
NT:
Oh, why did you leave Missouri? Or what made you?
IT:
Well Barbara being a native Californian and didn’t adjust too well to the Midwestern
market and I had not finished my dissertation and so I was under pressure to get that done
if I would have stayed in Missouri. And a colleague of mine from the graduate school in
Texas had came here one year before I did, and we were very close friends and he is my
neighbor back here now, and he continued to a, talked me into coming to Fresno State.
And so I was able to come to Fresno State from inside connections you know. Not only
that but the Chairman of the Economic Department at the University of Texas was a close
friend of the Chairman here and they both belonged to the Shokinbach Foundation out of
New York and so to that connections and so on, it was easy to come to Fresno State and
because Barbara wanted to get out of Missouri, I had applied to University, I mean
Portland State University in Fresno. I did not apply to the Bay Area or Los Angeles
because under our system, you had the salary schedule, and you get paid the same
whether you are here or there.
NT:
Right.
IT:
And the cost of living here is much less so it’s a lot more money to be here than it is to be
in the Bay Area. So I came to Fresno.
34
TANIGUCHI
NT:
I see. Were you still ABD?
IT:
ABD yeah. I was ABD until 1970 and teaching twelve units and so on and kind of
delayed my finishing up. I did while I was in Austin I applied to the Ford Foundation for
a grant to go to Japan to finish my research but circumstances didn’t come out right, in
other words, in applying for (inaudible) in Chicago, it was winter time and snow and so
on my flight got grounded in Oklahoma City, and I arrived three hours before my
interview in Chicago and I had, although I had a reservation at the hotel, I arrived in
Chicago at 5AM and my interview was at 8:30 AM and so I had to go to my interview
without shaving. Well that probably didn’t apply into it anyway, so I did not get my
grant to go to Japan so I had to finish up my research with whatever I could get here.
And then in 1975 I did take a sabbatical to complete my research and went to Japan. And
while I was at the University of Houston there was several Japanese students from Japan
and one of the students was a descendant of the major oligarchy that I was including in
my Ph.D dissertation and we became friends and we are still in contact but since her
family was a political family and a member of the (inaudible) party and so she had many
connections and so when I went to Japan to do my research in 1975, she introduced me to
the minister of telecommunications and the minister of finance and when I told her what I
was looking for in (inaudible), I didn’t have to go to a library and do my research the
minister handed me a package of materials. (laughs)
NT:
You need to explain how you and your father came to meet with the Crown Prince? Was
that the same trip? How did all that come about?
IT:
Well I think we should—
NT:
Stop for a minute?
35
TANIGUCHI
IT:
Stop for a minute.
NT:
Okay. All right.
IT:
My father retired from farming in 1967 and when he retired, my brother was living in
Austin, Texas and through his practice and connection at the University, he became
involved in the city and was the architect for the Town Lake Project in Austin which is
the Colorado River has a low level dam and so the landscaping and designing for the use
of that Town Lake was designed by my brother and he came to know the city people
quite a bit.
And then my father retired in 1967 and moved to Austin because my brother’s
family was there and then in the retirement being so active all his life he didn’t have
much to do. So my brother arranged for him to landscape a Japanese garden in the city
park known as Zoka Park and my father proposed that he would landscape and do the
garden for no cost to the city and no out of pocket cost to the city. What he did is the city
has a motor pool for equipment and so on and a casual labor pool. And so all he had to
do was requisition the use of bulldozers or skip loaders or whatever from the city pool
and the location is on the side of a hill and so he landscaped the Japanese garden which
included a stream and a pond and so on and became part of the project of the Greater
Austin Garden Club Project. And because Lady Bird Johnson was a member of the
Garden Club and when the garden was finished, it became one of the city attractions. In
addition to the garden itself, right alongside of the Colorado River he built a lotus pond
and through his connection in Japan, he was able to obtain lotus rhizomes that were given
to the Emperor as diplomatic gifts as with the lotus plant is a symbol of peace in Asia and
so the lotus plants came from the Palace collection of plants. Currently-well the garden
36
TANIGUCHI
in Zoka Park is named Taniguchi Oriental Gardens, and landscaped completely out of
native plants. Also my father had problems planting cherry trees in the garden because
the cherry trees that he planted were susceptible to disease and insects so my father found
a native plant that is in the cherry family and he grafted Japanese flowering cherries to
the native root stock and that turned out pretty well and so they have cherry trees that
blossom in the springtime in the Japanese garden. And so the garden club named the
garden Taniguchi Oriental Garden and it has become an attraction to visitors to Austin
and so on.
But in 1975 when I got my sabbatical to go to Japan, I invited my father to go
with us and I took my whole family, and my father to Japan so at that time Lady Bird
Johnson asked my father to deliver a letter of thank you for the lotus plants to the Crown
Prince and so when we were in Japan, we got an appointment and had an audience with
the Crown Prince and Princess. And at that time I was a Vice-President of Research and
Services for National JACL and so the Crown Prince became very interested and wanted
to know all about how the Japanese-Americans were fairing here in the United States and
he had many questions for me. We thought maybe we would get five or ten minutes with
the Crown Prince but we ended up about an hour with the Crown Prince. And they
served us tea and sembei cookies and so on and offered my father cigarettes from the
Palace although my father really didn’t smoke. (laughs) So it was a very interesting visit
there.
NT:
What did your father have to say about that interview or about the visit or about Japan?
IT:
Oh he was very surprised that we were there with the Prince for so long a period. He
thought we would have about five or ten minutes and he felt the Prince and Princess were
37
TANIGUCHI
very gracious. They didn’t seek then they kind of put us at ease and so on and of course
the secretary that accompanied the Crown Prince was very accommodating. I was kind
of at first a little uneasy, the way things that are done at that level are so formalized so it
wasn’t that bad then.
NT:
Was your mother on the trip as well?
IT:
No, she was not able to go because of her health.
NT:
What did you do for the remainder of the trip and how long were you there?
IT:
We were there three months and in order to make it possible to stay that long if we had to
stay in hotels all that time it would have been very expensive but I had a cousin in Osaka
who was working for Kanebo Cosmetics but he was quartered in Tokyo and his home
was in Osaka. In Japan if you rent out your house or anything, you cannot evict them so
rather than not having a place to go back to by renting it out, he just left it vacant so he
invited us to stay at his house in Osaka, well actually it was a she, my cousin she and her
husband. I had met them back when I was in the occupation of Japan and I had been in
contact with them at that time so we had a whole house to ourselves in Osaka and stayed
there. And also when we were in Tokyo, we had a family that I mean, the son visited the
US and we were the host family here in Fresno and so they invited us, they had enough
apartment project that they lent out and at that time they had one vacant apartment so
they invited us to stay there while we were in Tokyo for three weeks. Plus the fact that
my friend that I had from being at the University of Houston who was in—whose family
is in politics and so on, she put us up at the Pacific Hotel in Tokyo for five days. And so
on that trip, having met a couple of the ministers of the cabinet and so on it was quite an
interesting trip to Japan. Other than that we kind of—outside of that we kind of acted
38
TANIGUCHI
like tourists and went sight seeing. We were guests of my friend in Hakone. We visited
Kyoto many times and saw many temples and we went to Nara, we went to Nikko and so
and then our two boys we had to take them out of school since we left here in early April.
And then we were able to work it out with the school principal that if they were to write a
report on their trip to Japan, that would suffice to make up for the time they were out.
One thing that we regretted that when we were in Japan they are so strict in the
schools that we were not able to visit schools. They will not allow strangers to visit the
schools. However we had a family friend who owned the private school in Misaka so we
were taken on a private tour of the school in Misaka. And also when I was at the
University of Missouri there was a visiting professor from Osaka Agricultural College at
the University of Missouri and we were their guests for a couple of days in Misaka.
NT:
How did your father become a Nuclear Peace Activist?
IT:
Because of the, all that he read about the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki of course he
read it all in Japanese and although my father was not too highly educated, being a high
school, he only graduated from high school, but it seems that the Isseis who finished high
school in Japan during the Meiji period really had intensive education. They had a lot of
(inaudible) because many of them had a lot of top talent and somehow he became
interested in Rousseau’s social contract theory and influenced his thinking about peace
and he vowed that he wanted to go on a pilgrimage in Japan to advocate for peace but he
never did accomplish that. Financially, he was not able to do it himself but he wrote
many papers in Japanese and spread it among his friends. But then, my mother, while in
Texas, took an interest in poetry and became a student of poetry through correspondence
with a well known poet in Japan and she received a ranking among poets when she
39
TANIGUCHI
finished her program. And so because my mother kept writing these poems and
publishing them in the Poetry Magazine Monthly, my father would read them and he
became interested in writing poetry also. And he wrote the, what we call Kanka’s it is a
loose form of Haiku and so he wrote poems advocating peace and also in Texas, the
churches like the Baptist Church every year would come around trying to raise funds and
would come to the farmers and ask them to donate money and so my father always used
to get into conversations with these ministers that came around and asking for donations
about the horrors of a nuclear war and all that and so although my father was not that
proficient in English, I mean he had his English was broken and he mixed it with
Japanese and some Spanish, Mexican Spanish, but he managed to communicate with the
people and I guess he enjoyed talking to the different people about his mission of peace.
Also I mentioned earlier how my mother had received a certificate to teach
Ikebana and because of mother, my father used to take my mother to the Ikebana classes
and provided all the raw materials for these classes and so on and he also became a
student of the Ikebana and he did mainly the large ones cutting down a tree and so on
rather than just cut flowers and so on. And so together my father and my mother used to
do all the flower arrangements for President Johnson at his receptions in Austin at the
Convention Center and so on and my mother had all the equipment, big equipment of
Ikebana and I have some of them here now. So they became pretty close friends with the
Johnsons. And when they got older and their activities became restricted, they moved
into the Rebecca Baines Johnson Senior Housing Project.
NT:
What happened to your mother’s bronze vases during WWII, the ones that she had gotten
from the temple in Japan?
40
IT:
TANIGUCHI
We stored those. We managed to get that back because I guess people didn’t know what
to do with them. (laughs)
NT:
So you stored them in Brentwood?
IT:
Yes.
NT:
What happened to the fifty-five gallon drum?
IT:
We never found. We were never able to reclaim that. My father buried it somewhere
and he thought he knew where he buried it, but we dug everywhere and couldn’t find it.
NT:
So it’s probably still there?
IT:
Could be there.
NT:
When did your parents pass away?
IT:
My mother passed away in 1983 and my father in 1993.
NT:
Were they both in Texas?
IT:
Both in Texas, they are both buried in Austin and so I have two nephews in Austin. The
older one took over my brother’s architectural practice and doing quite well and the
younger one is an attorney in private practice.
NT:
What were your parent’s full names?
IT:
My mother was Sadayo- S-A-D-A-Y-O and my father was Isanu, I-S-A-N-U.
NT:
And your mother’s family name?
IT:
Maiden name was Miyagi-M-I-Y-A-G-I.
NT:
And they were both from Wakayama?
IT:
Wakayama.
NT:
Tell me a little bit about your involvement in the JACL? How did you get started and
how did you get to be the Vice-President?
41
IT:
TANIGUCHI
Okay I first joined JACL with the St. Louis chapter when I was with the University of
Missouri and since Columbia, Missouri is about a hundred and twenty miles from St.
Louis, I only got—I was only able to participate in social functions but I was a member
there and then when I came to Fresno I transferred my membership to the Fresno
Chapter. And I learned more about what JACL was doing and since it is a civil rights
organization, when I was in Texas and Houston and in Austin I got involved in politics
and was with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. I participated in precinct and
county conventions and so on and was very—became pretty much involved in the civil
rights movement and when I was at the University of Missouri, I participated in a sit-in at
the restaurant and things like that. And so when I came to Fresno, I was already aware of
some of the things the JACL was working on and the first thing I was aware that the
JACL was very involved in the McCarran Immigration Act and getting concessions on
immigration and naturalization rights and so on and then in the 1960’s began a movement
to, well first there was anti-miscegenation at the court and rescinding of the Alien Land
Laws and so that’s the reason why I got more and more involved into JACL and I guess it
was about 1968 or 1969 when I first became a member of the Fresno Chapter board and
as a member of the Fresno Chapter board and also—
(tape goes dead)
NT:
You were telling me about getting involved on the Fresno Board of the JACL.
IT:
I think it was about 1968 or 1969 I became a member of the Fresno JACL Chapter Board
and with my connections at the University, the Central District, the Central California
District Council has an annual installation banquet and it used to be a two day thing. We
used to get together on Friday evening and have a business meeting where the officers for
42
TANIGUCHI
the new year would be elected and then we’d spend the Saturday in workshops and
actually in 1969 I, because of two Chinese-Americans girls at the University came to me
and wanted to know why we couldn’t start an Asian-American studies program and they
had gone to the administration first but they apparently hit a stone wall. And so they
came to me and asked how we might start it. And so I proposed that because we had a
program at the University known as Experimental Studies where faculty members can
test out courses and if there is a demand for it, we can put it into the regular curriculum. I
proposed that we start a class in Asian-American studies under the Experimental College
and I volunteered to teach the first Asian-American studies class and since my
department was willing to let me teach one course, that’s what we did and got an
enrollment of sixty students in the one class and so the administration agreed to put it into
the schedule and I was able to start the Asian-American studies program. And I went to
the Dean and he gave me authorization to go out and hire a full time person for the next
year. And in conjunction with teaching the Asian-American studies class, I proposed that
at these Central California District Council workshop, that we should bring in some
speakers and so that is what I arranged to do. We had workshops on the Identity
Question and some of the JACL issues on civil rights.
And at about the same time, Caesar Chavez was starting the United Farm Workers
Union here and because most of the members of the JACL in the Central Valley are
farmers, there was a lot of controversy between Caesar Chavez Union and the farmers.
So we organized workshops on those lines. And we got—I got more and more involved
in bringing to this rural community, what is going on in the urban centers like Los
Angeles and Bay Area with regard to civil rights and so on and started bringing speakers
43
TANIGUCHI
in from that area. And what I did with the authority to hire a full time person in AsianAmerican studies, I hired a Bill Tsugi, who had a Master’s Degree from Los Angeles
State, California State University of Los Angeles and he had his contacts with people in
the Los Angeles area so we were able to get some speakers. And from the Bay Area we
had people like Edison Uno to come in. And at that time Edison Uno was proposing the
repeal of Title Two of the Internal Securities Act of 1950 which was put there by Joe
McCarthy. Now on the Title Two of that law empowered the government or the
President to intern subversives and so on.
NT:
How successful was he?
IT:
We were successful in the mid 1970’s. The Title Two of the Internal Securities Act of
1950 was repealed and signed by President Ford. Another project of the JACL in the
1970’s was to get Executive Order 9066 rescinded. And another project of JACL was
that we felt that Iva Tagori, the person we labeled as Tokyo Rose, was not guilty as
charged and so we had a project to get her pardoned.
NT:
Were all of these successful?
IT:
All of these were successful.
NT:
What was your personal role in all three of these? The Title Two, the rescinding of 9066
and the Iva Tagori case?
IT:
They were to educate the people of the local areas of these were National JACL Projects
and the chapters and districts were trying to educate the people and to lobby local
politicians and the community people to give us support on these projects. And that is
what we do is use the JACL network for such things.
44
NT:
TANIGUCHI
Coming out of the late sixties with the workshops between the Chavez United Farm
Workers and the Nisei farmers, how close was your relationship, your personal
relationship with for example the Nisei Farmers League? Did you have any direct
contact with the League or was it individuals or what?
IT:
With individuals because they were JACL members and actually when I first came to
Fresno in 19—I came here in 1963, in 1964 was an election year and having been active
in the Democratic Party in Texas, however the majority of Nisei here are registered
Republicans. And when the Caesar Chavez started the union movement I suggested, well
the JACL, the President of the Chapter used to have a election orientation night in which
we reviewed the propositions and the candidates and gave presentations on both sides
because JACL being non-profit, cannot be partisan and we used to have those programs.
And at that time I remember telling the people that to deal with union organizations, the
farmers need to organize also. And before that you know the farmers used to complain
about the governments agricultural policy and they complained about how prices were
not high enough and wages were going up too fast and all these types of things. And
being an economist, I advised them they need to organize as a farmers association of
some kind but they didn’t believe in that. Farmers are independent (laughs) individuals.
But when Caesar Chavez organized the union, it forced them to form the Nisei Farmer’s
League.
NT:
Oh, what was their immediate purpose when they formed the Nisei Farmer’s League?
IT:
To counteract I mean the UFW I mean although they were not recognized by the
(inaudible) at that time, they individual members of the organization engaged in some
violence like vandalism on the farms, damaging equipment of the farmers and things like
45
TANIGUCHI
that and consequently they organized, they had to organize to help each other out. In fact
I think there were some farmers who patrolled the farms at night to watch out for any
vandalism and so on. And in order to do that, they had to organize to see who is on duty
and this and that.
NT:
Were the Nisei also organizing with farmers of other ethnic backgrounds at this time?
IT:
Yes, when the Nisei farmers got organized, other farmers in the region joined in and in
fact now, I think there are very few Japanese in the organization. Most of them are nonJapanese because the Sanseis have not taken over the farms.
NT:
Is it still called the Nisei Farmer’s League?
IT:
I—it is still there. There is an office here but there is a Stockton branch of the Nisei
Farmer’s League also.
NT:
Populated by a lot of other?
IT:
A lot of other people and they have an annual banquet in February, I think.
NT:
How did this kind of activity helping the farmer or encouraging the farmers to organize in
the face of the farm worker pressure, how did that square in your own mind with your
civil rights activities back in Missouri and Texas?
IT:
Okay, now in the late 1960’s when the college campuses or students became very active,
the young people and urban tenors were very sympathetic with the union. And actually
the JACL hired some youth into their regional offices like in Los Angeles. And they, I
don’t know whether you heard of the name Warren Furutani, he became—he was
employed by the Los Angeles Pacific Southwest District office, regional office and
because he was sympathetic, he had a banner of the United Farm Workers on his office
wall, as a result the Central California District Council here called him on the carpet and
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TANIGUCHI
tried to educate him on some of the problems some of the JACL members were farmers
were having. And so we had several meetings here by bringing those young staff
members and trying to educate them but at the same time, they were educating us about
the civil rights movement.
NT:
Did this have any resolution or was there just tension?
IT:
It was quite a bit of tension at the time but there was a resolution where the JACL had to
ask them to take down their banners and be more considerate. And then we had to—well
some of JACL chapters and districts of the urban centers passed resolutions in support of
the UFW and the Central California District Council objected to that, for example, at the
Chicago Convention.
NT:
Did that have—what affect did that have on the JACL as a national force, for example, in
trying to get Executive Order 9066 rescinded or anything like that? It seems that the
split was taking place at the same time of these national projects. Is that true?
IT:
Yes, but then because we were all involved in the evacuation rescinding of 9066 and so
on, I mean, I think we were above the UFW controversy because that was only between
mainly the Central California JACL and all the rest of the National JACL.
NT:
What about your other experiences? You said that you were active as a liberal Democrat
in Houston and Austin, that you were involved in the civil rights movement and at the
University of Missouri and sit-ins at restaurants. First of all, were those activities to aid
the civil rights of others or were you still discriminated against as a Japanese-American?
IT:
No, I was supporting the African-American and the NAACP and so on because when I
was in Houston as a grad—when I was a research assistant at the University of Houston,
the Bureau of Business Research received a grant from CBS to do a study within
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TANIGUCHI
Houston, Harris County of the situation I don’t exactly remember the actual title of that
project but being involved in that project, I found out that the segregated school system,
the black schools many of the teachers in the black schools had only an eighth grade
education. And I began to see the inequities in the schools. I mean there is no such thing
as equal, separate but equal, and all that so I got involved in trying to support the civil
rights movement.
NT:
In what ways was that similar and different from the UFW movement here which also
was in depth civil rights?
IT:
UFW only overlapped in civil rights. It was really a labor management situation. And,
well when I was at the University of Houston getting my Master’s Degree, my Master’s
Degree emphasized labor economics. And I was familiar with the labor laws, the
National Labor Relations Act and the Wagner Act and all that and therefore I was very
sympathetic with the farm workers, their living conditions and wages were way out of
line. I guess my economics kind of tied into that situation and I felt that how they
discrimination and segregation in the labor market was a total waste as far as American
economy was concerned, we were wasting human resources.
NT:
How much of that could you communicate to the farmers in the CCDC?
IT:
I tried to communicate but at the JACL meetings, I was kind of labeled.
NT:
What was your label?
IT:
As a pinko. (laughs)
NT:
I think you’ve come a long way from that. You are certainly one of the most respected
individuals in the CCDC today.
IT:
Well I don’t know about that.
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TANIGUCHI
NT:
No, I was there when you got the Ruby Pin. How has this transition taken place?
IT:
Well, I’m not one that goes for confrontation. I am a strong believer in education. So I
continue to kind of bring about the people on both sides together and discuss and talk and
so and so every year when they had the CCDC, Central District Council Conventions, I
was involved in organizing workshops to bring speakers in who will talk about the other
side and try to reconcile the differences and follow the path where we had common
grounds. We always agreed when there were differences we tried to work it out by
talking about it in the workshops and so on.
NT:
Who were some of the speakers you brought in at this particular sensitive time when the
UFW was organizing?
IT:
Well, present day we had Warren Furutani, Edison Uno, Ray Okamura. Ray Okamura at
the time, he was the chair of the National JACL Committee to have Title Two repealed.
And they were all activists. In fact Jim Matsuoka who was sort of an artist who does
caricatures and so on was also on that too. And then when I hired Bill Tsugi he was
friends of all of these activists in the Los Angeles area and then because Bill Tsugi only
had a Masters again the administration said that he could not stay on unless he got his
doctorate so he had to move on. And then I hired Steven Tom from again LA State. He
also had a Master’s and was here for two or three years. And then the Department of
Anthropology hired James—the name slipped my mind. James Jen and he served it for
one year but he was an anthropologist and not really an Asian-American scholar so he
served for one year and then we went out and made a search and we hired Franklin Ng
and we hired Franklin Ng in 1975. Then and actually he arrived here when I was on
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TANIGUCHI
sabbatical in Japan. But I was able to be involved in the search before I left on the
sabbatical and then he’s been here practically ever since.
NT:
Yes.
IT:
Then back at in those days one year when we had Edison Uno here as a speaker at one of
the workshops, he had mentioned about redress, reparations so we had an informal
conversation and so at that time I became a supporter of reparations having gone through
the 1959 Evacuation Claims Act, my father applied for some of that. But then under the
Claims Act we were required to supply evidence of our losses. And all of our evidence
was lost in the situation of everything so I mean it was like a catch 22 situation and I felt
there had to be something done about the fact that attention be brought to the fact that our
Constitutional Rights were violated in evacuation but left it at that. But then Edison Uno
introduced the resolution at National JACL Convention in Washington D.C. and I think
that was 1970 and in concept the resolution passed but nothing was done about it. And
each year another resolution was passed 1972, 1974 and it was not until the 1976
National Convention that a resolution was finally passed to form a reparations committee
at the National level.
NT:
Were you involved in that?
IT:
No, I was not directly involved, although let’s see. In 1972, I became the Governor of
the Central California District Council and went on the National Board and while I was
on the National Board, we had some problems. We had the governors were automatic
members of the National Board and then we had elected officers of National to make up
the rest of the National Board. And the executive director and the national officers would
have an executive council caucus before our National Board meetings and they would
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TANIGUCHI
come to the National Board meetings with all of these recommendations and somebody
would make a motion but the governors was not aware of what was going on yet. And so
we, the governors got together and I proposed that we create a governors caucus so that
we can block vote on the board if we are not ready to vote. And so I mean that is when
we formed the Governor’s Caucus of the National Board.
NT:
Was it successful in meeting your objectives?
IT:
At the time it was and some people are objecting to it now that the Governor’s Caucus
has too much power. But at least it, you know, provided us with a voice to give us a
chance to study whatever resolutions or proposals are being made by the National
Council. And while I was Governor of the Central California, we did not have a regional
office yet. And I found that it was difficult as governor to keep in communication and so
although we did have a small budget from National for stationary and things like that, we
did not have an office and telephone and so on. So I wrote a proposal to create a
regional office here in Central California.
NT:
Okay.
IT:
And at the same time I felt it would be nice if we used the regional office to have a dropin center for the senior citizens.
NT:
What would be the function for the senior citizens?
IT:
Well, we would help—I mean the service center. Right now we call it the Nikki Service
Center here to provide service to the Issei, we still had Isseis at that time who were
Japanese speaking so when it comes to social security issues and medical problems and
someone at the service center would help them out. So I wrote up a proposal and took it
to the National Board and at the 1974 Convention we were allocated seventeen thousand
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TANIGUCHI
five hundred dollars to establish a regional office and the service center, to open a service
center. And so we searched for a location and found out this place 912 F street was open
and we can get that for a nominal rental fee so we took some of that money and put in
new lighting, carpeting and so on and made it into the regional office. But before we did
that, this address became the regional office of Central California and Barbara was the
secretary for the regional office until we were able to move into our regional office.
NT:
How long did this house serve that purpose?
IT:
Almost a year until we were able to get the place refurbished and set up for, get furniture
and air conditioning and so on.
NT:
And as soon as the office was ready did you hire a staff? Who did you hire?
IT:
Yes, the first Regional Director of the service center was Rita Yee who was a student in
Asian-American studies program at Fresno State. And then about a year after that we
hired Yokota, I can’t think of her first name who was, who had a lot of ideas. Well, I am
not sure whether Rita Yee or Yokota who started the monthly birthday program but I
know Yokota is the one who started the hot lunch program for the seniors and we got and
also she applied for at that time the CETA Grant, C-E-T-A and we received about fortyfive thousand dollars each year on the CETA Grant so we were able to get a van for
transportation through the Older American’s Act and we had a staff of about four people
in the service center. And actually the CETA Grant permitted us to really get the service
center started but when President Reagan was elected and we went to Block Grants the
CETA was eliminated and we had to cut things back because we didn’t, we could not hire
people from the grant. And then when Ms. Yokota left Sachi Kuwamota became the
Regional Director and Director of the Service Center. You know, through that activity in
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TANIGUCHI
the 1972-1974 period, I got talked into running for Vice-President of National JACL so I
became Vice-President for National JACL, Vice President for Research and Services, at
the 1974 convention, served ‘til 1976. And while I was on the National Board, I became
a member of the JACL National Education Committee and that committee, well we
had—we got a grant and got what was that? Well a grant from the U.S. Department of
Education so we published a teacher’s manual on the Japanese-American experience in
1975. And ever since that time, I’ve been involved as a district—Central California
District representative on the education program of the National JACL. And then in the
JACL I have served on many National Committees such as the, right now known as the
Nikkei Biennium, the National Scholarship Committee, Nominations Committee and of
course, the Education Committee so ever since becoming Governor, I’ve been involved at
the National level.
NT:
Is that something typical for a Governor or are you just a more active person?
IT:
Well, it is not typical and most people serve the term, their Governor’s term and then they
drop out. They don’t continue on in National affairs. Some of them stay on another term
or two and go to National Conventions but only a few people stayed involved or continue
like Fred Hirasuna, Frank Nishio.
NT:
What do you feel has been your greatest personal satisfaction from your JACL
involvement?
IT:
The greatest personal satisfaction was the success in the redress movement and I strongly
believe and the fact when I was evacuated, feeling like a person without a country and
losing faith somewhat, and in getting redress passed, I learned a whole lot about how our
system really works. And in order to make it work, you have to be involved. You got to
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TANIGUCHI
lobby, you got to raise funds. You got to lobby, you have to find out the contacts, make
contacts and so right now I am involved in these teacher education—teacher training
workshops to tell our story about the Japanese-American experience and how we were
able to get redress, being a very small minority and getting all the support in Congress
was a lot of hard work but then we really learned how to do it and so it has restored faith
in the system that if you work at it, you can accomplish something.
NT:
What role did you personally fulfill in the redress campaign?
IT:
Mainly, the District and Chapter level, helping to raise funds when National needed funds
for lobbying purposes. I served as the fundraising chair of the chapter most of the years.
At the District level, well my first National Board meeting as Governor, I roomed, my
roommate was James Sujimura who was going to become, who was Governor of the
Pacific Northwest District and he eventually became President of National JACL. But
there was a small group of people in Seattle who from the outset organized a proposal for
going for redress. Their proposal was not approved as it was but they contributed a lot to
the education of how to go for redress and so on. But James Sujimura came to the
National Board Meeting and he was asked by that committee in Seattle to feel out the
National Board about how they feel about redress. And he asked me and I told him about
my meeting with Edison Uno who talked about redress and told him that I was very
sympathetic but we have a lot of educating to do in JACL because most of the Niseis
were opposed for going for reparations.
NT:
Why?
IT:
By the mid 1960’s then Japanese-Americans had successfully recovered from the
evacuation and Newsweek Magazine labeled them as the model minority and statistically
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TANIGUCHI
if you calculate average income per capita, we were above that average and so most of
the Nisei were saying “Don’t rock the boat.” And culturally it is not in the books for
Niseis to demand reparations. But that was because they focused on reparations only, not
on the Constitutional aspect of evacuation. And the twenty thousand dollars that we
received is earnest money, it is really not reparations, I mean. If it were reparations, we
should have been paid a whole lot more. But it was just a token thing to go along with
the apology from the government to make the apology meaningful. Even it were one
thousand dollars, it would have been just as meaningful because we lived in a different
(inaudible) society.
NT:
What specific steps did you take to try and educate the Nisei about the reparation
campaign?
IT:
We had workshops annually at the convention on redress year after year. At the Chapter
levels, we spoke to people and in the community from the mid 1960’s I was going to high
schools and Pacific College and so on to tell the story about evacuation and redress and
so on whereas there are many Nisei who are unwilling to talk about it. And I wondered
whether the severe competition that the Niseis faced in California in recovering from the
evacuation had anything to do with not wanting to talk too much about it to their kids and
so on. But I have no feelings about that. I told our two boys and whatever and they knew
about the situations. In fact when I went to National Conventions, they always went
along with us. We took the whole family to Convention and I think, I feel the older son
Neal now living in San Francisco, he is pretty much involved; in fact, he went to work for
JACL at the National Headquarters for a couple of years and then he became VicePresident of Operations for JACL and not only that, during this a, 1970’s Barbara and I
55
TANIGUCHI
were senior advisors for JAY, the Japanese American Youth JACL youth arm. We had a
chapter here and we advised them and took them on field trips and took them to
conferences and so on. So I was kind of involved in that and Barbara became President
of the Fresno chapter. And in the community we have done things like, we’ve sponsored
specific Philharmonic Concerts. We sponsored exhibits and Barbara was really involved
when she was President. And so I’ve always felt that JACL not only did we, should we
engage in things for the Japanese-American community but we also need to support
(inaudible).
Then getting to the end now, I taught at Fresno State for thirty years. Served as
Department Chair for sixteen of the thirty years and right upon my retirement, I was
asked to serve on the grand jury, county grand jury, and spent one year on the grand jury.
And since my retirement I’ve worked with the Friends of the County Library and was
involved in getting and increase in sales tax for the benefit of the library last year.
NT:
What year did you retire?
IT:
Nineteen ninety-three. And while, also in terms of education, I got involved in mid
1970’s I got involved with the State Department of Education and served on legal
compliance handles to clean up public school text books on the presentations you know
and derogatory terms that were used in text books about American Indians being savages
and name calling at minority people and so on that were in print. I served, I headed in
fact I chaired panels to review text books and then recommended (inaudible) all that and
then recommending to the State Curriculum Commission what the problems with some of
the books were and so on. Then I was appointed to a State Commission--The
Educational—Innovation—no, Education and Innovational Planning Commission which
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TANIGUCHI
involved Title Four. Then I served on the Asian-Pacific American Advisory Council to
the Superintendant of Instruction.
NT:
For how long?
IT:
What was that, a couple years ago—for about two or three years on that after—well after
and during the time I was on the Education and Innovation Planning Commission which
was Title Four and when President Regaan got elected and went to block grants, the
whole Title Four was wiped out so. And then I was appointed to the Jesse Unruh
Assembly Fellowship Executive Board.
NT:
Is that the one that chooses?
IT:
Chooses the Fellows to the State Assembly.
NT:
And how long did you serve on that?
IT:
Two years.
NT:
So you have been very involved in education.
IT:
That’s right. Also I served at the Advisory—on the Advisory Council for School of
Education and Human Development at Fresno.
NT:
I want to go back to a couple of questions that I had. From when you were speaking
earlier and I guess the easiest way to do that would be to start at the beginning. You told
me a lot about your brother but you never told me his name.
IT:
Oh, before evacuation before we went to camp he was known as Yamato-Y-A-M-A-T-O.
and he took on the name Alan-A-L-A-N while he was in camp.
NT:
Why did he do that?
IT:
I’m not sure what the reason was. I guess too many people. It may have been because he
was planning to go to Detroit and leave the camp and he needed an Anglo name.
57
NT:
TANIGUCHI
And you also mentioned that your uncle, your father’s brother came to the United States
and what was his name?
IT:
Katsuji-K-A-T-S-U-J-I. But then he took on the name Edward.
NT:
You said he was about a few years older than you?
IT:
No, he was just a few years younger than my father.
NT:
Oh okay. Did you do anything in particular with him, with your uncle? Or was he just a
farm laborer or was he part of the family and took you fishing?
IT:
Yeah, we used to go fishing all together. He loved to go fishing.
NT:
Where did you go?
IT:
Oh this was in Texas. We used to go to the Gulf of Mexico. Port Isabel.
NT:
When you were back living in Brentwood and you said the whole family lived in the one
house, who was living there?
IT:
My grandparents.
NT:
Okay.
IT:
My parents and my brother and I.
NT:
And your uncle?
IT:
No, he married and had his own home. He had two children, a son and a daughter. And
my cousin Edward, Jr. lives in Arlington, Texas. And my cousin Yuri Shida, S-H-I-D-A
lives in Mission, Texas and then we had a, I grew up with another cousin which is a
second cousin in Brentwood and she became quite well-known, Michi Reagan.
NT:
Oh yeah, that’s your second cousin? (laughs) So she was one of the—you said there were
about fourteen Japanese families?
IT:
Right, the Nishiura family was her maiden name was Nishiura, N-I-S-H-I-U-R-A.
58
NT:
TANIGUCHI
In Brentwood. When the, in the thirties, with the drought and all the Dust Bowl migrants
coming to Brentwood, what were the attitudes expressed towards the newcomers?
IT:
My mother was a very sensitive person and she, I probably shouldn’t say she felt sorry
for them, but she empathized with them a great deal and so many of them came to the
farm to ask for jobs and so on but most of our workers were all Filipino workers who
lived in—we had housing for them and everything. But then, there was a couple of
families whose car broke down on one corner of our farm and they just camped there so
my mother said leave them alone.
NT:
Did you employ them?
IT:
Well they did little odd chores around and (inaudible).
NT:
How long were they around?
IT:
Well just less than a year I think they finally found a job somewhere.
NT:
The Filipinos you had working on the farm, how did you—how did you originally hire
them?
IT:
In the 1930’s many Filipinos came here to work on the farms and I think one, hiring one
or two of them lead to bringing in their friends so they tended to have clans and so if you
hire one, they bring the whole clan.
NT:
And then did their children go to school with you?
IT:
Yes, those that had families, in fact one girl that lives in Freemont now Rose (inaudible),
her family did all the cooking for the Filipino workers.
NT:
Are you still in touch with her?
IT:
No.
NT:
Did you hire any other ethnicities to work on the farm?
59
IT:
TANIGUCHI
Some Mexican workers during the harvest season or planting season when we had to
have a little extra. The Filipinos were more—well many of them were seasonal but then
we had a number of Filipinos that were year round. And so we had this—I mean we
housed and fed all the Filipino workers and before we hired this family to do the cooking
and feeding them, my mother used to do the cooking and fed all the workers.
NT:
How many were there? How many workers?
IT:
During the peak of season we had sixty, seventy workers but year round, we had about
six.
NT:
How did your mother and father meet?
IT:
They are from the same village.
NT:
Oh I see.
IT:
And in Japan most of the marriages are arranged by family.
NT:
Right.
IT:
And actually way back there, Barbara’s family were family relatives of my greatgrandparents, her great-grandparents and my great-grandparents were probably relatives.
NT:
What were your grandparent’s names?
IT:
My grandfather’s name was Yunosuke, Y-U-N-O-S-U-K-E and my grandmother’s name
was Kinu, K-I-N-U.
NT:
And her maiden name?
IT:
Yuasa, Y-U-A-S-A. And Barbara’s great grandparents were from the Yuasa house clan.
NT:
I see. Well it sounds like your grandfather was a very innovative man to learn about auto
mechanics and—
IT:
No, my father.
60
NT:
TANIGUCHI
Your father—your father was very innovative to learn about auto mechanics in 1914.
That is a little early on. Was that one of his traits, would you say?
IT:
Well he went to a trade school in Los Angeles. And it came in handy because when they
bought that Caterpillar tractor and did and he knew something about the internalcombustion engine.
NT:
That partnership that he formed the five farmers? Were they all Japanese?
IT:
One was Caucasian. There were six members all together in the association. He was the
sixth one.
NT:
I see. (pause) Oh, you talked about the business association that your father formed in
Brentwood, the Produce Association?
IT:
Uh-huh.
NT:
And that they had an association with the California Berkeley and Stanford that resulted
in getting tickets to sporting events. How did that association develop?
IT:
No, it was just the business manager’s connection. The business manager who became—
who founded the Watsonville Strawberry Cooperative after the war, his name was Ted
Tomita, T-O-M-I-T-A.
NT:
Okay.
IT:
And through the success of the Strawberry Cooperative in Watsonville, he was appointed
by the—I think it was during the Kennedy Administration as an Agricultural Consultant
to Puerto Rico. Also, the Brentwood Produce Association was the very first shipper of
green-wrap tomatoes to wax the tomato; in other words, it contracted with the Food and
Machinery Corporation out of San Jose to invent the machinery conveyor belts and tubs
61
TANIGUCHI
to wash the tomatoes that come from the fields and dry it through a roller mechanism and
wax it automatically before it was packed for shipping.
NT:
Who was doing all the packing or was it done mechanical?
IT:
We hired seasonal workers for the packing. We hired seasonal workers who were
specialists in making boxes to pack the tomatoes in and stuff.
NT:
What did you have to do personally on the farm?
IT:
On the farm? I just drove the truck and hauled the tomatoes to the packing shed or drove
the tractor and things like that.
NT:
You mentioned earlier that your dad also gardened. Did the gardens in Brentwood, right?
IT:
Well that was his own personal garden.
NT:
Did he garden for others?
IT:
No.
NT:
But how much did you do on the garden?
IT:
I mean?
NT:
Did you have any specific chores or just sort of helped out?
IT:
Oh just chores like watering the plants or something like that but see Brentwood is still in
the valley so it is quite dry.
NT:
Oh, and you mentioned that your grandparents visited Japan in 1937 and that they retired
there in 1940. What part of Japan?
IT:
Wakayama.
NT:
Were they still there when you went back after—?
IT:
In the occupation?
NT:
In the occupation?
62
IT:
TANIGUCHI
I went back to look them up after I got to Japan and they were there. In fact they came to
visit me in (inaudible) Japan when I was in the service.
NT:
What did you tell your grandparents about the internment?
IT:
I didn’t tell them very much about the internment. I told them our family was fine. I
always tried to help them out. I mean things in Japan were really horrible after the
bombing and destruction and when I first arrived in Tokyo, the whole city was leveled.
And people were living under bridges and so on and they were very hungry and that
was—when I first got there and I got worried about my grandparents and friends and
worried about how they were so when I first visited them, I found out that they were on a
farm and so, they were much better off.
NT:
How much did the destruction of Japan affect your father? I understand he got his peace
activist ideas from reading about the war in Japanese? What kind of literature or what
was—what was the major theme perhaps of his literature as opposed to what you might
have gotten in English?
IT:
Well, of course we have Japanese language magazines here in San Francisco, Los
Angeles and he subscribed to all of them. And also, he subscribed to Japanese magazines
and literature after the war. I can remember when things settled down.
NT:
Did he ever discuss with you what he was reading?
IT:
Not specifically but I know that he was receiving various kinds of magazines in Japan.
NT:
What language did you speak at—
(tape ends abruptly)