Japanese Americans

Items

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  Frances Tashima interview

  Talks about growing up in Livingston, her family history, attending school and what she did for fun as a child.  She talks about going to college at San Jose State, Pearl Harbor and getting the evacuation notice.  She discusses being sent to the Merced Assembly Center and applying to Eastern colleges to get back to her education. She discusses how she was accepted at Colorado State and talks about getting married while finishing her education and her husband being sent off in the Army to fight in the Aleutians.  She talks about working for the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the latter part of the war in San Francisco, having children and the loss of her daughter in childhood and discusses her grandchildren.
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  George Okada interview

  Talks about his parents immigrating from Japan and eventually settling in Fresno County, his siblings, attending Parlier Grammar School and Parlier High School and doing farm labor.  He discusses how Japanese cultural values were instilled in him as a child, and his decision not to attend college.  He talks about Pearl Harbor and the aftermath and evacuation.  He discusses being sent to the Gila River War Relocation Center and refusing to answer the loyalty questionnaire after being refused entry into the Army.  He talks about being sent to Tule Lake as a result of this, working at the camp newspaper and getting fired over printing a controversial article.  He discusses later being sent to the Fort Lincoln Internment Camp in Bismark, North Dakota with other "renunciants" and participating in a class action law suit against the renunciation and later winning in court.  He talks about getting married post-war and buying a farm, having children, enjoying travel and gives advice for Sansei and Yonsei generations.
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  Fude Tanioka interview

  Relates her life experiences and evacuation and incarceration during World War II.  Interview is in Japanese.
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  Sadawo Yonaki interview

  Sadawo Yonaki's father was from Okinawa and immigrated to Mexico to work in coal mines, then moved on to the U.S. in 1905.  He went back to Japan and returned with his new wife in 1914.  Sadawo is the second of five children, born in Baldwin Park, California in 1917.  They lived in Earlimart and he was a member of a judo club in Delano.  He and his mother sent to the Fresno Assembly Center and then to Rohwer War Relocation Center.  His father was sent to Camp Lordsburg in New Mexico, then to Rohwer.   Sadawo met his wife in the Fresno Assembly Center and they were married in Rohwer in 1944.  He expresses his thoughts on the issue of redress.
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  Frank Nishio (Dr) interview

  Talks about family history and growing up in the valley, being educated in Japan and Fresno State, attempting to volunteer for the army medical corps after Pearl Harbor.  He discusses being incarcerated in the Fresno Assembly Center and the Jerome War Relocation Center in Arkansas, teaching at the University of Michigan and finally being accepted into the army in intelligence. He talks about his relatives being sent to Tule Lake and returning to Fresno after the war.  He discusses working in Japan after the war for the army and getting further education in Minnesota and Illinois before getting sent by the army to Korea, and practicing optometry in El Centro, Fresno and Clovis.  He also talks about getting married and participating in the JACL.