TOKYO — When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, the first thing Hidekazu Tamura, a Japanese American living in California, thought was, “I’ll be killed at the hands of my fellow Americans.” It wouldn’t be the last time he felt that way.
At 99, amid commemorations of today’s 75th anniversary of the formal Sept. 2, 1945, surrender ceremony that ended World War II, Tamura has vivid memories of his time locked up with thousands of other Japanese Americans in U.S. internment camps. Torn between two warring nationalities, the experience led him to refuse a loyalty pledge to the United States, renounce his American citizenship and return to Japan.
“I have too many stories to tell,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Born in Los Angeles to Japanese farmers, his parents earned enough money to return to Japan in just a few years, buying a farm near Osaka.
Against his family’s wishes, Tamura moved back to the United States alone in 1938 when he was 17, after his dream of becoming an aircraft pilot was crushed when he failed an eye exam. The United States, he hoped, would provide him the same opportunities his parents received.
But Tamura arrived in California amid rising discrimination against Asians, and Japanese in particular. His uncle, who ran a grocery store, once drove him to a fancy hilltop restaurant in San Francisco and showed him a sign outside that read, “Orientals Not Allowed.”
“I saw that and thought, ‘Bloody hell!’ And that awakened me as a Japanese,” he said.
When the war began, Tamura was finishing his college studies in aircraft engineering. But in February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an order that led to the incarceration of an estimated 120,000 people with Japanese ancestry, including those, like Tamura, with U.S. citizenship.
The following year, the government asked those in the camps whether they would serve in combat for the U.S. military, and whether they would swear unqualified allegiance to the United States, renouncing loyalty to Japan.
The questions divided the Japanese community between those seen as loyal to the United States and those loyal to Japan. The split caused fights and even killings in the camps.
Many men answered “yes” to both questions, enlisting to fight in the U.S. military abroad even as their families were stripped of their property and locked in the camps.
Tamura said he answered “no” to both questions. He was sent to Tule Lake, a segregation center for those deemed disloyal, where he joined a group called “Hokoku Seinen Dan,” which means, “Young Men’s Association to Serve the Fatherland.”
The group was initially meant to educate and prepare U.S.-born, second-generation Japanese Americans, many of whom had never been to Japan, for an uncertain future, including possible deportation, according to Sachiko Takita-Ishii, professor of Sociology at the Yokohama City University.
For a time, Tamura said he served as spokesman for the group, whose activities were eventually seen as subversive by the U.S. government.
Looking back, Tamura admits the marches were dangerous, but patriotism had inspired the young members of the group, which Tamura said numbered around 500 during the time he was there.
“It’s war with Japan, so we thought we’d be killed eventually anyway,” he said, by way of explanation of his risky activities in the camps. Secretly, Tamura hoped the Japanese military would rescue him.
While at Tule Lake, Tamura and a group of others were branded as troublemakers and transferred to the higher security Santa Fe Internment Camp. It was his fourth and last camp.
Despite the turmoil of internment, he now remembers with bittersweet nostalgia the camaraderie and friendships he made during those days.
Even though he resisted in the camps, he said he has always liked Americans. There’s “no feeling (of being an) enemy or anything like that,” he said.
