Kennie and Ruth Namba

Kennie and Ruth Namba were passionate advocates for sharing the incarceration story, and found themselves lecturing to schools and organizations about their experience. Kennie (Kenji) was a lauded veteran of the 100th/442nd, as well as the plaintiff in a high court case in Oregon that took on the discriminatory Alien Land Laws. After graduating from The University of Portland in 1953, he worked at Pacific Power and Light for 30 years. Ruth Namba, born in Hood River, Oregon, returned after WWII to Portland with Kennie. She worked for Portland Public Schools as a nutritionist, was known for her beautiful artistic touch in florals and baking cakes. Ahead of their forced removal, Ruth remembers the difficult departure of the Japanese Americans at the train stations. “We had a couple of friends and all our girlfriends [that] we used to roam around with, and all of a sudden, we have to catch a train to go to the camp assembly center. Do you know, they're all out there and they're giving us a goodbye, you know, and they're all in tears, too. And they gave us a big hug before we got on the train. And it was kind of sad at the time.” 

This interview was conducted in Portland in 2003. Kennie passed away at the age of 87 in 2012. Ruth passed away in 2016 at the age of 92.

We're at the lovely home of Kennie and Ruth Namba in Portland, Oregon. So can we start with you, Mr. Namba? 

My name is Kennie Namba. I was born in an area called Fairview, Oregon. I was born on a farm in 1925. May 2nd, to be exact. My given name was actually Kenji K-E-N-J-I, but I had that legally changed after I started university. When I came back from the war to Kennie.

Okay. And Ruth? 

Ruth: Okay. My name is Ruth Namba, my maiden name is Ruth Inukai Namba now. I was born in Hood River. I was born on August the 15th 1924.

So Kennie you were born in 1925. So you're very close in age. Can we start out by you painting a picture of what life was like before Pearl Harbor? And to do that, if your parents came straight from Japan or from anywhere else, maybe you can tell the name of your parents and where they came from.

Kennie: My dad and mom came from of area called Okayama Japan. They came here after the turn of the century, I think. I'm not exactly sure of the exact year, but they must have been here around 1910. Dad came first and Mom came later. But Dad came here originally, like hundreds of other Issei with the intent of making some money. Actually, and taking the amount of money that they could accumulate over a period of time back to Japan and reinvesting it and having a better life for themselves. But that, as we know, didn't occur.

How many sisters and brothers did you have?

I had two brothers and two sisters.

Well, what was life like for you growing up before Pearl Harbor?

Ruth: We used the busses and the Hood River high school before the war.

How about elementary?

Elementary was not too far, about two miles. But we used to walk to school in the snow, rain and all that. It's a little country, you know. So you never knew too many people before the war. We were too young to roam around so most of us kind of stayed home.

It's the country life. 

Right. And nothing but apple orchard in that area. 

Do you remember the day Pearl Harbor was bombed?

Kennie: Yeah, vaguely. I do. You know, I think you probably weren't matured to a point that we could recall. But it was Sunday, and I was on a farm, and I was actually out on the farm harvesting in December. We had some real late crop brussels sprouts and cabbage, and I can't tell you whether we were harvesting cabbage or brussel sprouts, but it was one of the two items that we had on the farm.

I don't remember precisely the hour, but it was after noon or somewhere close to that. If I remember our time, it came over the radio and my sister was home at that particular time and she heard that Pearl Harbor got bombed by the Japanese government or from Japan. And she came out to the field, as I remember, and she told us that, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Didn't give it much thought, really, because…

Japan bombed so many places.

But were we wrong in our assumptions. Because, you know, as we lived through it, the war affected us in all kinds of different ways and in different matters. So it did affect us but at that particular time, no, we didn't give it really that much of a thought in so far as consequences go. But I can remember when President Roosevelt got on the radio and he made this speech about the declaration. That sound of President Roosevelt still lingers in my mind that.

Yes, were you scared. What did you feel as you listen to his speech? Do you remember?

When I say that even at our young age, when there was the declaration of war, that meant mobilization of people. And, you know, I must have had some feeling regarding being a citizen of the United States that we would eventually be involved in the war effort.

I think in comparison to a 16 year old youth today, to my age when I was 16, there probably a vast difference in maturity because we did almost what an adult person would do. We might have been an equal for what I say today is 16 youth. But from other ways and other aspects, I think we were matured a lot more.

This speech, did you listen to it at school? At an assembly or at home?

Lets see, December 7th is the day that the war was declared? As far as Japan dropping the bomb, I don't think President Roosevelt was actually on the air until the following Monday. And I think I probably heard parts of it at school.

Did you know there was a lot of people rounded up by the FBI? Were there any in your community that you knew of?

I don’t know of any Japanese people that – I take it back. There were one family in Gresham and I may not be totally right, but I kind of remember a conversation that there was a family call the Kotos. Mr. Koto was quite active with some of the Japanese organizations, and I think the FBI rounded him up and they took him. I don't know where, but ultimately, I think he probably ended up in a federal penitentiary.

Okay. I'll ask the same questions of Ruth. What do you remember the day Pearl Harbor was bombed?

Ruth: Like Kennie was saying, he was young, and we didn't have any TV or anything like that. So how we heard is some friend of my uncle had called us and they mentioned something about Japan dropping bombs on Pearl Harbor. 

Oh you had a telephone? 

So that's how we all got to know that something had happened. But that year, like Kennie would say, you never thought anything of it, you know? So like Kennie was saying when he went to school, I think that's where they talked about it in the auditorium. But then from that very day, we felt kind of bad the way they started treating us. You know, if you’re Japanese, it just kind of was hard. And so we kind of ignored all that. But, you know, we had a couple of your friends and all our girlfriends we used to roam around with, and all of a sudden, we have to catch a train to go to the camp assembly center. Do you know they're all out there and they're giving us goodbye, you know, and they're all in tears, too. And they gave us a big hug before we got on the train. And it was kind of sad at the time. 

After Pearl Harbor and after some of the FBI roundup, there was a travel restriction and also a curfew. Did that impact your life?

Kennie: Yeah, I think it affected us somewhat. I mean, for one reason we were restricted from traveling after 8 p.m. and traveling before 6 a.m. in the morning. And so for some reason Dad had to go something beyond a limitation, which was 12 miles. He needed a permit because if he didn't have a permit and for some reason he got picked up by the military police or by the civilian police, they would book him in jail, which happened to a few of the Japanese.

But living within their community, 12 miles was okay. But what was real hard to accept was the fact that there would be things that you wanted to do. Like, for instance, if I wanted to go to a basketball game during that period, I couldn't be involved because every function that was taking place was after, say, 7:00 p.m. and it lasted to about 10:00. So that meant that I was restricted to stay within the residence. And that was with all Nisei people that we couldn't do anything that we really wanted to do.

How about your family? Did you have to destroy anything?

Yeah. Let me give you some basics on what we had to do with our personal possessions. First of all, after they issued the Executive Order 9066, it was quite clear that they were going to eventually move us. We didn't know the destination and we didn't know when, but dad had made preparations about storing all of our personal possessions.

What dad did was he got regular plywood and we made containers or crates from the so-called plywood. And we stored everything in maybe in four or five of these so-called crates that dad improvised. We sealed it by nailing the top. And we started in the barn that we were living on. We didn't live in the barn, naturally, but the barn that was on our farm – what happened was our neighbor was a Dutch person, and we asked him if in the eventuality that we would get relocated, would you watch over our personal possessions we stored in the barn? And we actually had an area that we locked so people couldn't have access to and from this particular area. And so he was receptive to that and he said, yes, we'll watch over your personal possessions.

Well, as you know, and you probably heard from many, many people that were affected by 9066 and the relocation that occurred after that. We came back on our farm back in 1946, and there was hardly anything left in my personal possessions.

Somebody had plundered.

A lot of it was, I think, not only ransacked, and they probably took it home and they threw it away because it didn't mean anything to them. Family or our personal possessions. But they took everything. But the worst part of it is, when you had picture albums, or albums and things of that nature, which can't be replaced and they were stolen or ransacked, it was tragic because of that.

So the photos that you showed before. Where was that?

Well, Mom kept a few photos when we got relocated. And those photos we had, but we lost most of the photos that we had prior to the war. But the other bad thing is from a larger point of view. Dad had a flat bed truck. It was not a new one, but it was functional, you know, And we used to take that truck into the market on a daily basis.

We had a pickup and we had a tractor, which was not an old new tractor, but it was an old McCormick-Deering brand tractor. When we came back, we had the registration papers for these items or for these things, and we went to the county sheriff's office and demanded having him locate our possessions for us. And I can tell you honestly that I knew at that particular time when we went to the sheriff's office said he wasn't going to do anything for you anyway.

And why I concluded that when we came back from the war, discrimination was terrible. Racial discrimination was so bad that we knew that the sheriff, not being a lover of Japanese personally, would not try to do anything. Well, to make a long story short, here, again, we never got our possessions back. Somebody had stolen it and utilized it for their own convenient right. But most of the Japanese people did lose almost everything they owned.

That was your livelihood.

Yeah, that was our livelihood. Gee, the other thing is, during war, for sure, things manufactured such as trucks, tractors, hoes, shovels, they curtailed all manufacturing. It all went to the war effort, which meant during the war, if somebody wanted a hoe or somebody wanted a tractor, it was a good option for them. If they knew there was something stored in the barn to break into it and steal it. So consequently, when we came back, there was maybe a couple of hoes and a couple of shovels left in the barn. That was the extent of what we found in the way of our personal possessions. It was terrible.

I see. Whoa.

Ruth: Like our farm? My uncle had our neighbors take care of it, so nobody entered our home. So they put everything in the back and kind of like, kind of split it. So when we came home, it wasn't that bad. 

So you had a trustworthy neighbor, right?

Ruth: And they took care of all our land.

Kennie: But as Ruth indicated, that some of the friends that we thought were friends really stopped socializing with us. And it was quite obvious why. I mean, we were considered Japanese aliens. You know, we weren't a neighbor. We weren't a citizen. We were somebody totally untrustworthy. And that's how the general population looked down on us Japanese Americans.

But thank God, like my good friend Jim Wilson over there I was telling you about, he stood by me through the war, until even after I came back. He was one of the first to come look me up. So, you know, he understood that it was something that happened. Maybe it was unavoidable in one sense, but war brought this on and it was a situation where the government of the United States felt that Japanese should be relocated for governmental purposes.

I would think just from a psychological point of view, if all of your friends had turned against you, it would have been hard, even though physically it might not have changed much in your everyday life.

Yeah, thank God for guys that Jim Wilson that stood by me, even though I realize that he was a minority amongst all my friends to stand by a Japanese-American. But he did. He stood up for me and he probably in some instances when I hadn't been with him, probably mentioned my name or something. And he probably got called names, you know, like “Jap lover” or things of that nature. But like I said, if it wasn't for people like that, we couldn't have tolerated that situation from December 7th to the end of the war. 

Do you remember after Executive Order 9066 was signed and later on, you were notified that you needed to move out. Do you remember that time and what you did? 

Ruth: First thing we did to start packing. ‘Cause we couldn't take very many things. So I took nothing but my clothing, that was it. 

Did you take your best clothes or did you take your roughest clothes? 

Ruth: Well, we just took whatever we had, what we wore to school and all that, but the shoes I only took one pair. And that era the wooden shoe was popular. And I had five dolls. I wanted to take all five but I couldn't take them. So I left the home thinking, well, I'll just leave them home. But I couldn't find it when I got home. 

[To Kennie] Did you take anything?

Kennie: Like I tell my friends, I'm a man of few words. They laugh at me. Oh, well, getting back to that period of time, I think when you say, you know what we were allowed to take, I don't remember more distinctly what mom packed for me, but I know most everybody took clothes with them because we knew that because the government ordered the Japanese for the relocation, that at least we would have housing and we would have bedding.

So we didn't have to worry about that. So it was just a matter of taking personal item and taking clothes like we used to. And what I regret, though, is we left some of the treasures that I consider of my particular time, and those were things that I accumulated. Like in judo, I accumulated a lot of pennants. I accumulated a lot of those, and some trophies that I had won in an exhibition in track at Gresham High School had won several medals first, second and third place medals. I lost all of those. I had probably considerable photos or albums that I had taken when I was quite young. In fact, I felt very fortunate that Dad bought me a camera at my very young age, and I took a lot of pictures constantly, but none of those were, I came back from the war and they were all totally gone. Some of that you can't put a dollar value on because – 

It's not worth anything to anybody else but to you.

But to me it was it was worth, you know, like I say, I accumulated those things through athletics or to some other means. And they meant so much to me, but to the person that confiscated it, ransacked it, they probably just sorted out the things they could use and threw the rest away.
Some things that I wish I had today. I could say I won in my judo tournament, but I don't have any of that anymore today. Like I say, I did acquire a few medallions and a few trophies and a few pennants for my judo and my track, but other than that, Mom didn’t buy something for me that I treasured, like some of the kids might have had.

Your friends who had just gone through the same kind of trauma of leaving behind their homes and in your cases, possessions, too. Did you talk about it when you went to the assembly center?

To be honest with you, I don't think we really got to talk about that aspect, insofar as living goes. First of all, you have to understand that at our age, we didn't have the mental attitude that older people might have had. You know, I'm thinking about older people, maybe like my brother, who was four years old or dad and mom who was along in their age when the evacuation came and we were put into the assembly center. It was an episode in our life, but we did construe it as something that was really negative. If I said that we kind of enjoyed it because we were able to meet with our friends, that was basically the truth.

You were in an adventure. You don't take everything from your home on an adventure.

But like I said, you know, when I say this to some people, they think that, gee, he's crazy for saying something like that. You were forced into relocation camps and you say maybe it was was kind of fun, but it was it really was kind of fun. We mingled with people we didn't know from a previous experience. We mingled with people that we already had met before and had, you know, relationships with each other. So it was in a sense, I'd say it was good times. Maybe that's not the application of a terminology, but we did enjoy a part of relocation.

It's part of the story. Yeah. Not the whole story but part of the story.

It certainly was not a camp. To make a long story short, the United States government, as you probably know, I don't think, ever found anything written relative to the reference of I mean, to a prison rather than a camp. But if you can find it in that confinement with machine guns at the corners of each other, was that is that a camp? By my definition, it's a prison. You had no right of access in or out.

But to me they should have called it a prison because 120,000 Japanese that were confined, they were confined, period. Just like at the federal penitentiary. It was no different. But we didn't go around every day with a bitter attitude and, you know, shake our fist at the government. I would have to say a good share of the Japanese population prior to the war, unless you were a business person or you had excessive amount of money, you were living in a class that was right between. I don't mean, starvation, but right between that aspect where you didn't have a lot of things that financially you could afford.

You were at subsistence.

Yes. And I'm speaking, like I say, of the majority of people. So when you got relocated and we got put into camp one item and we didn't have to worry about food, like you were [given] breakfast, lunch and dinner. We may not have enjoyed the type of food that was presented to us, but it was there. We had a place to sleep, though it was not of a mattress or a type of bed that would give full comfort. But it was a cot, maybe with blankets, which was bearable. So, you know, for a lot of Japanese, there was no different than living at home.

Do you want to add to that, Ruth?

Ruth: Well, when we left for a assembly center, I don't know why Hood River Valley didn’t come to Portland. We went to Fresno. And so it took us days and all the shades were pulled down. We didn't know how we were going. It took a couple of days to go all the way down to Fresno from Hood River.

And what month?

First part of May I think. 

So it wasn't quite oven hot yet. 

No it wasn't. But once we got there you just see a lot of people couldn't stand the weather. I mean all the people, it was so hot they just couldn’t stand it.

Well, I know you weren't an adult, but was there an atmosphere being scared or was it just kind of adventurous for you? 

Well, for me, I just took day by day thinking, Well, what's going to happen next? Where are we going to and what are we going to do you know? I felt sorry for the Issei, you know, but like our age level, it wasn't too bad, but I really felt for our parents.

The average age was nineteen, right? Yeah.

Kennie: To the average Nisei. I think that concept in there idea of the rights that were granted to us under the Constitution, we were really not aware really of the rights that it was accorded us until relocation came along. And we couldn't do this and we couldn't do that. We couldn't go there and we couldn't go there. And we realize what those rights really were.

The realizations really start to sink in then. And it was more obvious after relocation because once we got interned and all of our rights were taken away from us, it became very clear in so far as the meaning of the rights under the Constitution.

It's only when you've been deprived of a right.

Yeah, then you know, right. You took it for granted. Otherwise it was always there. You never gave it a second thought. But when it was taken away from you?

I think we dealt with on a daily basis. I think what was presented to us in so far as, you know, what we could do and what we couldn't do, I think the realization probably was there for a lot of people that if I were home, I would be doing this rather than what I'm doing in camp. You know, and so there would be a correlation or comparison between. But I think if I said traditionally, the Japanese population, race-wise, lived by their social laws, I'd say 100% of the time. And so when the government came with EO 9066, even though it was not constitutionally right for them to demand this because of our heritage and because of our background, Japanese people said, yes, we will, we will do what we're told.

And that's been the whole structure of the Japanese living here in America since the turn of the century. There was no major crimes committed. They didn't go out and rob banks and they didn't commit murders. 

Tell me about the loyalty questionnaire. By the time the loyalty questionnaire came up with the questions, 27, 28 that says, are you willing to serve in the armed forces whenever ordered? And the other one was, will you forswear allegiance to the Emperor of Japan. Did you have to fill out that questionnaire? 

Kennie: No, I can't recall. 

Ruth: Did you? I don’t think we had.

Were you 17 in ‘43? Well, maybe for you it was an easy matter of answering it.

Kennie: My allegiance was with the United States, and that's what I answered. And the other part of it is, would you be willing to fight for the United States of America in a time of emergency? And I said, yes, I would. I would like to fight for the United States in time of war.

So it was not a matter of questioning. I think I just felt that because of my background that I owe it to myself and to everybody else that I don't want to say anything negative. I want to be very positive. So I got no repercussion from that. But you know where she was in Tule Lake as you know, half of the Japanese men said no/no to those two items that they did.

Ruth: So that's when we got transferred to Minidoka. When those people came. 

So you went from Pinedale to Tule Lake and to Minidoka to Minneapolis. 

Ruth: That's where I met Kennie.

Where did you meet him? 

Minidoka.

Okay, you finally got to where most of the Oregonians were. 

That's right. 

Oh, I think we're getting into love story here. Tell us about how when you met Kennie. 

Ruth: Let's see, we were at a function. They, you know, they had movies and they had get together dances and I learned how to jitterbug. Well that’s where we met, I met him at the dance. At the dance at Minidoka, and that's where I taught him how to jitterbug. 

Oh, you taught Kennie? Was he a good student?

Kennie: No, no, my leg just would not move. 

So that's how you met. And you said soon after, Kennie was left. Or you were drafted or you volunteered?

I volunteer. You probably may know the facts behind the 442nd in so far as the composition of the outfit went. The majority of the people that were in the 442, other than the 100 Battalion, were volunteers. Selective Service was frozen until the early part of 1944. But I volunteered even though that law was in effect that early part of ‘44, and I was only 17 and I wouldn’t become 18 until my birthday, which was in May. I asked Dad if I could go in the service. 

I see, you were allowed to volunteer before you were 17.

As long as you got consent from your dad. That's what happened to me. The majority of them were volunteers because the draft was closed to the Nisei.

Until the law was changed in ‘44.

Like February of 1944, the government of the United States, it whatever the word is, let the Japanese come in under Selective Service but until then they were all undesirable aliens, which was 4-C.

Instead of 1-A.

And all of a sudden we got reclassified to 1-A. But the majority of the other Nisei that comprised the second and the third Battalion were mainland Nisei and they were of age. And of the time that they had to volunteer before they got into the service, the ones that came as the last replacement was probably in 1945. They were all drafted. 

Did Tom, your brother go with you? 

He went overseas with me. He was in the 522nd which was the Field Artillery Unit which was part of the order and 442nd.

So what month of which year did you volunteer?

I think I volunteered in February. I can't remember exactly the date or anything, but it was probably when I turned my paper in. And in March I got inducted at Fort Douglas, Utah, I officially became a soldier in Utah.

What was it like to be inducted? Did you feel proud? Did you feel excited? Were you scared? 

What’s the proper adjective for that period of time? I would say maybe. First of all, I was proud to serve in the Army, because here again, even though ethnic wise, where you have me or Japanese Americans, our heritage might be in Japan but because we were born here, we were Americans. That meant our loyalty lies with America, not with Japan. So I was proud to be in the service. Number two, the life in camp was not that desirable.  I mean, what's in store for me by staying in camp? So that was another decision. So I did decide with the consent of Dad, I volunteered to go into service. 

Well, do you believe the idea that the Nisei were taking on insanely dangerous missions was accurate?

We were constantly asked to spearhead an area which was difficult to overtake. It was always the Nisei 442nd. We always took our objective. It was a known fact in Europe. If we had to take and replace, we have to take a gun placement. But they wouldn't ask any other unit, they would call 442nd for another sector completely and move us into position so we could take that and we took it without hesitation, without question. What is that?

Because we had made such a name for ourselves, you know, in the short period of time, it was a request of all underlying generals in the area. If there were heads of several units, you know, an army or whatever, they would always make certain that the 442nd was part of that particular unit. Yeah, we got a lot of commendation.

So how did you survive the horror of it? I mean, if you were anybody else, you might have just died of fright.

Well, you know, actually there were a few of them that gave up. There were, what they call Section Nine or mentally incompetent. And they had been there for so long and been associated with death. So many, many times the mentality level dropped to a point. They couldn't stand it anymore. And they just said, I'm not going to fight anymore.

So what what did they do?

Usually they gave them a dishonorable discharge.

A dishonorable, oh my god. 

But they got to come home.

Yeah. Isn't that a little unfair for somebody who – 

But the percentage of that type of soldiers in the 442nd was almost nil. There was only a few of them that actually took that course to say, “I had enough fighting. I just could not fight anymore.” I don't know what motivated me to fight through the war, because when you think about being exposed to enemy fire constantly and not knowing when your number is going to be called, it's very difficult when you analyze that today and say, how did I do it back in 1942 and ‘43 or ‘44? Survive it. But I wasn't the only one. The entire 442nd had the same concept that I did. Honor America. 

Yes, then why would we accept into the situation and say “we're different.” We are not loyal to the United States and we certainly don't want to give our life to the United States. To me, that that's not the right answer. But, you know, without even thinking, I would say I want to fight for my country. Patriotism, probably loyalty, probably. Well, what other country am I supposed to love besides the United States of America? I don't have anything to do with Japan just because my heritage tells me I'm Japanese.

So considering that, do you want to say anything about those who resisted the draft on the grounds that they wanted to fight for democracy and didn’t go fight during WWII? But during the Korean War, they did because their families were indeed free.

It's really hard to correlate the difference between my thinking love of country and fighting for the United States of America. Preserve the democracy and the freedom that we so dearly love, as opposed to my friend who is not really disloyal in that sense of the word. But he feels that injustice was certainly part of his thinking.

So that he resisted the draft.

Yeah, he resisted the draft because he felt to the Constitution that they did wrong to such an extent that his thinking – I don't say became warped. I don't say that it was to that extent that he got persuaded. But in in some sense of the word, he was just as right as I was. I would never say I wanted to be part of that. No, no section of draftees or of the Japanese population because I didn't totally conform to their thinking. But those people that did, I don't know. I think you know what you have to appreciate. Maybe what they did, it was not totally wrong. Like I said, I wouldn't have done it.

Ruth: We came home in February of ‘46. 

Came back to Oregon? 

Yes we came to Hood River.

Now tell me about Hood River.

Well we [me and Kennie] went to the shop. We got off the train from Minneapolis to Hood River, and we stopped for the 7-Eleven type store and we bought a couple baskets full of groceries. We took it up to the counter and this fellow said, “We don't serve ‘Japs.’” I said we are not “Japs” we are American. I said, “Look what he’s got on. He’s got on a US uniform and he fought for Americans.” But he still wouldn’t serve us.

You had guts.

I mean how could he say that when you were still in uniform, right?

Kennie: I never knew that on my return, from fighting in Europe, that that type of situation would ever exist. I mean, I knew the definition of racial discrimination, but when you live it and you find out it really hits home, it really strikes you in the heart. It tells you these people are ignorant.

Ruth: So we went home and found out we couldn't shop. We couldn't shop any place except Safeway.

Kennie: But, you know, that was such a transition from being overseas fighting. Finally coming home and all of a sudden finding out that you're in a solitude world all by yourself, more or less totally different.

And also it’s not bullets that are attacking you, but words. You must have been in a culture shock for a while.

You know, I hate to think of my race as being somewhat different than maybe another Japanese-Americans. You know, I always felt this way about being here within this community. I've felt all the time, even when I went to high school before the war, that I myself was an equal to anybody else. And I did things accordingly. Like going out for sport. I excelled in sports, even among my Caucasian friends. And so I never took us as a second class, though I know for a fact that the total community of the Japanese were looked down by the community of Caucasians.

But in high school, everybody had respect for you and a man who got letters all four years starting his freshman year.

But I know a lot of Japanese people that [felt] we can't be an equal. But I was different. Always challenging for me to be something differently.

What was it like getting resettled back in this area? I heard that there was a lot of racism.

What confronted us primarily was that it was not obvious to any great extent, but we know the there was the Alien Land Law which prohibited the Issei from becoming citizens. And to complicate matters worse, the law stated that Issei could not live with a Nisei on the same portion of land. I mean, what kind of a law is that, for God's sake? But anyway, as we returned, that law was confronting all the Japanese Americans because they couldn't have their dads live with you to assist you in the farming aspect. 

So what we did was we retained two attorneys. Those two attorneys undertook our course and they wrote a brief which was presented to the circuit court here in Multnomah County, which upheld their initial Alien Land Law. So we made an appeal and it went to the –

Circuit Court. 

Yeah. When went to the Supreme Court of Oregon, it was heard by the Justice Department of the Supreme Court. And in due time, we got a favorable decision rendering the existing Alien Land Law to be unconstitutional as well as very discriminatory. But I always make reference to the law as such as it was worded. Should that law have been allowed to exist, even though we came back as honorable persons? Dad couldn't live with us, what would he have done?

He couldn't farm anymore. He had to live somewhere, but he couldn't live with me. And I couldn't have Dad or I could not help Dad, you know, to live in in a fashion that he was accustomed to. He would have to live all by himself in an apartment or someplace. That would have been terrible insofar as a relationship or family went.

So I'm very happy that at least the people that sat in the Supreme Court of Oregon during that period of time saw to that extent that it was very unconstitutional. I'm very proud to add that my name, Kennie Namba and my Dad's name, Etsuo, is now entered into Oregon Law Books, or what they call O.R.S., Oregon Revised Statutes. And they'll be there as long as they study things relative to the Alien Land Law. I'm proud to say I'm part of history.

This is a big project you undertook.

It was. And like I say, I came back from the service and, you know, I'm still not mentally mature to any extent really. I mean, I fought the war and I survived the war. I came back and this is confronting me. And so with the aid of other people in the community, I don't say I got persuaded maybe to undertake this with my Dad, but it was not my total idea. It was a community idea primarily.

Well, do you think all that racism that you encountered after the war is gone now? Is it?

No it's not gone. The only thing is it's harder to dig. Detect racism by observation maybe, but it's there and it's not going to be gone. It's not eradicated until people get educated and understand that all of the ethnic groups in the world are equal. Until the day they accept that, there's always going to be racism, they're going to always say, “He's not as good as I am.”

And that's going to be a standard, except that with some of the people, primarily Caucasian. So I've been asked if there racism, discrimination as far as race goes? I said yes. It's harder to find. It's hard to determine that, but it's there. Like, for instance, I'm very conscious of my race when I go places. For instance, I'm going to go to church tomorrow. I don't know anybody there because it's a church that I don't belong to. I get there quite early and I sit maybe in the next to the last pew on the outside. The church people start filling in. They come in and they're observing where to sit and they come down the aisle to my aisle and they're like, “Oh, there's Ruth and Kennie. I don't know them, but they're Japanese.” They're going to proceed on to another row. And this happened constantly. 

If you could give a word of wisdom to young people today based on what you went through, what would it be?

What I'd like to say to the young people is if you know right from wrong and you understand what is right, what's wrong, I think you should always do what your heart dictates based on that concept of right and wrong. But you have to understand what is right and what is wrong. I think that was part of my concept when I joined the service.

Interview conducted by Grace Megumi Fleming. JAMsj thanks Grace for allowing the museum to archive and share these oral histories