mae morita

“The friends I thought I had were no longer my friends. They kind of looked the other way. They were ashamed and afraid to be seen talking to me. No matter how American, our faces looked Japanese, and how I wished I had blue eyes. That's a fact. I wished I had just blended in with the rest of them.”

Mae Morita was 17 years old when the war broke out between Japan and the U.S. With her mother already deceased before the war, her Issei father raised six children against the backdrop of a war with so much uncertainty for their future. But as difficult as it was to be uprooted, Mae maintains that “Camp wasn’t all that bad for us younger people, I think it was harder for the Isseis.” At her senior high school graduation speech in camp, Mae spoke about the duty of educated Japanese Americans to become the ambassadors of their story – humanized Japanese Americans – to the general public. Mae has given several talks to local schools in Fresno over the years, and shares her story to inspire young people about the injustices of racial bigotry and discrimination.  

This interview was conducted on February 16, 2002 by Grace Megumi Fleming. 

Can you tell me your full name and where you were born?

My full name is Fukiko Mae Morita, and I was born in Klink, it’s near Visalia, California, it no longer exists. I was born on August 18, 1924. That makes me 77 years old.

I know you've spoken at a lot of places and that you have some written material you'd like to read. Would you like to share that now? 

Well, I'll read you a short summary. I was 16 years old looking forward to my senior year in high school. Since mom had died I had to stay home the previous year, to take care of my brother and sisters. I remember being anxious to get on with my schooling. Pearl Harbor and Executive Order 9066 changed all that. I can still remember packing my belongings into one suitcase, with one bedroll, and being taken first to the Fresno Assembly Center, where we were held, then to Arkansas, on a train. I can still hear the train, traveling across the tracks for days and days, it seemed. Humiliating. 

I, who was born here, as an American citizen, had to go, because my face looked like the enemy. If I were ordered to go today, I would tie myself to a tree, and the American government would have to split me in half and take half of me to camp. 

My father was considered an alien Japanese because he had been denied the right to citizenship. I recall writing to Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt, explaining my father's intense desire to become an American citizen, and when his life was over, to be buried alongside mom in the United States. Mrs. Roosevelt wrote that in time, justice will prevail. So be patient. It was signed 1952. The McCarran Law was passed, enabling our Japanese alien parents the right to American citizenship. What a joyous day that was. But too late for many. Our Issei parents endured hardships, discrimination, and untold miseries to raise us to become a good citizen of this country.

Camp life for me was spent waiting tables for $9 a month in the common mess hall, where everyone ate together. As a parent, now I almost turn green, thinking about what we endured, leaving everything behind on a moment's notice to be placed in a one room with no walls, ceiling top exposed to the next room, where another family dwelled.

40 years later, why do we ask for an apology and redress? Because the claim of military necessity was based on unsubstantiated facts, distortions, and one military commander with racist views. The Freedom of Information Act, which released all these documents after 40 years, revealed all this. There was not one case of proven sabotage or espionage. Wartime hysteria whipped up by handful of newspapers caused a small minority of 120,000 people to be lifted up blithely and sent inland, selling their property and giving up careers for a pittance.

We have no other country but this one, which we love dearly. An apology and a redress is due, especially to our remaining Issei parents. When this is done, I feel that we can close this chapter, and feel that an incident like this will never happen to another group of people again. I said this somewhere in November of 1983.

It's wonderful. A wonderful synopsis. I wonder, do you remember Pearl Harbor?

Yes, I remember it very well. It was December 7, 1941. I recall running out into the field looking for my father. I said, “Papa, I heard over the radio that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, it's true!” We were shocked, but we didn't believe our lives would be turned upside down.

Did you speak in Japanese or English?

I think I spoke to him in half English because he understood English very well. He came here when he was 17 years old, to repay his parents' debt. In Japan, there's a red mark at the center square, if you leave behind anything bad that occurs in your family. He decided to leave Japan against his mother’s wishes. She begged him not to come. He said, if I stay, we'll never be able to repay our debts.

I see. So he came to America to clear his father's debt?

My father's father bought stocks or something. He lost squares of land here and there. And soon, they're in debt. So that's why my father came to America and he stayed here and worked hard, building the railroad tracks. Wherever he went, he always sent some money back to Japan. And when he was 34, I think he cleared up all his family's debts. So, he always told us, you can always be proud that we have always honored our debts.

Do you know where your father came from?

Shiga-ken. He was ibuki-mura. He could see the mountain. When we visited Japan, we drove by it, but we didn't stop. So I have never seen my father's homeland.

Such courage.

It took such courage for the Isseis. No knowledge of the language or the customs.

Were you the oldest of the children?

I was the second of six. My mother was deceased then, so my father really raised all of us. But shortly after Pearl Harbor, we were sent to the camp. A lot of mothers in the camp would look after my younger sister, Amy. The rest of us were older and able to fend for ourselves. And I left for school outside the camp. Texas University was one of the few schools that accepted Niseis, and at the time there were three ahead of me. I was the fourth Japanese-American to attend Texas University School of Nursing.

What helps young people nowadays (what it must have been like) are vignettes, little stories. 

Well, I can tell you that there was no privacy in the camps. I have a friend who got married in the Fresno Assembly Center, and she was one of the first couples to get married in a camp. Her wedding night was spent in the one room we were entitled to. This room was divided in one half, and this half was the bedroom. And the other side was a sitting room, in which there was a potbellied stove that kept us warm. But her mother and father slept in the first one third of the half partitioned by sheets, and the other third, their sisters, three sisters were there, and she and her husband were sleeping in this last bed, this last third of a half. And she said the mattresses were straw. Any time you rustled or moved; it made such a terrible noise, that “not a thing happened,” she said [chuckles]. 

That puts a little humor into it, a little humorous twist.

You know, a lot of us were kind of shy. But you had to get used to not being so modest.

But I heard that the Issei parents were very good at keeping their miseries...

Gaman. Yeah, very private.

From the Niseis. And so a lot of Niseis, they don't know what their parents lost.

Yeah, gaman. That word, gaman. Gratitude. I think, was a great part of the Japanese Issei culture.

It's sometimes hard to interview former internees, because they have selective memories.

That's very true. 

Only the good things.

And then you forget a lot too.

During redress, Isseis and Niseis testified, but they had to let the government know that all the good things that happened were because of the efforts of the internees, the prisoners, and that there were many hardships.

Yes, Tak and I went to the redress hearings that they had in Los Angeles, and we taped it. And we went to the ones in San Francisco to hear what the people were having to say.

What was it like for you, to be silent for so long, and then to hear these groups of people coming forward?

See, our daughter is an attorney, and she testified in a certain section. But my most vivid remembrance of that occasion was when this Lillian Baker came out and tried to take the microphone away from the veteran who was speaking. They had to physically remove her from the court, because she's raising such a commotion that we couldn't continue, saying that we had no right to that redress.

People were so mad at what she said, and knowing that it was not true, spoke up.

But I also recall a man from Atu, who was crying as he spoke. He says, “You know, I lost my father at that time, and I've been looking for him ever since.” 

After we came home from the camp, we were so busy trying to get started again that nobody took the time to talk to their children about this. It was a forgotten episode. It was that way for many years. And when the kids got into high school, they started writing papers on the internment. That's when they found out. For the first time, they really understood what happened because, as I said, parents were too busy. We just put it under the table and went to work.

And after the camps?

I was still in school, and I wanted to come home, but the dean of nurses told me you don't want to go back when you're just half way through. That's no good to anybody. So that's why I finished school. But my sister and the rest of them came back and they said that they slept in a shoe store. They had no place to go, someone was still living in the house. They could hear people throwing things, like eggs, at the store, you know, where they lived. See, I don't have that to talk about…because when I came back things were partially settled.

What year was that?

I finished 1946. I can't even remember what year it was that I came home. I finished school and I'm so glad that I did, because I probably would have never become a registered nurse had I not stayed and finished. People in Texas were very hospitable and very kind, but my first month there, I didn't know where to sit because the discrimination against Blacks was so hostile. Even the hospitals where I worked, the Blacks had a building all their own, and the whites were separate. Of my classmates at University of Texas, I was the one out of 70 that would approve of a Black nurse coming to school.

Really?

Oh yes. They said, “Mae, it will never happen.”

And you belonged to the white?

Yes. I didn't know where I was supposed to go on the bus, and they directed me to stay in the front. Blacks, even the elderly ladies, I've seen them pushed aside, the whites just marching through. 

So that relates to a comment one woman made, that the redress movement probably would have never happened had it not been for the civil rights movement.

Well, I believe the Sanseis are the ones that truly got into it, and they found out, this is against the law. That helped. They didn't give up. Most of us thought, well, that'll never happen. It's okay. It's been so long ago. 

And?

But they persisted. 

Do you have comments about the situation now where Arab-Americans and Muslims are?

We have to remember what it was like when we were singled out because of our physical characteristics. I believe we must be vigilant and remember how it was. Without due process of law, we had no say.

Did you feel like a criminal?

You weren't a criminal. But you didn't feel justified. When I was growing up, the McClatchy newspapers were saying that we were a dangerous people and could not be trusted. “Japs were engaged in espionage and sabotage.” No one took the time to check if these stories were true. I still remember, you know, “Put them on a ship, on a boat and halfway across the Pacific––sink em!” That's how much resentment there was against the Japanese. 

And our parents weren't citizens. We had no political power. The friends I thought I had were no longer my friends. They kind of looked the other way. They were ashamed and afraid to be seen talking to me. No matter how American, our faces looked Japanese, and how I wished I had blue eyes. That's a fact. I wished I had just blended in with the rest of them. So, I tried to be a super American. I denied my own cultural heritage. I was uncomfortable to be seen eating with chopsticks. I didn't want to be heard speaking Japanese to my parents, who didn't understand English very well.

That's a strong feeling.

I remember in the Fresno Assembly Center, when we were in the camp, the fence on the other side. You could hear the cars going by back and forth. We couldn't step outside the boundaries, and that feeling, I'll never forget.

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