Paul Sakamoto

Paul Sakamoto has deep roots in San Jose, particularly in the fields of academics and education at San Jose State. Born and raised in the farmlands of Alviso (now part of San Jose) before the war, his parents owned a boarding house at 5th and Jackson. His brother, Jim, ran a barber shop on North 6th Street and was known by many of the old timers. Though not a common Japanese name, he was given the English moniker “Paul” after a Portugesue principal of his local elementary school, Paul Dias, whom his parents greatly respected and admired. 

At the time that the war broke out, the Sakamotos would find themselves eventually uprooted from their home and sent to Jerome, Arkansas. Though Paul’s father tried his best to avoid the forced roundup and tried taking the family further east, they were eventually stopped in Stockton by the Army. Paul would later come to understand the sometimes frustrating point of view that the Issei and Nisei took at that time of the incarceration, in that their “silence” was viewed as compliance from the Japanese American community. “It’s because the feelings of the culture at that time was that the government knows best. They know that we are doing this for the betterment of our country. And so we should aid in the movement of that many people.”

Paul’s successful career came in his years of college, when he got heavily involved with student politics and social fraternities on campus at San Jose State. His career began as a high school science teacher, then later he went into counseling and administration. He would go on to earn his doctorate in education from Michigan State University with his educational appointments including associate dean of students at San Jose State University, deputy superintendent, and superintendent of Mountain View-Los Altos High School district in Santa Clara County. 

What is your birthday and when were you born? 

My birthday is February 3rd, 1934. I was born in San Jose at 6th and Jackson. I think I was delivered by a midwife, I was delivered in the home of my parents. 

Where did you grow up in San Jose?

Place where I was born was right here in Japantown at a boarding house. 

What were your parents doing for work?

My mother was — I was the last of 11 children so she had her hands full maintaining a household. My father spent most of his time, according to my mother, playing poker and card games. But his main job was to go out into the fields and find jobs for the new arrivals from Japan. And he dealt with agriculture truck farming primarily but he always had a love of agriculture and plants. My mother favored being in town because it was kind of a newsworthy incidents that happened, they could share with each other. But my father always wanted to be a farmer. 

And did you have to help with the farming?

Whatever we could help with, mostly not though. We were given pretty much the freehand to play and not work except the peak periods when we would pick up, pick prunes for example. Seasonal kinds of jobs. 

And where were your parents from in Japan? What prefectures were they from?

Kumamato, Kyushu. That’s where most of the people from this area went.

So where you were living, were there a lot of Japanese?  

Oh where did we live? We were forced to live in a substandard housing. Most cases it was a shed that the farmers’ landowners happened to use as a storage or very poorly put together. So that’s where we lived until we got on our feet to support family. You know, the Japanese like ofuro, kind of communal bathing. And I remember we would, we liked a bathtub that held maybe two or three people. And it would be filled with water and we had to get lumber to keep the water hot and warm. And that was the highlight of our bathing and it was a good feeling after working out on the farm. Coming [home] and bathing. My mother would not only cook for all the members of the family but she also ran the bath water. She did everything. 

And I remember the kids would [be] strapped to her back and she’d be the first one out picking crops, the first one to come in and get food ready for the family. And it’s just absolutely amazing what the mothers, the women went through. And it seemed like a happy arrangement. Of course from the viewpoint of a kid and all, who was five or six  years old, it looked like a good environment.

Hardworking mother. What about the day that Pearl Harbor happened? Do you remember that day and hearing about the bombing of Pearl Harbor?

I don’t remember too much, except that we knew that [there] is going to be trouble. Because it was an identifiable culture and we were here in Japantown. And it will be easy to identify those who were Japanese. Issei or Nisei.  I don’t believe that we believed that they would have….we would be put in camps. Because it just seems, didn’t seem possible that they would...that the government would take American citizens and put us in camp with actually very limited resistance from the Japanese. 

I think that to have that idea of moving 1,500 people and it just didn’t seem like it’s a civilized thing to do -- to put us in camp though we were American citizens and do this in a very short period of time. To build camps with barracks and a mess hall for the food and -- it was a concentration camp. There is no doubt about that. Even though people resent the name. When you have barbed wire fences surrounding the compound, machine gun towers every so many yards, and not be able to freely walk around in the area.

And Paul, can you talk about what happened when you went into the assembly center?

My father bought this old truck and he bought dried foods, primarily, and we would keep moving until it was safe to not move anymore. That was his plan. That was the common thing. The good thing was before that, it would just mean less people that they would have to account for. So they were happy to see us leave and go and find a place to live. Because they were faced with the tremendous task of gathering this group of people and telling them to go.

Most of the fairly good sized cities in the state were assembly centers. They were convenient facilities in the assembly centers. As they were horse racing areas, were converted into temporary housing. Until they could keep track of all of us, once we had the inventory made and then that was the first spot to put us in and then they had sufficient housing in deserts and swamps and any place where the land was cheap. And easy to supervise.

When you think about it, the whole thing seemed like it can’t be, it can’t be happening to us. It’s unreal. Yet it happened with very little protestations from the Japanese. It’s because the feelings of the culture at that time was that the government knows best for...they know that we are doing this for the betterment of our country. And , so we should be, not only resisting it but we should aid in the movement of that many people. When you think about getting the food and feeding all of us people. And in most cases, we were very unhappy with the food there. Because it was more American food, potatoes instead of rice.

During a short break, Paul thinks back on some memories from camp in Jerome. He remembers that as a pre-teen he enjoyed catching fireflies. And in Arkansas the challenge was to make a net that could catch the brightest insect. Paul and his friends would go out at night and try to catch fireflies. 

That was the most prestigious thing for us to do! To catch one of those. And I remember once the brightest firefly went over the fence, the barbed wire fence, and the soldier in the tower was pointing his machine gun actually at the kids to get them from, don’t let them get to close to the fence. “Or I will have to shoot you.” And I remember that clearly. 

One of the things that makes you wonder about fairness and that it wasn’t something that the whole world or the nation was supporting. But it was happening to us. And not totally understanding why it happened to us, when everything that took place at Pearl Harbor and the fact that we formed the 442nd combat team, mainly to show that we were Americans and not Japanese. And we were supportive of our government and not sabotaging. I guess at that age we just couldn’t understand why it happened to us. There was no reason for it, especially since the whole media, the entertainment world and all of it was supported by the Japanese settlements in the Japantowns that sprung up all over the country. 

Did your parents talk to you about what was happening? Did your mother or your father ever say anything about it? 

They--I had the feeling that they kept as much of this away from us. It wasn’t like they sat us down at the dinner table and they talked to us about why this happened to us. It was, I think the less we knew, the better. And as long as we were taken care of from the standpoint of education. And the Japanese Americans generally were very supportive of education. Whether it’s secondary or college level. We had the WRA supplied the school with Caucasian teachers. Mainly female because the men were off to war. And the Japanese were very conscientious about doing well at school. And that was generally accepted by the community. 

And this, the classes were taught mostly by white females, but the education was fairly good – higher level than the outside people. The Japanese were more conscientious about the school and the grades. And so the WRA was a very good outlet for the energy of the Japanese. Eventually these classrooms were turned over to the Japanese Americans, the camp people themselves.

You were nine, ten and eleven years old when you went to camp and you were in elementary school in Rohwer. 

Well elementary was fun to a great extent because here we had an opportunity to be with Japanese Americans, our own age, our own appearance, our own values, and so from that standpoint it was , a plus – not to mean that concentration camps are great for any reason but it’s just -- it was an opportunity for us to be with our own age group. And not treated like second citizens. That the education we were receiving was fair and the opportunities were there.  

You had a great story about your father being a cook. Can you talk about how he got that job?

Well, my father was a storyteller I think. And he had definite leadership skills. I was proud of that. And he gave us direction, he took care of us, and he didn’t -- because drinking was fairly common in camp because there was nothing to do. Yet he, because of his skills in sharing what was happening on the outside through newspapers and radios and shortwave radios, and so forth. And he protected us and I think he did surprisingly well given the negative odds against him. And especially having eleven children was a job in itself I think.  But I felt that he seemed to have some social skills that made him a leader. I felt anyway, a leader in the community, and people turned to him for advice and for just seeking information.

News is very important in a concentrated area like a camp. And so because we were dependent on these [block managers] these people went from block to block to tell them what happened in the outside world. And so he would communicate some of the news that came down from these men, primarily,  so like a newspaper itself. He would be vocal but not accurate sometimes. In fact it would be exaggerated by the end of the day that something happened and that we were going to be released or have a special dinner. Those kinds of things. 

Right. But it wasn’t true. 

No.

What other memories from camp do you have? Or is there anything, you know, that stands out in your mind? 

The impact that the camp life had on people my age, it wasn’t negative in terms of the way we were raised and the way in which we spent three to four years of our lives. It was more that the whole thing didn’t make much sense to us. 

When we looked upon the weakness I suppose that, it just didn’t seem to fit. What we were taught, what we were learning. It just didn’t seem right and yet what can you do about it? What should you do about it? 

Now one of your older brothers was in the MIS, right? 

Yes. He was--he accomplished a great deal in his lifetime. He was on the battleship Missouri when the peace accord was signed. The only Japanese American to be on the ship. He was fluent in Japanese. My parents sent him back to Japan to get an education because they felt that the education here was not especially good. So he graduated from high school in Japanese. 

And he spoke Russian and English of course and he was the highest paid, highest soldier as lieutenant colonel when he retired. So he did well. And he did well because my parents supported him and so he didn’t have to come back to the United States to get an education but he remained there even during the summers. Because my parents didn’t have enough money to send him back and forth for a summer vacation. He spent his summers visiting the Asian countries. And he spent the summers with that culture. So he was very fluent in Eastern history and arts. 

That’s amazing.

Yeah. Unfortunately he didn’t have any children. 

Do you remember what it was like coming home to Japantown?

The weekends...the fun weekends for us was to go to Japantown on Saturdays and Sundays and for restaurants and for just being with friends. And of course the churches had a great influence in holding us together. 

Did your family attend the Buddhist temple here?

Yeah. My father used to like to brag about the fact that he had participated in building the temple when this community got together. I guess most of the parts of the temple were Japanese and sent here. But it was my brother Frank [who] was a carpenter and so he had skills in that area, helping build the building there, the recreation center. 

That’s incredible. So your family helped build it. Do you remember what resettlement was like, coming back to San Jose right after camp?

Well, most of the time was taken up trying to make a living. And the easiest way to get back into the community was through sharecropping. And the last venture that my parents got involved with was strawberries. In fact most of the Japanese at that time grew strawberries because it was a multi-year crop and it was high-labor intensive. Because even with our kids we picked strawberries. So during the season, and there was a commonly known split of 60 - 40 percent. And so that kept us alive. Because there was almost all the labor that there is, strawberries are very labor intensive. A lot of handwork and backaching. So my parents had to work for Frank Steindorf and his, and almost all of the strawberry patches in the area was Japanese owned. Or labored. And that was the main avenue for advancement for education. That and gardening , horticulture. Through, not only people’s yards , garden, but the whole industry of gardening was taken over by the Japanese. We joke about finding a good Japanese gardener is very difficult.

Right. And you came back and where did you go to school? Were you going to school in Japantown?
It was mostly junior high school. We typically would go to an American school until 3:00 and then we’d go to Japanese school from 4:00 to 5:00. Everybody did that. No exception.

Where did you go to high school?

Campbell, Campbell High school. And San José State for my Bachelor’s and Master’s and then as I was working I was taking classes, also. And got my PhD at the Michigan State University.

Oh, what did you get your PhD in?

Educational Administration.

So the plan was to go into teaching?

Yes. 

Can you tell us your experience at San José State? And how you became student body president? And how you entered the fraternity.

It’s understood that you’re gonna do that. For one thing it was cheap, it was state funded and it was small. And when I was studying there it was 4,000 students. And it was easy to transfer from San José State to other universities.

I didn’t know that! Yeah. So Paul, when you were at San José State you entered a fraternity. Right, you went into a fraternity?

In the social fraternity? Is that what you meant?

Yes. 

Well, the fraternity and sorority system at San José State is one that people have not talked too much about. It was considered to be for rich people to exist in society. Because when I was there for four or five years, they didn’t have dormitories for example. It just started out with an old college. At the time there was a lot of discussion about affirmative action. The fact that the Asians are underrepresented in all phases of college life, I became interested in student government and I got along quite well with the administrative structure. The dean of students was my best friend and we did a lot together. A question that they couldn’t respond to is why they didn’t have any Asians, people of color who became members of a social fraternity. 

And people never brought it up because it was an embarrassment, number one, and number two: college life was part of the social interaction that you signed in and in joining or being accepted into a social fraternity. Most of these social fraternities, in fact all of them were national organizations. And the national organization generally had a clause that it would be available to white middle class or upper class men and women. And that went on for years and years and years. And it was just accepted from one generation to the next that no people of color would be in these social organizations. These sororities came on first and then fraternities; they felt that there was a good exchange between the sororities and the fraternities but not between anybody else. As the white society. It was just accepted. That’s the way it is, and I became active in the fraternity, Delta Epsilon it was called, and it was one of the few organizations that didn’t have a clause. 

And I used to go to the fraternity house for lunch. But I couldn’t join, they didn’t allow me to join because of the national organizations. And that went on for four years. And towards the end of the four years, one of the members of the fraternity went to the national organization and said that they were going to recruit me for what they called the “rushing.” And so they “rushed me” when I was a junior or a senior which was unusual because if you know, if you are not accepted in your freshman [year] generally you are not gonna become a member. And anyway , I joined Delta Epsilon as the first Asian American who could join a social fraternity. And the history of San José State -- now they have a black student who is the president of the fraternity, so things have changed somewhat for the better. But my closest friends today are my social fraternity.

That is quite an experience. Can you tell us the story about you becoming the student body president at San José State? 

I think partially due to this Campbell High School, too. From Campbell High I went to San José State with almost  a cluster of us that went together. So going to San José State I was not a stranger. We were fairly active in high school, so it followed suit that if we went to San José State we would become active and I didn’t sense any prejudices at San José State in the academic area.

What impact did getting the student body president have on you? What did that effect? 

It was a student government that allowed me to participate in various conventions and weekend trips. This allowed you to just be open to a lot of possibilities that you wouldn’t have because most of us were working as well as being college students. So it took most of our time just survive and take some job that paid us for spending money. 

Do you think you ran for student body president because you saw your father as a leader? Or that seeing your father as a leader in the community affected why you wanted to do something? 

It was more social pressures that they put on me, to become a member of the greater society. That I didn’t feel that I was excluded or that I’d belong. So socially they were very supportive that I was a member of the society there. Because they felt that was part of the educational system that I’ve become part of that organization. 

Interesting. What did becoming student body president do for your sense of confidence? 

Well the good part, I ran along with the leader of the campus. And it was athletics as well as academic. So I think that the participating [with a] core group of people was helpful.

Okay so after you won it, what did that make you feel? Like knowing that your family was in the camps and, you know, you were , just denied very basic rights. What did that, what did winning kind of make you feel?

Thinking back to what I was able to do was in part because of the group that I was with. Particularly in high school, the kids you ran around with made a significant difference in what you were able to do later on. And when I went from Campbell to San José State, it was not a surprise or, it was a given avenue for a person who wanted to do more than the classroom. 

Paul, did you see yourself as a leader? Did you see yourself as being a leader?
I don’t know. I think that leadership skills to some extent are a born characteristic. And I think that it just happens. That especially if you enjoy that kind of position. And the leadership training is part of that and it comes naturally. I think that it’s easy not to get involved. Because it means doing things that are characteristic to you and it’s not kind of a “sit back and wait for things to happen.” Or to just not be active and do your share of volunteer stuff, I guess.

Hm. So that came naturally to you? Did that come naturally to you to just want to have a role like that? A leadership role?It just felt natural? Like you could do it.

Yeah. I just cannot imagine it being the other way. It would be foreign to me if I would not be active and in any organization. I belonged to something like nine different organizations in the four years that I was there at San José State. And , ultimately became president of all of them at one time or another. And , I think that happened because I enjoyed being in the leadership position. But, more importantly, the students seemed to just accept that as a role that I played in the organization.

Paul, how did it come about that you helped to institutionalize Asian American Studies at San José State? 

I don’t know if I did anything.

You did! You supported the students. Can you just describe a few things that you did in supporting the students who wanted to get Asian American Studies?

Well I think that the most helpful was, people who were willing to speak up. And ,  be recognized as a leader in that area. Mike Honda is a good example of that because he started out as a teacher, a biology teacher in fact. 

I probably need to say that I set up a program for him to work in student services and Japanese or Asians. And Mike being Mike he just went crazy and started other programs very, very rapidly. He became an advocate and , with some support from our offices he became a Congressman, so. 

Why did you feel it was important to have Asian American Studies offered? Why do you think it was important for students to have that as an option?
Well I think initially there were a group of actual students who were very vocal. And people could say what they wanted about people who are vocal but it really makes a difference, especially among the elected officials because they are dependent on constituents, the support by others in the community and are willing to speak up. And , when you have those people that are elected to vote the trustees or any kind of support , in public. Like school boards, city council, it really makes a difference. I sat on both sides of that equation. And I am always surprised at the impact one person can make at a public session articulating the need for more help in that very area or, or talking about people that are suffering and they need help.

When you received the check and then the apology letter, what was your feeling when you received that? When you got your check for 20,000 dollars, from the Government, for being put in the camps –

Well I had some second thoughts about that. And that I didn’t need the money. And there were people who needed it. And whether that makes it okay for us to deal with some very negative things for $20,000 dollars, how much is $20,000 dollars for one year gonna mean? That it’s ok to put people behind barbed wires for $20,000 dollars? Take away three to four years of my life for 20,000 dollars.  I think the very least of that money but then again there is a lot to be said about what $20,000 dollars means in a capitalistic society. It’s a drop in the bucket.

But the fact that they were able to get that passed is amazing to me. That it did go through as rapidly as it did. And those $20,000 dollars is nothing to sneeze at, we need to be aware of those things. I don’t know, I have some reservations about that though. I spent the money like anybody else who has received it. I didn’t give it back like some of them did.

Paul is there anything else you wanna share? About anything! Any other reflections, you know, from your life or your career or any, any last thoughts that you want to share with us?

I am pleased that the  attention that you are bringing forward to something that has been needed for some time, and finally coming to the open, I am 84 years old now, and I am surprised and pleased that these programs are receiving as much attention as they have. And it just needs to be continued , and there is so much to be done. That it’s all going to be for the better. And a better way to educate young people is through these experiences. 

This interview was made possible by a grant from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program and the Japanese American Museum of San Jose.