Sue Kunitomi Embrey

It could be argued that Sue Embrey’s name is as recognizable in the Japanese American community as Gordon Hirabayashi or Fred Korematsu. With her experience of being incarcerated in Manzanar deeply rooted in her youth, Sue Embrey devoted her life to activism and the advocacy of progressive ideas and political parties. She was a core founding member of the Manzanar Committee and worked with the National Park Service to ready their interpretive site for public visits. 

This interview however, conducted by Grace Megumi Fleming, focuses on Sue’s life growing up in the historic neighborhood of Little Tokyo and in particular, the relationship she had with her mother. As Sue’s father died before the war, her mother became the core anchor to the family, running a small grocery store in 1941 but sadly being forced to sell it following Executive Order 9066. But it was coming out after camp and returning to the neighborhood that Sue felt the backlash against Japanese Americans, particularly in terms of housing availability. “They just wouldn't rent to us. When I gave them my name, they’d say, ‘Are you Japanese? Well, we don’t rent to Japanese.’” 

Sue’s impact and influence on the story of Manzanar continues to be widely respected today in the community. In reflecting on the necessity to stay vigilant she says, “All of us have a certain responsibility to make sure that everyone is treated equally because one injustice to one person affects the rest of the population. You may not know it, but it does affect you. Eventually.” She passed in 2006 at the age of 83.

I'm sitting here with Sue Embrey, who graciously accepted my request to interview her. Can you tell me your full name?

Well, my Japanese name is Sueko which was shortened to Sue by my teachers in elementary school. My maiden name was Kunitomi and my married name is Embrey.

Can you tell me when you were born and where?

I was born right down the street behind the museum. This was Little Tokyo. And I was born in 1923, so I'm 77. I’m the sixth of eight children and my mother and father came from Okayama from southern Japan. My father came first and then my mother came. They were married in San Francisco, moved out to Hollywood and worked as domestics. And as more and more Japanese came into Little Tokyo, they moved into Little Tokyo where my father started his own business. My mother ran a boarding house. My father was kind of a contract agent for farmers so that he would pick up the bachelors and put them on the bus or the train and they would go up and down the coast in California harvesting crops. He also had what he called a moving transfer business, moving people, when they wanted to move from one house to another across town.

So your father was bilingual then?

Not very much, mostly with Japanese. He used to read the L.A. Times. He used to read us the comics. So I guess he did speak English. 

What was life like before the war?

Well, we went to regular school, public school, which was pretty much segregated because it was in Little Tokyo. I was east of Little Tokyo, but I would say 98% were Nisei and the others were Chinese from Chinatown. And some Mexican American. There were no Anglo kids or Caucasian. I couldn't remember, except for the two of them, that came, one lived in the neighborhood. She was a blond, blue eyed gal, and the other one was brought in by his father because the father wanted him to mix with other people.

He lived I think somewhere in Beverly Hills, they used to bring him in every morning. Anyway, he was a son of a wealthy person, and they would bring him in the morning, pick him up in the afternoon. I don't know how much he learned by being there, but those are the only two non-Asian. I don't remember how long they stayed, but we went up through the eighth grade. We went from eighth grade to Lincoln High School, which was on North Broadway.

I went to Lincoln High School and just before graduation, I ended up in the hospital with an appendix attack. So the doctor said he couldn’t wait ‘til I finished, that he really needed to take it out. So I spent about a month before graduation in the hospital. I made it for the last rehearsal, marching into the auditorium. And then I made it to the graduation. Around that time, our neighbors were running a small grocery store. My father had been killed in an auto accident in 1938. And so my mother pretty much had to fend for herself. My two oldest brothers were working. The other two below them were working part time going to school. And so the neighbor said they were going back to Japan, that they had saved enough money. They were going to build a house. They were afraid there'll be a war. They asked my mother if she would like to buy the store [and] course she wanted to very much. She wanted to be kind of independent. 

What kind of a store was that? 

It was a very small grocery store. They sold meat and dairy products. There were some fresh fruits and vegetables. Cigarettes, cheap wine, candy, I remember. And canned goods. So it was a regular small store which probably couldn't survive nowadays without a big market. 

Tell me a little bit about people who went back to Japan, even though they knew about the war. I mean, did they have the feeling that Japan would become this rich, prosperous country and they could be part of it?

I don't think they thought that far ahead. I figured the whole thing was a fear of the war and that they would be separated from relatives over there. And they had saved enough money, I guess, to go on. And they had three American born children. And I don't think they wanted to go, but they had to because they were minors. There was an older girl. And they were still in elementary school. And then a boy in the middle and a lot younger sister. Never found out what happened to them because they ended up in Hiroshima. But they built a house and they sent us a picture. They wrote to my mother quite often. This is 1941. So when I graduated in January, my mother was about to buy the store. She wanted me to take care of it for her. She would be there too. So, I ended up minding the store.

I wanted to go to college. Once my younger sister finished school in two years, then I guess she thought we would have enough money saved for college to send me to community college. But then the war came a year later. She had to sell the store. 

How were you able to sell it for enough money? 

I wasn't very much. I think she sold it for less than she paid for.

So she bought in early ‘41 And by December --

She sold it in ‘42. I think around April because we left for Manzanar. She had it a little over a year. She never said anything, but I think it was something we hoped to at least secure our future. 

I know that many of the old timers did not talk about feelings. Did she show anything in her face or in the way she moved?

Well, my brother, who is immediately above me, decided that he would go as a volunteer to Manzanar to learn to help build it. He said, “If we're going to go, we might as well go and see if we could make it at least habitable.” So he had a job in food stamps. And that was the one of the big jobs that all the Nisei had working in the food stamps. And they all have to join the retail clerks later. But at that time, they worked the wholesale markets -- truck drivers and dispatchers. 

What were your plans because you wanted to go to college?

I wanted to be a teacher, which at that time there weren't any. And I remember, I think it started right after the war [that] eventually I’d be able to teach. But I think we were pretty much aware of the discrimination and the fact that we could not get jobs elsewhere. Right after Pearl Harbor happened, our neighbors were young Mexican American. Most of them had finished high school. Went to the defense plants to see if they could find work. They came back and said that they were told that they weren’t hiring anybody except Caucasians, which is interesting because they were Mexican Americans. They couldn't get a job. Same with us. 

Was that the same way throughout the war? Because my image of like, Rosie the Riveter. You know, people of all backgrounds. 

No. Maybe eventually some of the Blacks were able to in the beginning, there was a lot of discrimination. You couldn’t get jobs. You know, even in our area there used to be a company that made caskets for funerals. They had no one there who was a minority at all. White men, not women. There was a white king soap company down the street on First Street.  And they also did not hire anyone except Caucasian. And I think that was true, most of the people in Little Tokyo had their own business. They hired Japanese people. Although we never talked about it, I think it was accepted, the fact that we couldn’t find jobs. 

Can you tell me maybe your happiest memory before Pearl Harbor?

Well, I think Little Tokyo was a very cohesive community. We had a Japanese school. We used to have annual events, like for Christmas at the old museum, Nishi. And the main auditorium was used for showing movies. Santa Claus would come and give out candy and stuff to the kids. We had annual picnics, school picnics.

They used to call [the] Undo-Kai, physical activity. They saw that we all ran races, competed against each other, and then they had the Kenshinkai prefectural picnic. The people from Hiroshima would get together once a year. And we used to go to the Okayama-ken, which was not a big one. My father would build a stage for each of these groups.  An outdoor stage and they would perform.

The kids would do dances and the men and women had instruments they would play. And I remember they would always ask my mother to sing. Because she used to sing a lot. And they would have races for the kids. They would have a lot of soda pop and lunches. And my mother used to make all of them. 

So you were really part of the community. And your happiest memories are these community events.

Yeah. And I know that my mother belonged to the Koyasan Buddhist temple. So they used to have activities there and they would go there. So it was, I think, a nice place to grow up in that we had no outside contact with other people except possibly our school teachers. I mean, mostly, a lot of Japanese. I think we were fortunate in having a group of teachers that were very, very sensitive to poor people and minority kids. Although I don't remember or not, my mother used to sew our clothes and she was very clever. My brother outgrew his suit. She would take the material apart. She'd make a skirt. So although we were I think like everybody else, we would get a pair of shoes a year or some clothes for Christmas. It was very practical. 

So was that considered poor if you had only one pair of shoes for a year?

I think we were all pretty much, you know, we didn't have a lot of money. I guess by those standards, everybody was coming out of the Depression. And so people didn't have a lot of money. Although we never lacked anything in terms of food, we didn't have fancy food. My mother made sure that we at least had rice. 

Do you remember when Pearl Harbor was bombed? 

Yeah, I was in the market. We had our grocery store and we opened it on Sunday from about seven o'clock in the morning to two in the afternoon. My mother had gone next door where we had to make lunch. And I was listening to a popular big band program on the radio. We didn't have television at that time, so they interrupted the program to say that they had just received word that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. They thought that the planes were Japanese. They weren't even sure when they made the first announcement, but that the planes had the red ball of, you know, the Japanese flag and insignia.

And they had devastated all the ships that have been in the harbor. And the planes have been bombed. And there was panic everywhere. And then they kept interrupting the program with this and pretty much in the beginning I don't think they really knew what was going on. They were just getting all of these messages from Hawaii. And so I sat and listened for a while. I thought, “I wonder if this is really true.”

You had doubts.

I had my doubts. And my mother, I went next door and I said that the Japanese planes attacked Hawaii. She said that must be a joke. “Why would they do that?” I don't know, but that's what they're saying on the radio. It went on all afternoon. And finally my brothers started to go home. They had gone out for the day.

They used to go to the local pool hall and they played pool in what they call shoot the breeze. And they said that the FBI had come into town, into the area and had arrested a lot of people saying the Issei were having some kind of Chamber of Commerce meeting. And they went in and took all of them.

The FBI went into a Chamber of Commerce meeting and just arrested all of them?

Yes, and they went into all the churches and arrested all the Buddhist priests. And there was just turmoil in Little Tokyo. And the police had come by and closed off the streets because there were too many spectators coming by just to gawk. By evening they had arrested almost all the leaders of every town: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle. So by nightfall, I think most of the leaders in the community were gone.

So once you heard that from your brothers, you were pretty sure that the radio show--

Yes, that this is really happening.  So my mother said, well, maybe I better get ready in case they come for me.  And then there was a woman a block away who was president of the Women's Federation.  You know, each of the different churches women's groups. So she packed her bag. She waited, but they didn't take her. They didn't come after my mother. 

Was she a leader too, your mother? 

No, she wasn't. But she was just worried because they're picking up all the Buddhists, and the Issei. 

Do you think she was terrified or was she resigned? 

She was sort of resigned, I think not so much but she was kind of surprised, I think. Or shocked that Japan would do such a thing. I already don't think she thought about it. I don't think any of the Issei thought about that. They figured there might be a war, but not nothing that Japan would attack the United States.

Was there any talk before Pearl Harbor that this might happen? 

Well, there were people who were boycotting down at harbor. The ships that were taking scrap metal to Japan. And the tensions were rising between the U.S. and Japan because they were sending ambassadors. They were  talking, talking with the White House with the State Department. So I'm pretty sure that there was a lot of tension. Our parents knew. They felt the discrimination.

Well, you know, when somebody first told me about the protests against ships taking scrap lumber to Japan. I thought it was the Japanese American community that was sending the scrap lumber and scrap metal. And then I heard it was like the big oil companies and it was the big industries that were making money off of selling all this war material to Japan. And it was the big Caucasian businessmen who were making money. 

Oh, yeah. There are always people who make money from war. There were a few progressive Nisei who went down to picket, too.  But it's not a large group. Unions are not large enough to do anything.

So here's your mom. She packed up her things and what [did] the rest of the family do? 

Well, my brothers were working for Japanese companies, they didn't get they didn't get laid off. So they, I think, pretty much continued with their jobs. My oldest brother had gotten married. He was living in Boyle Heights and his wife had a 6 week old baby the day that we left for Manzanar. On the train, she was pregnant and her doctor said, “If your baby is expected, you can stay with me while the rest of your family demands. She said, “I’m not going to get left behind!” She was six months pregnant. Oh, almost nine months pregnant. And the doctor said, well, if you want the baby to come early, you can walk every day, walk as much as you can every day, kind of hasten it. So she did. And the baby was born in April and he was six weeks old when we got shipped off to Manzanar. 

Tell me about the whole scene around being shipped off. I've seen photographs. Were people just resigned? Were people panic stricken?

The Issei were pretty much resigned because they were enemy aliens as far as, you know, the US was concerned because they couldn't get citizenship. And so the government said  “You have to go.” Then you have to go. And I think we sort of went along with it because the Nisei were not of age.

And  you usually do what your parents tell you to do. So we started to get rid of our things at the very last minute. I think  my mother decided that if people were coming by, she would just sell her plants. She was always growing things at home. So she would put out a big pot. And people would come by. I don't remember if she got a decent price for any of it. And then we had our store until April, and it was interesting because all of the people that were our customers from WhiteKing Soap Company and Casket Company, and people that worked around the area. Very sympathetic. They couldn’t understand why the government was doing it. They’d say, “You haven't done anything wrong.” And they would come by and talk to us. It was quite different. When you went outside, and got on to Main Street, you got the discrimination. 

So you didn't feel that you were in a hostile community. 

Yeah, pretty much. Because our teachers were supportive, and the customers. And we told them we had to sell the store. Then they came around with the notices. The soldiers in the Jeeps came around with notices and posted them so they were posted. They were dated May the 3rd and we had to leave on May the 9th.

Oh, you had six days.

Pretty much. But, you know, most people weren't even ready to sell their business like that. 

So what happened to those people who were not ready to sell their business? 

They just abandoned. And they told us we could only take what we could carry, so that meant possibly two suitcases. But our neighbors helped us with some of the things that we had extra [of]: duffel bags and things like that. And they walked with us down to the train station. Well, I know that my mother had a duffle bag and she had one of these woven baskets from Japan. So she put things in there, tied it up with rope so it wouldn’t come apart. And so I really don't remember, but I know we didn't get our baggage the day we got into Manzanar. They said they wouldn’t be able to unload until the next day. And so the next day, we all went into this huge firebreak to look for our luggage. 

So Manzanar is something special in my mind because it was both the assembly center and the relocation. So you didn't move twice.

Right. It was under army control as an assembly center. Somebody said they call that a reception center. 

I've heard that term. How strange. 

Yeah, I think the army turned it over to a civilian agency, which became the War Relocation Authority on July 1st. And we were lucky to get to Manzanar because my brother had gone ahead. But when it came time for us to meet, we were told to go and register at the old Union Church, which is on San Pedro Street and today it's the theater for East West players. But that was at a church and they used that for registration, and we were told we would be going to Santa Anita. And my mother was kind of frantic because she said that we might never see my brother again if we don't get to go to Manzanar.

And then my other three older brothers. He couldn't get into the army because he had very poor eyesight.  He tried to volunteer and they wouldn't take him. Once he got to the physical, it's just, you know, and he said, “What am I gonna tell my kids that I didn't serve in the army when, you know, my country needed me?”  He tried everything. He just didn't get in. But the other three were drafted. They were older. They were drafting men from eighteen to twenty two, twenty three and maybe twenty five. All my brothers were older. Two of them were married so they didn't get drafted until later. So we were all gone. 

So the first initial draft was for eighteen to twenty two. 

I think so. And then later on they extended the age because they needed more soldiers.

You know, you have so many brothers and probably sisters, too. Why don't they get the names of them? You can just say the names. 

Okay. My oldest brother was Frank, Koichi. Next was my sister Chioko. And then next to that one is Jack. Then Kinya, then Hideo. Hideo is the one that was always going out as a volunteer. And then I came in there myself and then my youngest sister, Midori, and then my brother Tetsuo.

My brother Frank was married and had the baby, six weeks old. And Jack got married just before we left because her family lived in Hollywood and they were gonna go somewhere else. He wanted to make sure that they were together. So they went down to this registrar office and got married.  

I hear about the hardships for mothers with very young children, especially if they had any health problems at all. How was your nephew?

He was okay. And I think he said he doesn't remember much about being in Manzanar. You know, he had a pretty free time because, you know, he had all the aunties and uncles, he had a grandmother and they all took turns taking care of him. But by the time the loyalty oath came around, my three brothers were already drafted. I was outside. I had gone to Madison, Wisconsin. My brother Hideo was in Chicago.

So my mother was left with two minor children. My younger sister and my younger brother. My older sister Chioko had tuberculosis. She was in a sanitarium before the war. She insisted on going with us to Manzanar. She said that now, they needed her husband, she was married and her husband was going with her. But the weather and the food was so bad that she had to go back and she was in a sanitarium in Monrovia. For the rest of the time that we were at Manzanar.

So here my mother was left with two young kids, all of us gone. She decided she's going back to Japan. Then my younger brother said, no, he's not going anywhere. He's only twelve. My sister just didn't know what to do. 

Well, back then, going to Japan means repatriating. 

Yeah. And then as American citizens they weren't going to go. And that would mean that she would go by herself except that my two brothers and sisters were minors so that they would have to go with her, Midori and Tetsuo. And Midori had just graduated from Manzanar High School. So she said it was terrible trying to keep my mother from going to Japan.They didn’t have us to support her. I wrote to her, told her not to go. I said, “You can't leave us all behind.” And she finally, I think decided not to go.

Were able to send money to her? You know, you were working in Madison. 

Yeah, I was working.

Was there any extra money after working to send to her?

Oh, all of us tried. Yeah, we all did. In fact, my brother Kinya, when he was drafted, they told him that they needed paratroopers. They would get additional pay. So he volunteered. And the additional money he made, he sent to my mother.

But paratroopers means that they go into the enemy line with the parachute. Right. It's like suicide mission. 

They could shoot you coming down. The other day, I heard from a man who was in the Air Force. And he said that he was on a mission over Europe when two of the other planes crashed.  Well, they collided. American plane. And he said they all parachuted out. And one of them, he said, his parachute was burning. He said, “I don't think he made it before the parachute, you know, completely burned up.” But he said, “As he was coming down in front of my plane, he waved to me.” He said I’ll never forget that because I'm sure he died.

He said the parachute was all burned up before he got to the ground. I thought, oh, my gosh, my brother. But he was lucky because his training didn't finish till after around ‘44. So by the time he went, he didn't go into combat. He went in with the occupation troops and he ended up in Hokkaido. And he said it was interesting because people in Japan had never seen Americans in uniform, and they hadn't seen any Japanese in an American uniform.

And they were surprised because he would take off his shoes when he went into the house and the American soldiers, you know, they just walked right in. They didn't take their shoes off. They really shocked them, Japanese people. They were so--

Rude. 

And not even asking about the customs of the country. But my brother and then he went to visit our relatives. So I am very happy to see him both he and Jack went in with General MacArthur.

With the occupation troops into Tokyo. He was stationed in Tokyo. And what he did, he didn't smoke, so he picked up everybody’s cigarette ration tickets. And he saved all those, and he bought cartons of cigarettes and put them all in a duffel bag, he bought Kleenex, he bought sugar, coffee at the P.X. And he took a whole duffel bag full of gifts when he went to visit his cousins. And our grandmother had died in ‘44. She was eighty seven or something. So both of my brothers helped to pay for the headstone for her, and they still talk about how they sat and looked at all the gifts in the living room we knew we had to do, you know, we had to sort out to give to everybody else. They were so grateful. And my brother said that people had starved on the street. Down the street. There was no food. 

What did you do in Madison, Wisconsin, backing up to that?

Well, I knew how to type, so I got a job. It was a temporary job in the office of the county administrator. There was a WRVA office opened and then they opened one in Madison, one in Milwaukee. We had one in Chicago helping us find jobs. And they found a temporary job in the Dane County Clerk's Office. I went there to work.  The people treated me very well.

They have no discriminatory kinds of things because I think, there weren’t a lot of Japanese living there in Wisconsin. They had one family who were farmers who were so happy to see us. They said, “We're so happy to see another Japanese face.” And they had two daughters. They were worried about who these daughters were going to marry? And all these young single men, Nisei, came here to work. Well, they were very happy.

So this is a Japanese American family in Wisconsin.

Right outside of Madison. And I don't know how they got there. He and his wife Issei from Japan. And he said they were really treated well. But then there was another Issei man who married a Caucasian woman and they had two sons. And one of the sons and the father both worked in the same place. I'm not sure what they did, but  they treated the father differently. None of them would talk to him. They would kind of ignore him. Whereas the son was like, you know, they never changed their attitude. I don't know why. And they were the only two families we met in Madison.

So, you know, this one family. I know. I think one of the daughters married a Nisei, moved to Cincinnati, and he was going to go to school. I don't know about the younger one. But I know the parents were very happy to have us come, and you know, have dinner with them. And then we spoke, some of us spoke a little Japanese, so they were happy to speak Japanese.

Do you speak Japanese?

I don't speak that much. I used to speak a lot before my mother was still alive. She knew enough English that we could talk to her. Mix Japanese and English.

What was it like when the war ended, when you heard that about Hiroshima had been bombed? 

When I woke up that morning when they dropped the bomb, I was really very sad. I just thought, what a horrible thing to do. And I later met a friend who was in Military Intelligence and they sent him to Hiroshima. I think he said a week after the bombing, and he said it was just awful.

They picked him up at the train station and put him in a Jeep so he could kind of drive around and check the damage. And he said he asked the soldier to take him to the highest hill so that he could look over the city and he said, “I did that.” And then I got back in the Jeep and I told them to take me back to the train depot.  He said, I got on the train and never went back to Hiroshima. He had taken a lot of pictures of the Hokkaido road or whatever. But he said he never went back to Hiroshima. 

And I just think by the time I got to Madison, I had become sort of anti-war because of all the things that had happened.  I thought it was terrible that they dropped the bomb. When the war ended, I think all Americans were very happy about it.

But then what was going to happen to us? So a lot of people were still in the camps. They were still open, and where were people going to go? I was worried about my mother. She finally decided to go back to Los Angeles. So my younger sister having just finished high school there, went with a friend who had a hotel in Little Tokyo. Leased it out, and she went back to get it back. So my sister went with her and stayed and looked for a job. She got a job at the County as a secretary.  And then my mother and younger brother came back and joined her. It's very difficult to find housing.

I hear horrible stories, not just about the housing, but if you've lost everything, finance. The families were split because children had to often be school girls and parents, if they were too old to work, they just had to live somewhere like shacks or barns or at the mercy of people who would give them rooms.

Yeah, that's true. I know families that are all separated into different domestic jobs. One of them, I think after he finished high school, he helped his brother start a gardening business. And he said, “That’s such hard work.” 

How about your mother, though? Where did she stay? 

She came back and they found a house, but they had no running water and they had to use the bathroom in a house in front of them. All they had was a room with a kitchen.  And she was still living there when I came back in 1948 -- she was there since 1945. She said they couldn't couldn't get a telephone because they were giving veterans first choice and they didn't have that many phones because they had stopped making them. When I came back, I decided that I had to find a place for them to live. I looked through the papers, and because we had no phone, I’d go to a public phone and put money in and try to find a place.

But it was interesting. They just wouldn't rent to us. They would describe the house and the rent and everything. And then when I gave them my name, they’d say, “Are you Japanese?” “Yes.” “Well, we don’t rent to Japanese.”

Just like that. 

Yeah, just like that, right over the phone. And so finally we found a place which was just south of Little Tokyo so that my mother could be close to the Buddhist temple. And we found a separate house in a three bedroom house. The owner was very nice. So I don't remember how much rent we paid, but we all moved in there. My brother Hideo by that time, was married. Had one girl.  My brother Kinbo was back from the army, and then my younger brother was there. My sister Midori had gotten married in Chicago. So I had come back to take care of my mother. 

And were you married?

I wasn’t married. So there I was with my mother, my younger brother and Kinbo.  So four of us in that, without any water. 

His name was Kinya, but you called him Kinbo? 

As a nickname, yeah. So we moved into this big house, which was kind of nice. 

Three bedrooms for the three of you. 

My mother and I slept in one room. My brother and his wife and the baby in another room. And then Kinbo and Tets in the third bedroom. And then after we’d been there awhile, Hideo and his wife, Ellen bought a house in the Crenshaw area and they moved there and I got married. My mother went to live with them.

I'm trying to think what happened to the rest of my brothers. Tetsu and Kinbo. I think Tetsu went into the service, he volunteered to go into the army in ‘48.  So it’s right after I came back from Chicago, he went into the service. And my brother Kinbo, I think, got married. But he was only married for a little bit. So then my mother went to live with Hideo, who had bought the house in Crenshaw.  

Did your mother ever work outside the house? 

She did after a while. In fact, when we first came back, she was working, doing unskilled labor. There are lots of little businesses in Little Tokyo. One was a company that had them sorting walnuts by size. And then they would have to pack them. Then she went to work in frozen food. And so she went to work in a place where they had shrimp and they sorted shrimp. But that, we thought, was too hard on my mother because it was icy water all over her hand. Yeah, and sorting shrimp and sitting for hours. And she did a lot of those little things. But after ‘48, she would find odd jobs, but she didn't work on a regular basis. We wanted her to not have to work.

And after that. She went to volunteer and she cooked lunch for the Buddhist temple priests at Koyasan. She did that for quite a few years. And she loved to go to the cemetery and clean up the area where my father was buried, and some of her friends, take flowers. She'd take the bus on First street all the way out there to get flowers. Then she joined the women's choral group.  Koyasan Buddhist temples is the only one that has a choral group. And they’d sing a cappella. And they had a little round bell that they hit with a little stick and they sing.

I've never heard of a Buddhist choral group.

It's very interesting because I talked to Reverend Mas of the Senshin Temple. That's the only group that has the choral group.  All women, and they do it during the service.

How wonderful. I’d like to hear it. Well, your mother sounds very interesting, but tell me about yourself. You said you wanted to be a teacher, that you wanted to go to college.

‘48 when I came back, I went to work for the county of Los Angeles County Health Department, and I worked there until 1952. 1950 I got married, and I had to be home because my mother did not approve of my marriage. Non-Japanese.

 Oh, yes. Your last name is Embrey?

Yeah, he was from Texas and we met at a party and I had gotten involved in politics. In 1948, I met some people who were interested in politics and I joined a Democratic club. And we did local elections. Like the Mayor's election, City Council and then gradually expanded to national and state candidates. I don't remember who I campaigned for in ‘48. Oh, I joined a group that was interested in the third party movement. And Franklin Roosevelt had decided when he ran for his third term that he did not want Henry Wallace as vice president. And he picked Harry Truman. Wallace was disenchanted with the Democratic Party and he formed his own third party. He called it the Progressive Party. And so I had some friends in L.A. who wanted me to get involved. So they took me to the first meeting of Nissei Progressives. Actually it was originally Nisei for Wallace and so we campaigned for him. We had our own newsletter and we walked. We would go to the different churches on Sunday and pass out leaflets. We couldn't go into the church, but we were outside.  And we’d do a lot of public school, private things.

And that's where you met Mr. Embrey?

Yeah. I was at a party and met him. He was introduced to me by another Nisei fellow who had gone to UCLA with him. They both had gone to UCLA and they had met after many years then seeing each other while they were at the party. At that time, I was going with somebody else.  But I invited him to come to the Nisei Week Parade. And we started dating after that. My mother didn't like it at all. She would tell him to go home.

Oh my gosh! How did he take that? 

Oh, he would say, “Well, Mrs. Kunitomi,” and she would walk out of the room. But we kept going out. Decided get married, invited all my brothers and sisters. Of course, they couldn't tell my mother.  They would come and see us, you know, after we were married. My sister would call me. For Christmas, I sent a present to my mother, [she] never acknowledged it. But it was 1955 when my first son was born that she came over to help. So that was interesting. 

Was it her idea to come and help? 

She would give him a bath. She was very strong. My son was quite big, but she would come take care of him, make lunch for me. This is right after I came back from the hospital. I think she helped a couple weeks. Then she’d babysit afterwards, when I started going back to school and working part time.

And then did she accept?

She then accepted him and invited us for New Year's or something like that.

That must have been a relief for you. 

Yeah, it was and it was interesting because my sister would call me and say, ”We're having this memorial service for my father so be sure to come.” And I would go and I would sit in the back and my mother's friend, who was one of her best friends and we had lived together in Little Tokyo before the war. Mrs. Yamada came up to me and she said, “You go up to the front. You belong in that family.” So when the family went up to do the incense offering, she nudged me.  “Go on! Go on!” 

And so I went up there. She said later, she said, “I told your mother, this is America [and] not to be so adamant about not accepting my marriage.” So I said, “I'm so glad.” I didn't see her very often after that. But, obviously, was kind of happy to know that she had talked to my mother. She was the only one that talked to her at all.  Now her kids didn't marry out of the Japanese race, but she had these progressive ideas. 

So you were involved with the Progressive Party. Was there any discussion about the internment and the political ramifications?

Oh yeah. We put together a platform which was for us to get citizenship for our parents, and compensation for our internment. Equal housing. Because there was an anti-housing ordinance. And we wanted to get rid of that. And to reform the immigration laws. So the Japanese and other groups could come into the country. That is a platform that we put together and the Progressive Party accepted all of that and put it on the national platform. 

Was this the seed of the whole reparation movement? 

Well, I think we were the early ones that asked for, you know, what we call reparations, but I don't think people were really working on it until much later. But it was an opening in a way. We made sure that the papers knew about it -- the publicity, and personal basis so that the community would know. I wasn't sure whether the national group had accepted all of these issues that we have put forward, but we were being interviewed by a young student about our progressive party activities and one fellow actually organized the group in L.A. He said, “Yeah, we sent all these issues to the national office and Wallace accepted them, put it in his platform.” He was very progressive. 

What was his first name? 

Henry. Henry Wallace.  He was a farmer who was doing experiments with corn. He thought if he matched different varieties of corn that you would get a hybrid corn, which was very good, and that's kind of the thing that doctors talk about. That if you, like my son, he’s half Japanese and half white. That he is stronger, healthier, and bigger than if he was one race. “Hybrid bigger.” I said, “Oh, that's like Wallace’s corn!” The doctor laughed. 

So did you say that when you put the platform together, it was or wasn't called reparations or redress? 

I think we called it “reparations.”

You did call it reparation and redress came later. 

Yeah, I think about 20 years later. Wow. Maybe longer, ‘48? It didn’t really  start until about 1980. 

I mean, you were doing this in ‘48? You were progressive!

Yeah. But you know, we were kind of isolated from the community because we were much too radical for the Nisei Community.  Nisei were very conservative, even today they’re conservative.  

How does the Japanese American community look at you now? 

I think they still think of me as too radical.  

What are you involved in right now? 

Well, I'm on the advisory board for Heart Mountain. I'm also on the commission for Manzanar, which is an appointed position by Bruce Babbitt, the Secretary of the Interior. The one in Heart Mountain is my volunteer because I have to pay all my own expenses to travel. But they’re such wonderful people, I have so much fun with them. We don't sit around and talk about camp stories!  

Tell me about your Manzanar position. 

I'm in the advisory commission, which is set up in the bill that Congress passed to advise and assist in the development of the Manzanar site, because this is now part of the National Park Service. So we have regular meetings. Things like, where shall we put the parking lot, and how do people go into the auditorium? Through the new addition or through the back original entrance? Different things like that. Interpretation is what we're concerned with. I'll be going up to San Francisco in August for a meeting.  

For this commission?

Yes.  Well, it's actually we're representing the Commission on the Interpretive Planning Team. That's a National Park Service group that's planning interpretation for Manzanar. They come from different branches of the different offices of the parks: historians, architects, planners.

And why is the meeting in San Francisco?

Well, we've been meeting in Independence, which is near Manzanar. They said that it's too expensive for these people to travel, like from Harpers Ferry or Denver. It's easier for them to go directly to San Francisco, it's cheaper. So they changed that. 

If you wanted to say something to young people or people, or anybody who wanted to know more about internment, what is the most important message you want to tell them? 

Well, I think that it's important to know about what happened because it could happen again. It might happen to another group of people or people with different political beliefs. And it's important for us to remember that we have a Constitution. A written document that is only good when people make use of it. And they have to use it, and not abuse it. You know, people worry about the right to bear arms. Carry a gun. Their right to do this, their right to free speech. But a lot of people don't really pay much attention to those things, and it's very important to make sure that nobody's rights are violated. All of us have a certain responsibility to make sure that everyone is treated equally because one injustice to one person affects the rest of the population. 

You may not know it, but it does affect you. Eventually. And I think that is important for young people to really know their history so that this doesn’t happen again. Because I had studied all of this in high school and in U.S. History. I think it's important for people to know enough about these things so that it doesn’t happen to anybody else.  A friend of mine does tours at Manzanar for people, for teachers. And they said the United States is the only country to apologize for what they did. And he said, you know, that could only happen in a country like the United States. Some people say, well, that weakens our country to, you know, expose our mistakes. But I don't think so. I think it makes America look better and stronger that they're willing to admit to having made a wrong decision and that they won't do it again. I think that's something you could tell the world. We are a role model. And that's representative of a democracy.

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