Margaret saito

Margaret Saito’s interview provides a powerful glimpse into the upbringing of a patriotic family, in which her father particularly fully believed in the goodness and culture of America. As he refused to send his children to Japanese school to fully assimilate them into the fabric of California and the U.S., he was even nominated as the drill marshal in the days following Pearl Harbor, checking to see that the neighbors had their shades properly drawn. The heartbreaking aspect of her father’s dedication to his country, however, was his disbelief that the camps were even happening, assuming that the bombing of Pearl Harbor was a major mistake that would soon be cleared up. Margaret remembers when her father told her, “Don't worry, they'll take care of you because you're an American citizen.” Margaret passed away in 2004 at the age of 80. 

Can you tell me when you were born and where you were born?

Born in Oakland. June 18, 1924.

You were born right here in Oakland. And you're still here in Oakland. Can you paint me a picture of what life was like in your neighborhood before Pearl Harbor?

I was a senior in high school. My father had a flower shop, and my mother helped him. From junior high school on, I had to cook the meals.

So, you cooked for the whole family. Was that pretty typical of Japanese American families?

I think a lot of them did that because both parents worked. And our neighborhood was very international. You see, we lived around 35th Avenue, Fruitvale, before Bart took over. When you cluster with your ethnic group, there's a lot of support there, and that's still how it is when immigrants come.

You're Nisei?

Yes. My grandparents came when my mother was six years old. My mother went through the Oakland public school system.

So even though she was Issei, she came so early. Her English must have been perfect.

Yes, her English was very good.

Was it hard financially at that time?

We sure weren't prosperous, but we were doing okay, I guess. Getting by.

Can you tell me a little bit about the racism before Pearl Harbor. We don't think of the Ku Klux Klan as having a huge presence in California, but I know they targeted Asian-Americans at that time.

Well, I wasn't even aware of it, because our neighborhood was the way it was. Everyone was the same. Everyone was treated equal. And at school if they didn't like me, I guess they ignored me. It wasn't until war broke out that you get this feeling. After the war broke out, people talked about it, especially the parents. So, they brought that feeling to school, and threw it at us.

That maybe speaks to the responsibility and power that the media has. Well, you were already a senior, so were you aware of current events and so forth?

I was so ignorant. I was just a kid. I would come home from school and the first thing I would do is look at the newspaper, and I mean just glance at it. Then to sports, then to the funnies. That was my whole world right there. Until the war broke out. Then, naturally you start reading more. Until then, I didn't realize that Europe was in turmoil. It didn't mean anything.

How did you react, then, when Pearl Harbor was bombed? Can you describe that day?

My father was at his store when he heard the news. We were home getting ready for Sunday school. He called us on the telephone, and we couldn't believe it. We just didn't believe it. I kept saying “Oh my god,” and he kept saying, “Don't worry. They will straighten it all out. It's a mistake, whatever it is, it must be a mistake.”

He tried to deny the gravity of it.

I think so. Be calm. Don't worry. He was one of those. All my friends at church went to Japanese school, but I didn't. He always said, you were born here, and you'll be as American as you can be. He didn't want us to learn Japanese. The funny part is that way at the beginning the war, the community, and I mean everybody, nominated him as drill marshal. When the city started having air raid drills, he would go outside and check the district, which was maybe a few blocks.  He made sure everybody's shades were drawn. The whole neighborhood trusted him, so it was so ironic that here he is, the enemy, and here he is, air raid marshal.

How did that irony play out for you as a teenager still in high school?

I had this feeling of dread, and I didn't quite know where it came from, because I hadn't felt any animosity beforehand. So, why would it be different? But I knew it was different. I was walking to school and this car came down the street with a bunch of young boys in it and they ran up on the sidewalk and I don't think they meant to run me over, it was just to scare me. And it worked. I was scared.

Your heart must have stopped.

I was kind of flattened up against the building because I wasn't sure what they were going to do. And I guess the frightened look on my face was satisfaction to them. They were yelling something like “Go home, ‘Jap.’” Well, I didn't understand. This is my home. When I got to school, this one kid I passed spit at me, and then in the classroom, kids called me “Jap.” You know, I never heard that come out of their mouth before. One day, I came home and I told my father that I wasn't going to go back to school. We don't have to be treated like that. And he said, you will go to school. Education is the most important thing in your life. And so the next day I went to school.

Do you think the experience changed your identity?

I think so. It was a rude awakening for me.

Some people I interviewed said that they had family discussions about it. Do you remember something like that?

My father was the boss, and what he said went. But I'm sure he and my mother talked a lot. I know he burnt all his books that he brought from Japan. We didn't have the Emperor's picture on the wall like a lot of our friends did, like you know, the ones that went to Japanese school.

Was that pretty common back then for a family?

It seemed like it. But when I talk now and hear all the people who did, they say they burned them. But we never had those things. We had the President of the United States. 

That's interesting, so even before the war, it was important to display his patriotism. How did your high school teachers react to all this? 

Well, I remember, our counselor had written to City Hall and asked permission for us to attend our senior ball. She had to vouch for us, because it's after 8:00 and because the curfew was in place, we're not supposed to be out.

What month was that?

That was in January or February. It didn't matter in the end. It turned out we were already gone by the time June came.

Can you tell me a little bit about when the evacuation orders were posted on the telephone poles?

Even then, there were some people in our neighborhood that didn't know we were leaving. I don't know if they didn't read it, or they just didn't care. But after the war, when I saw them, they would say, “We didn't even know you were going.”

My father told me, “Don't worry, they'll take care of you because you're an American citizen.” So that's another shock for him.

He had his own denial to struggle through.

I think until we got to Topaz, he couldn't believe it.

How did your father deal with the business and all the pressures?

On Tuesday the FBI came and took him in the middle of the afternoon. They wouldn't tell my mother where they were taking him or how long he would be gone or anything. They told her to close the store. And so, when I got home from school, he was gone. And my mother was telling me what she knew, but she didn't know very much. Three days later, he was home, but a lot of his friends, schoolteachers, and people like that, were detained for a long time. He was the president of the Japanese Society of Oakland. So naturally, he got picked up. But his attitude to the system was always: we comply with the law. We bring up our children to be good Americans. We participate in community activities and are proud to be American.

Do you remember packing up and going to the assembly center?

Being children, we wanted to take everything. And my mother kept saying, you can't do that. And complaining all the way, you know, it wasn't bad enough that they were going through this, but on top of that we kids are just complaining constantly. As I was crossing the Bay Bridge, I was thinking, this is the last time I'm going to see this. My first experience at Tanforan was traumatic. My grandfather had always told me the Japanese are honest. And so I believed that. I had been given a watch by this fellow who was going to another camp. When I went to the latrine I took it off but of course I forgot it. I went back to my place and realized. I went right back, but it was gone and I was shocked. Not that I had lost my watch, but that a Japanese person had probably taken it. I guess that's when I realized not everything they tell you is true. Even Japanese people can be desperate or dishonest. 

There was a loss of innocence.

That's what it was.

What was it like in Tanforan?

Well, we lived in a horse stable.

Somebody told me the smell at Tanforan was terrible.

Especially in a horse stable because of the manure that was left by the horse. It was just whitewashed, not really cleaned out. The hair from the horse is still sticking out of it. You know, you can just pick them out of the walls. My mother tried scrubbing the floor, but you just couldn't get rid of the smell. There was a sense from their age group––a shikata ga nai––it can't be helped. And they just went along with the tide. The men my father's age group I think had the hardest because they're the breadwinners and here they were taken away from that and their whole lifestyle changed and so yeah, I think it hit them harder.

Did that force his attitude toward the government to change?

I think he knew the whole thing was wrong, but it was something that he really clung to because he felt when he came that that's what America represented. That everybody had rights.

I mean, maybe the way I think of shikata ga nai being like bamboo bending in the harsh wind is when the harsh winds subside, when the racism has been lifted up enough, then maybe you can stand up tall and straight like the bamboo after the wind and then you can examine what happened, what your values are, how you felt.

Well, I can't speak for anybody else, but I like that. We didn't want to talk about things at the time. And in Tanforan I worked in the mess hall. I took care of the baby food department.

How did that work?

We're supposed to keep count of how many babies are in your block and then order the food and divide the portions. The mothers would all complain that their three-year-old is hungry and you're going to give him a tiny piece of this just mashed potato or rice or whatever it is.

So the food wasn't sufficient.

Not so much the quality. They were happy to get what they got. But I mean the quantity was too small. So what I did was I kind of went halfway in between the number of children we had in our block.

So you just fibbed on the number of children? 

Plainly speaking, yes. And that worked fine until I got fired. But, you know, we tried.

Nobody has ever told me that there wasn't enough food.

Well, the children, I think, were really shortchanged. There were mothers who didn't say anything, then there were vocal ones in my section. That and I could see it myself.

You never want to see your child hungry. Did people get used to that, or did some get physically sick? 

I'm not sure about the physical aspect, but there were people who just sat and did nothing, not because they were sick, but because they felt so hopeless. And to see them sitting out in front barely moving was painful. They tended to be men and they tended to be older. 

Maybe women are used to having to put up with a lot of stuff and so it's a matter of “this is the way it is and we do the best we can.” 

Right. That's why I think the men had the hardest time: the 35, 40-year-olds and up. I've heard a lot of stories afterwards about how men went through this deep crisis state. Well, my father was still in the mindset of the government will take care of us, so don't worry. And we are protected from the outside, all the racism I experienced in school. Even though those soldiers up there were pointing their guns inside, toward us, not toward what was happening outside. That's the story we were given. And he was going to stick to it because that's what his government told him. 

Loyalty was very important to him.

After the war, when I went up to visit my father before he passed away, Richard Nixon was speaking on TV. I was going to excuse myself and my father said, come here. Sit right here. And here I am well into adulthood or whatever, and staunchly opposed to Nixon's ideas. But I came and sat down, and he said, “Even if you don't like the man, you respect his office and listen to what he has to say.” That's how I remember him. Right up until the end.

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