The Great Depression; Interview with Togo Tanaka. Part 4

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

Speeding. Marker.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, we were talking, you were in the middle of telling me about the situation in California for Japanese-Americans and whether you felt welcomed here.

TOGO TANAKA:

I think, during my student days at UCLA-

CAMERA CREW MEMBER #2:

Let's hold for a second.

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

Helicopter.

INTERVIEWER:

Oh, a helicopter.

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

Mark.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, let's start where we, we were before-

TOGO TANAKA:

All right, fine.

INTERVIEWER:

-about California and whether or not if felt like a receptive place, like a home to you.

TOGO TANAKA:

I, If you lived in California, in the 1920s, cause I've lived here since 1916, but you knew that you were not really a first-class citizen on an equal footing with other classmates. One, it wasn't just the economic difference, I think it was more a question of knowing that customs that were, you know, cast in concrete here. I remember the first time I walked down here into Westwood Village to get a haircut, I was a sophomore at that time, and I was told that, \"your hair is different so go to Little Tokyo.\" [laughs] That was not an uncommon experience, you see. If you went into good restaurants, couldn't afford them anyway, but you know, you usually might be seated in the back. Now, this might not have been that common an experience, but I think it was in that, for most people who were visibly different, you know if you were black, we didn't say black in those days, you were a Negro, or there's other. Or Japanese or Chinese. There weren't many other Asians, but I think the Japanese and Chinese bore the brunt of the early anti-Oriental, you know, feeling just generally. I think most noticeably, and I ran into this on graduation from UCLA and attempting to buy a home, and you discovered that within the legal framework of how you buy a home, there was a thing called, I think it was a deed which said, \"Occupancy of this property can be only by a person of Caucasian descent,\" which eliminated a lot of us. So I think in those ways—later as I became an English editor of the Rafu Shimpo and discovered that literally in Little Tokyo, I had never lived in a segregated, racial community until I began to work for the newspaper. My parents had always lived in, you know we had the worst house in a Caucasian neighborhood, you see. Or the, my exposure was to customers of my parent's fruit stand, and in that course of a day if I talked to a hundred people or waited on them, and often I did more than that, there might, there'd probably be not a single Japanese person, but the discovery that in a way we were hemmed in in a ghetto because there were so many laws and rules that said, you cannot do this and you cannot be, you cannot be licensed as a lawyer, or as a doctor, or as an accountant, or in the professions, because there were restrictions based upon your race, and that was pretty much typical. I think it was accepted by the first generation Japanese, but not so by the second.

INTERVIEWER:

Did that affect the way you, the way you felt about your citizenship here? Did you feel at home here? Did your parents feel at home here?

TOGO TANAKA:

My parents never did feel at home, I think my mother did, she accommodated with whatever happened, and she was, I think, I don't think she was baptised but she accepted Christianity and sent her children to Christian Sunday school. My father, who took refuge as a Confucian scholar, and a background in Buddhism, simply said that \"this was a white man's country. There's no place for me.\" If he had ever been successful in business or otherwise he probably would have taken us all back to Japan, but he was not a businessman and so he could never afford to, so he merely put up with it.

INTERVIEWER:

How did you feel? You were in the late '30s, how did you feel about your place in this country?

TOGO TANAKA:

Well, you know, I had very dear and good friends at school. One friend I lost this past year, we had known each other since we were in the third grade, at Los Feliz Elementary School, that's a long time. And, I would say most of my friends, all of my friends in school days were not Japanese. I felt very much at home, was very much a part of it. And, I think in 1923 when Japan had that very severe earthquake, and my father had [coughs] brought me up to believe that you could never get a square deal in dealing with anybody that was not Japanese, but I remember taking a shopping bag and walking all over Hollywood collecting donations from people to help people who were made destitute by that earthquake, and brought back a lot of money, a bag full of coins and bills, and I began to question my father, if they're all that bad, how come? [laughs] He began to feel that much of what he was saying applied to him, but not necessarily to his children.

INTERVIEWER:

So was there a sense of dual-allegiances at all on your part?

TOGO TANAKA:

Oh I think so, yes, very much so.

INTERVIEWER:

Can you just explain that?

TOGO TANAKA:

Well, you know, I think it was kind of funny, when I was—I read a great deal, I went to the library constantly—and I remember one year, we were to, he, you know the idea of putting a bookmark with your name on it, and I think my father's influence showed because I looked at some of those early bookmarks and I had carved a Japanese sword and then my name, and I put that in a book, and I thought that was kind of, [laughs] as I look back on it in later years I was kind of funny, but it certainly indicated that—my father came from what they call a samurai family in Japan, he was very proud of that. And I, I know one of the greatest disappointments that he expressed to my wife was that, when he was getting older he asked me would I like his collection of swords, or his books, and I made the comment, \"What would I do the sword, cut cheese with it?\" [laughs] I mean you know, he thought, that to him was blasphemy. He left me his books, and he left my wife his swords, [laughs] but the books, I can't read them, so I gifted them to UCLA or an Asian-American Studies Center or to, I think some went to the Japanese-American Museum. I wish I had learned to read Japanese, I never did.

INTERVIEWER:

We talked on the phone a little bit about the, kind of uncertain citizenship status that existed among Japanese-Americans, I wonder if you can help me understand that and how it effected your family?

TOGO TANAKA:

Well, I was typical I think of those who—when I was born, I believe my father, I was born at home in Portland, Oregon, and my father, a year or two later I think, registered me as a Japanese subject. They did that in Japan, so I was, but I, by virtue of having been born in the United States I was an American citizen. And, at the outbreak of, or before the outbreak of war, we were made conscious of the fact that, if you had dual-citizenship you were subject to the laws. If I were in Japan I'd have to serve in the Japanese army, in this country I'd be eligible for the draft. And that was my situation when—just before Pearl Harbor—when my wife and I married, I renounced Japanese citizenship. Part of it was due because of my boss, the publisher of the Rafu Shimpo, had believed strongly himself that, if we were going to live here, we should be citizens of the United States, now he couldn't become one because the laws forbid that. But, but there was that dual loyalty fear in much of the public in California, and I think that may account for the behavior of Japanese-Americans during World War II. They were out to prove that they belong here.

INTERVIEWER:

Talk to me about what happened to you during Pearl Harbor. Start if you could by telling me where you were when you heard and what happened-?

TOGO TANAKA:

Oh, I was home in Glendale, and it was Sunday, and I had this call from my friend who was on the staff of the Los Angeles Examiner, Magner White, and he called and said, \"The Japanese are bombing Pearl Harbor,\" and so my immediate reaction, well I'll have to go down to the newspaper and put out an extra, which I did, and I think the, I can't, my mind is fuzzy and the entry in my red books don't show it, but I thought that during that hectic day we worked on putting out—the calls were coming in everywhere, from everywhere—and I believe it was on that day that

INTERVIEWER:

I think maybe we should stop for a second so we have time to change camera rolls.

TOGO TANAKA:

Oh, all right, fine. [laughs] OK.

INTERVIEWER:

And you know what I might do, Mr. Tanaka, when we put in the next roll, before we get to Pearl Harbor I meant to ask you about your broader awareness [inaudible]

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

That's roll out. Camera roll 100.

INTERVIEWER:

I want to talk about your awareness of what was going on in Japan, and perhaps you can tell me about your job at the newspaper and, and what that was, and how you became aware of what was going on?

TOGO TANAKA:

The English section staff was very small at the time, Louis Siskiyou, had been editor for many years, she was the first editor, was the person with whom I worked. They had another bilingual editor named George Nakamoto who had, thought he had greater opportunities in Japan, and he left so I took his place. And, the first responsibility that Mr. Colmi, the publisher gave me was he said, \"You work with the Japanese section editor who does the front page,\" and I said, \"Well I don't,\" you know \"read or speak Japanese very well.\" \"Well you understand enough,\" so every morning my job was to take the, either rango or denzu shortwave wireless dispatches that came in from Tokyo every morning. And there it was in English, Japanese written in English, \"koro mag e,\" and Mr. Shimojima would read that to me and it would be like Greek or Latin, and then he would explain to me what it meant and I would be taking notes. And I would, each morning, write in English the article that appeared in the paper. I did six years of that and got to be fairly good, and I became conversant with the sound of Japanese words, and as I—

INTERVIEWER:

What did this, I'm sorry, I was going to say, what did this do for your awareness of—

TOGO TANAKA:

Well, what that did was that, you know I was reporting about the Japanese invasion in China, the I guess, the occupation of Manchuria, the military, you know, influence in the Japanese government, and reporting that. At the same time reporting on the impact of that in the United States, you know the sinking of the gunboat Panay in the Yangtze River. There are many incidents that made me aware that the thing that was happening was growing hostility, the clash of interests between the United States and Japan. And, that made me realize that one day—and I'd taken, I think, I, in my major in political science, I think if you go back to the 1930s, one of the lecturers there was a Professor Charles Titus who had been in, I think in military or army intelligence, and he lectured on what he called the Columbian Picture, a theory developed by professors at the University of-- Columbia University, on why, eventually, Japan and the United States would fight a war on the Pacific. And, I think I also mentioned my reading of a book that I read many times over by Homer Lea, the Valor of Ignorance, pointed out how these two forces would meet and fight a battle, a war in the Pacific. He also predicted that Japan would lose. He didn't go further on to say what they were doing economics for following the war, but that was something that I lived with everyday, being with the Japanese language newspaper—and incidentally the Rafu Shimpo still is being published, it's the largest, you know, Japanese language newspaper in the United States.

INTERVIEWER:

So you were, what kind of articles were you writing, to this effect?

TOGO TANAKA:

Well, as I look back on it, I was writing propaganda. Apologizing for what Japan was doing. And that, that was, you know, considered the role that, if you were a, a \"Japanese American with a sensitivity about the need for what you were doing for your own people,\" in quotes, then you were defensive about, and you wanted to explain all the good things that were coming out of what Japan was doing in East Asia.

INTERVIEWER:

Tell me how this, this growing concern in, about the inevitability of war between Japan and the United States made you feel?

TOGO TANAKA:

Well,

we were being attacked in the mainstream media,

the Hearst newspapers,

with people who were,

you know,

writing about the \"yellow peril,\" the threat to the safety of the republic,

you know, with people who were multiplying like rabbits on the West Coast. The Japanese,

we were not Japanese-Americans, we just simply were Japanese,

and the, I think the tone of the Los Angeles Times, which today is regarded as middle-of-the-road or even left-of-center on many issues, felt that there really may or may not have been a place for the descendants of the Japanese immigrants. I think they felt the same way about the Chinese.

The, you had the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, the American Legion,

the Grange

these were

organizations,

groups of people who really owned and ran cities, and communities, and areas up and down California. And, I think the, their ability to influence a legislature, to pass laws that restricted the opportunities for people who were not of Caucasian descent, that was the order of the day.

INTERVIEWER:

So what were you, you had told me that you were afraid about what this might mean for Japanese-Americans, this war was building, we were talking about that.

TOGO TANAKA:

Well, the thing that we feared probably was that we would either be incarcerated, put into camps, or deported. We had in the Congress of the United States, senators from, say, Mississippi -- I think it was a man named Stuart, there was another one named Rankin, Stuart was from Tennessee -- but people who, I used to, you know, subscribe to and read the Congressional Record, and I remember [laughs] that, you know, I think Senator Stuart quoted a very popular sportswriter whom I read faithfully, except when he wrote about anti-Jap—he was named Henry McLemore—and he says you know, [laughs] \"by God, the, once a Jap, always a Jap. And, and when war comes, the only thing we can do is to round them all up, put them on an island in the Pacific and sink the island.\" I mean, this was not an uncommon point of view. This made, you know, people who are living in these, if they, if they weren't physical ghettos they were mental ghettos, people who felt that the walls around them were so high it was hard to get over them. And that, most of us, you know, had been born and raised on the West Coast, we didn't know what the rest of the country was like, and as a consequence

I think there was a great deal of anxiety that, my god what's going to happen if and when the war comes.

And this may count in my, as I look back in retrospect, the only vocal organization representing this beleaguered group was called the Japanese-American Citizen League, and you know, much of what this group and its leaders did at that time, maybe was an overreaction to this fear that, 'my god, we, we don't have too many defenses, and we haven't got too great a chance.' I think is what happened.

INTERVIEWER:

You moved back to Washington at one point, you remember-

TOGO TANAKA:

In, in October of 1941, two months before Pearl Harbor, if I could've predicted that [laughs] I don't think I would've gone. But I had been for some time talking with my publisher, I had, I think in 1939 and '40, created some real problems for the business office by, in my, I think, eagerness to fight against discriminatory practices. I had picked up a quotation from a San Francisco publication called a newsletter in The Wasp, and I quoted them because at that time there was a drive on to deprive Japanese fisherman in the Terminal Island area of their right to run those, to earn a livelihood. They were going to pass laws that would restrict them, and I picked up a quotation from a newsletter in The Wasp in San Francisco and ran it without permission, and we got sued by that paper, $1,500. Now for someone earning $65 dollars a month that's a fortune, and I thought he was going to fire me. Instead he sent me to a lawyer that represented the newspaper, a man named Marcus Roberts, and said, \"He's gonna lecture to you on what you should do. That, out of ignorance you've done these things. It's going to cost the publisher,\" you know, \"more than a year's salary for you.\" I said, \"Well, if he's going to fire me I guess I'll go back to working a fruit stand.\" He didn't fire me, he told me to go and study law. I didn't know where I could find the time, I was holding another job beside the newspaper because I wanted to earn some more money, but I went down to the University of Southern California library and began reading things. Eventually I took a correspondence course from La Salle Extension University in Chicago. But in the, in my reading—

INTERVIEWER:

Oh.

TOGO TANAKA:

No, that's all right.

INTERVIEWER:

OK.

TOGO TANAKA:

Does that bother you?

INTERVIEWER:

Yeah.

TOGO TANAKA:

OK.

INTERVIEWER:

Is your machine on?

TOGO TANAKA:

Yeah, it'll go off shortly. I think it rings three-and-a-half times. [coughs]

TOGO TANAKA:

I can take it off the hook. Would that be better?

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

That's a roll out on camera roll 318:101.