Yosh Nakagawa retired from a successful career in business to focus on sharing his story of internment/incarceration as a child during World War II. Through that he works as a civil rights activist.
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| Photo by Madeline Crowley |
What’s important is not only that the story is not lost but that with that knowledge that it happens to no one else. That’s the significance. That’s finding common ground. I have no problem talking to blacks, to the Jewish or the Hispanic communities when we call for the human rights and freedom that belongs to all Americans.
About Yosh:
Yosh’s
love of sports not only introduced him to towering figures like: Jackie
Robinson, Arthur Ashe and Billy Jean King and a career but cemented a sense of
fair play that drives him to pursue social justice and understanding even
today.
Yosh on his life:
I was born in 1932. My name is Yosh Nakagawa. The story I
will share with you is the story of the Japanese-American, the Nikkei community
and their incarceration in a Japanese concentration camp during World War II (WWII).
We were born and raised in America where we have a Constitution and a Bill of
Rights. Yet, it is only as good when it is abided by, that paper is worthless
when citizens lose their freedoms. In wartime, I lost my freedom because I
looked like the enemy.
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| Yosh as a toddler. Collection Yosh Nakagawa |
That’s the central question in my story. When I look at this
in context of today, in the very church building that was boarded up and closed
in 1942, because all its congregants were removed physically, against their
will, to be interned without due process of law by Executive Order 9066 signed
by President Roosevelt.
It is ironic that 120,000 Japanese-Americans living west of
the Mountain ranges from Alaska to San Diego were physically removed from their
homes. When in the (then) territory of Hawai’i 160,000 similar people were
never removed [from their homes] despite the fact that they lived where the
bombs fell in Pearl Harbor. If I had lived over on the other side of the
mountains, I would have been free. How do I know this? When I was in Camp
Minidoka, the American Concentration camp, I had a friend who looked like me,
who lived in that area (Idaho) could come into the camp to visit me but I could
not leave to visit him.
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| Yosh boxing. Collection Yosh Nakagawa |
If we had lived in Washington D.C. or New York City or
anywhere else, our jobs would have been considered key (to the war effort) and
never would have been threatened. This isn’t in the history books, so the
educated American knows little, by intentionality, of this story. My story of
my community is not just a Japanese-American story; it is an American story. It
does not simply belong to my people; it belongs to American History. The
Eurocentric model must come to include that Columbus did not discover America,
nor did this city begin when settlers founded Seattle, in both cases the indigenous
people were already there.
My story is part of what I call the awesomeness of America.
Today I have found that if I do not speak about what
happened to people, our freedoms as citizens will soon be challenged. 9/11, the
bombing at the Boston Marathon are instances where people are subject to
looking like the enemy. We must be very careful for it might not be me [this
time] who will be incarcerated or interned but it may be my neighbor.
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| Yosh on a pony. Collection Yosh Nakagawa |
Growing up in Seattle I’ve come to realize that education,
government, religion must bear the burden of their silence [during internment],
we have along ways to go until we break that wall of silence that allows human
freedom to be taken.
Seattle gives me great hope that the American future is
bright, for we are again at the cutting-edge of human rights and working for
freedom for all. I have had the opportunity through religious groups to talk to
all faiths, to interfaith groups, to students and faculties of great
educational institutions. Through that experience I’ve seen the new political
mandate of America. In the 1940s and
50s, I grew up in a community of people of color, this is a symbolic model for today’s
America. 70 years later, all the ethnic groups I grew up with are now willing
to share their stories: The First Nations, the Trail of Tears, the Holocaust,
slavery, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Hispanic Migration and new immigration.
These are all issues that were there when I grew up. Losing my freedom [when
interned] is not a story that ends; it is a new beginning. This is because I am
sharing that story.
What would you like
to share of your memories in your childhood in the Central Area?
I was born in Seattle, Washington. Like many new immigrant
families, my family opened a grocery store in the Central Area.
Today where that store was located is now the
campus of Seattle University. During WWII some 30-50 Japanese families were
removed from their homes and businesses [to be interned, and that land was
taken to become part of the campus]. We had no homes to come back to after
being sent from the camps.
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| Yosh in the Central Area. Collection Yosh Nakagawa |
So, the University
took those homes and those businesses?
So, I’ll tell you how that happened. My parents were not and
could not become citizens legally. If they had come instead from Europe they could
become naturalized citizens. So we were called ‘aliens’ just as today we call
undocumented workers, ‘illegal immigrants,’ all of which are negative to being
an American. It was not until 1952 through the passing of the Walter McCarren
Act that my parents could become citizens. Then by these historical means the
greatest number who became naturalized citizens were of Japanese descent.
And at that point how
long had your parents been in the country?
Since the early 1900’s.
And they became
citizens…
They were finally allowed by law to become citizens
in 1952. Whereas any European immigrant could simply have applied for naturalization.
Did you live above
the grocery store that your parents owned?
The store was our home. It’s the same today, you see it in New
York City or Seattle, new immigrants own the corner grocery stores.
Did your parents own
that property?
No. They could not own property. Again, (at that time) if
you weren’t a citizen, you could not own property. Their American-born children
were not of age [to be able to own property].
When your family was
forcibly relocated what happened to the store and everything in it?
It was abandoned. No one knew what to do. We were only given
two weeks to get all our things in order.
Was your family able
to secure any of the investment they’d made in that store?
We did not have much, but all we had was all lost.
Was the store looted?
I don’t know.
Then Seattle University
was able to take that land and make it their campus.
They were able to have it because we were no longer there.
I understand they just
built a Japanese garden and made a formal apology this year.
That was because I went and told Seattle University the
story of what had happened to us. That’s the awesomeness of America. I also spoke
with the government about what happened to us, and with American government
funds we’re building a camp in Minidoka with so that [episode in our history]
is not forgotten. And to help ensure that it does not happen again.
If I understand what
you’re saying, you’re saying the awesomeness of America is the willingness to hear,
to acknowledge, to apologize, to then take action and to make sure these
stories are not lost.
What’s important is not only that the story is not lost but that
with that knowledge that it happens to no one else. That’s the significance.
That’s finding common ground. I have no problem talking to blacks, to the
Jewish or the Hispanic communities when we call for the human rights and freedom
that belongs to all Americans.
How old were you when
you were sent to Minidoka?
I was in fourth grade and was there until middle school.
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| Yosh & family at Minidoka. Collection Yosh Nakagawa |
First, we were removed physically against our will. We
didn’t know where we would end up. We were moved to the Puyallup Fairgrounds to
live in horse stall and barracks. Then, later when government closed the
concentration camps, we were told we could not stay [in the camp housing]. They
knew full well that we had nowhere to return to. A good portion of the camp
then became homeless.
Did you know people
when you got to Minidoka?
Basically no, my parents knew some people but we as children
we were separated from our friends.
Then, you had to
start fresh, new friends, new teachers?
And you didn’t have a home. You lived in one great common
community, you dined in the central, you bathed in the central, your unit had
no restroom, kitchen, bathing facilities. It was only where you came to sleep.
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| Yosh & friends at Minidoka. Collection Yosh Nakagawa |
For the children, it was like summer time all the time
because we were outside to play. There was no other place to go but it was
difficult for my parents and the older community because they had no privacy
and they had lost everything.
I wonder did they
ever speak to you about that?
The culture of the Meiji Issei is a story that soon will be
forgotten if people like myself don’t uplift it. And if I can’t uplift my parents America will
be far less grateful for my presence.
Who were the Issei?
The awesomeness of our parents, the Issei, was their loyalty
to making America a better place. They gave up their children to die for
America.
It’s much easier to hear the story of those born in America.
Yet, America was built by the efforts of those new immigrants. They are the
greatness of America, not just those born here, but those who came here and
contributed.
It is still true today, those who came to labor, our new
immigrants. This issue of how we treat immigrants is ongoing. If we do not
learn through our history [with this issue] it is our education that has failed,
not the people [the immigrants].
You came back to
Washington Middle School and then Garfield High School after the camp.
We never knew in those days that Garfield High was called
the United Nations School, those words were not meaningful at all to us. I
believed that the incredible diversity was normal, only to find much later that
at that time it was very unusual in this country.
It’s a unique thing
about this community
That’s what I’m saying.
I found a picture of
a Japanese couple before Internment and their home had been spray-painted with
anti-Japanese slogans. Were you young enough that you weren’t aware of that
kind of that…
I was too naïve to understand that at that age.
In a way, that’s a
blessing.
It is. Absolutely.
You can’t become
bitter over things you don’t perceive. You didn’t feel you were being treated
differently at school afterwards?
I only knew that I was not white. Let’s be very clear, in
Seattle, prejudice was more difficult because it was so subtle. If you lived in
the deep south, you were either Colored or white. When I travel to the southern
part of the country, I didn’t know that I had to become white. Because of segregation,
you either entered places through the door that said, Colored or white. When I
went to the service in Georgia, I was considered white.
This is jumping way
ahead in time but it does seem that the definition of ‘white’ has to do with
class. In the early part of the 20th century, the Irish and Italians
weren’t considered white. They were provisionally European but they weren’t
white. This was true of the Jewish people as well. And now it seems the
Japanese-Americans third generation are now considered white, because it’s
about class not race.
There you go. You see what I’m saying.
Our group, incarcerated concentrated in the camps, our group
is probably the largest in outer mobility in marriage, good or bad.
Do you think this
desire to gauge people according to class divisions is as insidious as racism?
I’ll tell you something, as far as food, I was as racist as
anyone. I can eat hot dogs and apple pie with the majority community but I
would never force them to eat my raw fish, sushi. I knew they wouldn’t like it
and they’d puke on me. Then one day, I noticed there were more whites at the
sushi bar than Asians. It’s not just the Eurocentric model that’s a problem, I
have the same hang-ups too.
In the Eurocentric model, I’m not empowered. So I listen to people
from the dominant culture. I talk to them but they never come across the bridge
to talk to me, their bridge is one way. As long as I go over your bridge and I
do what you deem necessary to be successful then you’ll honor me. I’ll be
successful. I might even be able to marry into your family.
I worked for a famous Scandinavian company (Yosh was President
of Osborn & Ulland) I could even have been President of Nordstrom’s because
I grew up with their family. The awesomeness of America is to get over these
negatives. In my culture, a woman has far more power but in white America they
think Japanese-American women have no power. I tell you, the white woman has it
worse than my mother ever did.
Because in Japanese
culture the wife controls all the money.
Absolutely. I feel sorry for white women who are over-qualified,
they’re the worst treated ethnic group. They can’t be leaders in the church. When
I was growing up they couldn’t play sports or they were called tomboys. And if they wanted to play they had to use
men’s equipment and shoes. I said, ‘That’s wrong.” Not just because they were
women but because it was bad for business. I can’t take credit [for working
that change]. Though in 1972 I was with Gary Gayton and Trish Bostrom to allow her
to play with the University of Washington Men’s Tennis team since there was no
men’s team. The University honored for us for this, which preceded Title IX.
I helped with that because that was just logical [that women
should be allowed to compete in sports]. That’s what I’m saying.
But if you were primarily using logic then how can you
imprison these Japanese-American people in the west, when you’ve got 160,000 living
right where the bomb fell?
That’s just a startling
realization. Why do you think that was?
In the strategic defense of Hawai’i, they were the most educated
and they controlled the security. The General there said if you do that [intern
or incarcerate the local Japanese] you will let the Japanese Forces take over
the country. The Japanese-Americans in Hawai’i controlled the security.
Because they were the
majority of the population in Hawai’i?
If you’re the majority internment can’t happen. Even today, Hawai’I
is the only state that the population is not majority white. It was a territory
at that time (WWII) not a state.
When I travel to speak to groups and tell them my story,
I’ve been amazed back east [on the east
coast] at a lot of the Ivy Leaguers: the Princeton’s, the Yale’s, the Browns,
the highest level. Yet, I’d put Stanford above them all. I thought all the nation’s
leaders, the Presidents and all came from the Ivies. Yet, what a mess we have
had in human rights.
I tell my German-American community [from the Central Area],
isn’t it funny, you didn’t speak up for me. Yet, you were the threat in America
because you had economic power. We had nothing. I was identifiable, while you
were employed in Government and none of you ‘Americans’ were interned. And said
to my Italian friends, you were shunned worse than the Germans. You were called
WOP and other things you didn’t like. I grew up with you in Garlic Gulch; the
Italian-Americans were my friends. It never dawned on me why I had to go, that
was my whole drive to understand, I never knew why.
I just had questions. Why could my friend go out of the camp
and I can’t? How come my German friends and my Italian friends, their parents
spoke the language of their countries [also our enemies during world war II). My
parents spoke Japanese. Yet the German and Italians, they were free. Even my
own community will not raise those issues, they say, ‘Yosh, you’re rocking the
boat.’ That’s why I have to be careful when I talk to people today because my
people are too gracious.
Well, in your
ancestral culture rocking the boat is a very dangerous thing.
The nail that sticks out will be pounded down.
Silence in my community means disagreement, in the white
world silence means approval. Horrible. They work by the Robert Rules of Order.
We work by consensus.
How is it for you
now, when you’re not operating in consensus?
It’s horrible. It’s divisive. But, some day we Americans all
get amalgamated not by skin color and we are seen as fully American, then maybe
the democratic Robert Rules of Order will work. Still, it certainly doesn’t
work among the whites. Today, they’re finally realizing that they’re not the
majority. Maybe that’s going to be the day when the Robert Rules work.
I want to stay focused on what is good for America. What I’m
sharing with you today is good for America.
It sounds like what
you’re sharing today is controversial in your own community. If you go into a
Japanese community center are there people who will admonish you for what
you’re saying?
They would, but there is one beautiful thing in my culture,
my hair is grey, I’m old, and the young the children do not talk, they do not
talk, they just listen. If you’re old, you’re seen as wise and given respect. When
I went to Hiroshima with Brooks [Andrews] and man, I want to live over there. They
would bring me a chair, bring me food, I was a sage. I had the wisdom.
In America, young people think the old are stupid. They
don’t give me any respect, yet there’s everything I have to share with them
about America in my story. We have to enlighten America on what is good. We
have to dwell on the goodness. We have to get all the people working together,
the best of each cultures combined. What we’ve tried is only the dominant
culture, white culture. So, everything the dominant culture believed from God,
to government, to human relationships, however they interpreted it was deemed
the only right way.
I thought what you
said about the one-way bridge. If you’re from the dominant culture, it’s hard
to see that that bridge exists. It’s
expected that people have to come to terms with crossing that bridge but
there’s not necessarily reciprocity in that.
I always went to their offices. Then, one day people came to
my office and they wouldn’t leave. You know why? I have a tatami room. They
took their shoes off they took their ties off, they wouldn’t leave. They
couldn’t believe how comfortable it was.
It’s good for everybody. Not that it has to be the one way,
if you don’t like sashimi or sushi, tell me, I can find a common ground. You
don’t sacrifice friendship over types of food but maybe you’ll learn something.
I never thought my white friends would say, let’s go to the sushi bar. One day
my friend Arthur Ashe, who lived in New York, came to Seattle to visit. I said,
Let’s go get some soul food around Garfield High but he wanted sushi. He had
high cholesterol so he had a sushi chef in New York and he would eat fatty
tuna. I was as racist as I could be in that idea that he’d want soul food. You
see, what I’m saying we use to much of our intellectual mind. If it feels right
by your guts and your soul, it’s going to be ok for your mind. We say, ‘thank
you,’ but we don’t mean it. You see what I’m saying, so much of what is said is
empty… like, ‘how are you?’ But we don’t want to really know.
I found out they really didn’t care how I felt. I wish they
had told me that because I wanted to be like them, I wanted to do what they
expected so I learned all the strangeness [of white culture], I learned to hug.
How was that?
It was awful.
Today, though, I love hugging. I went to Japan and I hugged
the wife of a colleague, I knew I did a wrong thing, but they were gracious. They
understand I was American. I couldn’t speak the language. We make errors but we
make the errors from our heads. It’s better not to make decisions with the
head. Sometimes when you’re trying to do the right thing it is actually the
wrong thing. The heart may make a mistake but it says, ‘I love you. Thank you.’
It goes a lot better from the heart then when it comes from the head.
I did interviews all my life for the sports world because I
wasn’t white I would say funny things from that perspective. I knew Jackie
Robinson, because he would come into the sporting equipment shows. I was awed
at how he’d been treated and how he’d succeeded. Also, I was in the golden era
when we broke the barriers in sports. Sports conquered more barriers in 40
years than did our government. I worked
with Billy Jean King, Arthur Ashe, Bjorn Borg - only in America.
Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson was my hero but I know he didn’t do this so
that Ichiro could play in the States. He just did the right thing. It wasn’t a
white issue but the whites took the credit for the blacks playing in the
League. No, it was that players who had the empowerment. The abuse Jackie Robinson took, it’s horrible.
But today, his story is on every young kids mind, “ I know who 42
was! That’s Jackie Robinson. And they’re just young kids but they’re learning good
history and to be positive. You don’t dwell on the spit and the fact that couldn’t
eat with your teammates or stay in the same hotel. From all that, though, he
died an early death. It’s our tendency to dwell on the negative. He didn’t do all
that to call attention to the negatives.
What I’m doing today, I’m not doing it focus on being upset, I’m doing it to
sketch out the story of being an American. I’m more Norwegian than I am
Japanese, why? I worked for them for 45 years. I know their sagas and I know
their stories and they love me. That’s my bottom line of what I’m doing. Being
American means having all these different stories, these different ways of
sharing, that makes us find our common ground so we can work together.
Getting to equality
means acknowledging the stories and the wrongs.
Admitting when we’re wrong cures everyone not just the
whites, because all people have the same hang-ups. Sometimes I’d ask people from
my past, did you know I didn’t like you? Did you know that when I saw two white
kids on the sidewalk I’d go to the opposite side of the street because I didn’t
want to get beat-up. Not that they were really going to beat me up, but I had
that fear. You [white friends] didn’t want to go Chinatown because you don’t
want to get killed or end up in an opium den or whatever. My friends from the
suburbs were scared to come to Chinatown. They would go only during the day, as
soon as the day was over, they’d head back to Bellevue.
Was this in the 1960s?
Much later, when what we called Suburban Flight happened.
If you look at the Central Area, the amazing part of it, is
that in 1940 the largest percentage of the neighborhood was Japanese. There
were 7,000 of us here. We were all removed physically from the neighborhood. Think
about that! The black and Jewish communities didn’t come until after the war.
After the Holocaust about 20,000 came from Europe. So I am speaking from a very
strong position. Still, I have to go
further back because there were a greater number of First Nations people here
before us but no one wants to talk about that.
That’s got to be part of the story of this area because the
city is named after their Chief Seattle.
My heart is with them, the 550 First Nations that are
splintered. I’m going to Oklahoma to speak with them. They honored me but I
didn’t understand the robe they were putting on me. I didn’t know what it
meant. That’s why I have to use my heart more than my head. I said, ‘Don’t
honor me,’ which was a mistake. I should have been using my heart. My point is
I can relate to them, that’s not in the history books either.
The Japanese were here from just 1880 – 1952. While the
First Nations were here from the beginning probably for 10,000 years.
Isn’t that scary, we have educated Americans who have no
appreciation of that fact. Instead, the common dialogue is about how they goof
up our salmon. Yet, all we did is take everything away from them. They’ve never
been reciprocated
You spoke about how the
Central Area is a special place…
Growing up in Seattle, you learn the culture of Seattle with
all its ethnic, religious and monetary differences. When I went to the east
coast, I also learned to appreciate the differences, things weren’t as mixed. It
brought home that we were ahead in many ways in what is today called a
multicultural society.
Can you explain how
that differs from how you grew up?
When I grew up we were tribal because our parents spoke their
home language so therefore I knew who was Chinese or Filipino or whatever,
because our parents spoke different languages. All us who were born in America,
the Nisei, our children, no longer knew the ethnicities of their friends.
Because we all spoke English, no matter what our ancestry was, so the
tribalness was not only a part of culture, it’s a part of America.
If I understand you
correctly, in Central Area schools there were Japanese, Filipino, Black,
Jewish, Danish, Swedish and Chinese all together, so among the children the
tribal loyalties dissolved.
Right.
You had a
multicultural society then in the 1940s when the rest of the nation…
Stayed in their boroughs or stayed in their communities. We
broke down the walls; our Chinatown became the International District. We, not by
our intelligence, by our very nature broke down barriers - not really knowing
that we had broken barriers. It was never intentional; every tribal group
wanted their children to stay in that tribal group. My point is that coming
together of the children is the awesomeness of America.
There was a very
vibrant jazz community at that time. Did that bear any resemblance to your
experience?
In those days it was very interesting musical performers
were black, our community never thought that was unique. We heard jazz music
where we lived in our neighborhood; it was a part of our make-up. We didn’t
drive in from the suburbs to hear it at night, we lived surrounded by it: jazz,
gospel music from the storefront churches, from the taverns. You could hear it
on the sidewalk, the tambourines and all. It was what we grew up with, and we
also grew up with the Bon Odori Dance. We all participated as a community,
whites, blacks and everybody dancing which we thought was normal.
Seattle Bon Odori
It was coming from the heart not the head; I loved Chinese
food more than Japanese food, ok? I never realized I was breaking culture. We
cannot take for granted what America is all about.
You have to remember here we lived, it was called the
ghetto, but I never thought it was the ghetto. The wealth was over there at
Broadmoor, I didn’t think they were rich, they had money but there wasn’t that
tension.
When you choose what
you can eat, do you choose Chinese?
To be bluntly honest, I’m going to eat Chinese food tonight.
These people who own a good Chinese restaurant called me today to say they have
razor clams. They do clams really well. They’re like my family, they call me
up, because they know when clams are not on the menu I’m disappointed. That
friendship, it’s something instantaneous, it’s you’ve got to walk the talk.
If I’m going to help you and have one time with you, if you
don’t see my friends or people who relate to the community then you don’t have
a story. The story is only as good as the people affirm their differences and finding
common ground.
If you share your
story… if it’s shared from the heart, it gets heard.
I’ll end with the last statement, I lived in the white
world, they used a word that frightened me, and they’re out to bring
conversion, to convert you to their understanding.
Was the word used
‘assimilation?’
And education. And religion. They had all the right answers
and they graded me on their understanding.
I think that’s still
kind of true.
I don’t blame them, it’s because I never led. It’s my fault.
First, I was a token, then I was symbolic, next I could contribute. I let them
get away with one thing; they never thought I could lead them. I could only
lead them if I did it the way they understood. That’s not a negative, that’s my
problem; I didn’t have the ego strength to know I could lead you. Only in sharing
a story, not to convert you, to share a story.
They wanted me to make sure I understood I was to do it
their way never the way I thought would be right for the people. That’s a very
subtle line…
The Eurocentric model uses the word ‘initiative.’ At school,
as a young person, I was told by my parents never to raise my hand, I was to
wait for the teacher to call on me. I failed; I got a poor grade because I
didn’t have initiative to participate. Most of my friends (who didn’t look like
me) didn’t have the right answer. I had the right answer. I learned really
quickly to speak up. I’m an oddball.
(Yosh came to this project through
Densho.org)
© Madeline Crowley People of the Central Area 2013 All material is covered by copyright. Express written permission must be given for any copyrighted material on this page. Email to request permission to copy or paste materials.
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This project was supported in part by
4Culture's Heritage Projects program |
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