Interview with Theodore Ono, 2011

              Theodore Ono Transcript

Interview date: May 10, 2011
Interview location: Kensington, CA
Interviewer: Paul Watanabe (PW)
Interviewee: Theodore Ono (TO)


PW: Okay, today we are interviewing Theodore Ono. It is May 10th, 2011. We’re interviewing him at his home in Berkeley, CA. This is Paul Watanabe and we’re doing this for the Institute for Asian American Studies. Good morning, Ted.

TO: Good morning.

PW: First of all Ted, I just wonder if we can begin for a moment of you talking about your current life, what you are doing in Berkeley and what you’re up to?

TO: Retired. Gardening, basically. My wife passed on thirteen years ago so I live alone with the help of my oldest daughter who has supper with me on Wednesday night, Saturday night, and Sunday night. And so I’m busy with household chores and then I’m an active member of the Albany/El Cerrito Kiwanis Club so that takes some of my time. Watch some TV, read newspapers and magazines, so that’s about it.

PW: Let me know take you, not in the current period, but way back to the beginning if you will, to just give us some background on your family – where you were born and when you were born and a little bit about your parents and siblings, if you had them.

TO: Um…born in Oakland, CA. At that time, our family lived in Watsonville. We were farmers and I was born in Oakland because my grandmother lived in Oakland and she helped with my birth. Spent grade school and junior high school and the first year of high school in Watsonville. My father emigrated from Japan and my mother was born, here, in Oakland. They were married in 1920. I was born in June of 1921. We left Watsonville and gave up the farm during the Depression years. Farming was not profitable in that we would raise crops, send them to market, and were told at the market they had to be dumped because there was not enough demand for produce. So, my father had had some experience with Japanese – what would be the Chamber of Commerce for Japanese – so in, we moved from Watsonville to Fresno, CA where he became the Secretary for the Japanese Association of Fresno. He’s also…University of…Oregon State University, which was called Oregon Aggies, so he had a background in farming and so he was also in addition to being Secretary of the Japanese Association of Fresno, he was a farm adviser for the Central Valley. So, we lived in Fresno up to the point of evacuation. And we reported, as a family, mother, father, younger sister, nine years younger than myself, reported to, or were bused to the Fresno Assembly Center where I spent the next four months. 

PW: I want to talk more about your experience, a little bit, at the assembly center, but I want to take you back just a little step back. So, you talk matter of factly about the war starting and then the evacuation order. Do you have any recollections about your own thoughts or those of the family or the community that you lived in when the war started obviously, December 7th, 1941, where you were or what the reaction was and the later when the evacuation order came out?

TO: I think my first thought, upon learning about Pearl Harbor, was that this is terrible because this is the country of my father. At that time, there wasn’t a naturalization available to my father. Attacking Hawaii and thought that this was quite foolish for the Japanese Army to embark on this venture. We were given very short notice to get ready for relocation. I think, probably, two weeks or so. So there’s a big rush to plan what to do with our furniture. We were renting our house so that we didn’t have to worry about selling the house but we had to store the furniture and a friend of ours had a laundry, which his family was closing so our furniture was stored in their closed laundry in Fresno. Upon leaving Fresno Assembly Center for Washington University in St. Louis, I asked permission to visit where our things were stored on my way to the train station and, so that I could pick up a typewriter and some more clothes. Well, I was surprised to find that the laundry had been burglarized and some things of ours, not everything, some things of ours were stolen. So that was unpleasant. I left the assembly center with a family friend. During high school and college I worked in a grocery store and they – the owners of the grocery store, Mr. and Mrs. Henmi had two boys and the older boy had had one year at Fresno State so he and I were accepted to Washington University St. Louis so we traveled together, got on the train, and Mrs. Henmi made sure that we would be comfortable so she arranged for a sleeping train arrangement so we were comfortable on that trip. And we got to St. Louis. The shocker at St. Louis was that tuition was two hundred fifty dollars and having paid twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents per semester at Cal, this is something that we didn’t plan for financially. We had saved up – I had saved up, working summers – so I was able to finance… I had one more year to go of college so I was able to finance that. But for living expenses, most of us who were accepted at colleges had to find work and many of us ended up as, what might be called, houseboys. Well, my, the traveling friend Richard Henmi and I ended up in the home of a Mrs. Brown whose husband was associated with railroads and gone quite a bit. They had a big home in St. Louis and we were able to stay in the third story two-bedroom set-up for the first half-year. Later, Dick Henmi’s parents were able to leave camp, found work in St. Louis, found an apartment so Dick Henmi was able to live with his parents. So, that takes us up to getting to Washington University St. Louis.

PW: Let me take you back just a little bit and I’ll remember to pick up on where you have just ended your discussion. But just for background, remind me, so at the, when the war started, you were at University of California?

TO: Correct.

PW: And obviously, you had to interrupt your studies to go to assembly center. So just briefly, do you remember what it was like ’cause the war started in December so you were near the end of one term or getting ready to begin another one, I would assume, and then a new term would’ve begun at the beginning of the next year. Do you remember what it was like at Cal when the war started and did you go back to classes for a little while before the evacuation order or…?

TO: Yes.

PW: Do you remember what the relationship was like with classmates and so forth?

TO: Yes. Uh…relationship with classmates…uh…Caucasian was good. I happened to be a member of the YMCA and had good Caucasian friends although in those years, the…being with fellow Japanese American students would be the more popular… We had men student clubs – Japanese American Men’s Student Club – and there’s also a Japanese American Women’s Student Club, separate, you know. So, in those days, most of our close friends were fellow Japanese Americans. The University, we appreciated, helped us; our President and Vice President were very supportive. In fact, they helped in the setting up of the Student Relocation Council.

PW: Tell us a little bit then, about the… So you go into the assembly center, it’s not clear that you’re going to be able to resume your education anywhere and most likely, not on the West Coast. So can you tell us a little bit about some of the decision-making and who was involved, and was your family involved in the decision to leave camp to finish school and ultimately the choice of Washington University? What was the process involved about, about being able to leave assembly center and go to college?

TO: It was more a question of, what colleges would accept us? Not all colleges were accepting. In fact, on our way to Washington University, Dick Henmi and I stopped at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Boulder. We stayed a few days in Boulder. When we got there, we were told that their quota for accepting Japanese American students was filled so we were turned away. So our next choice was Washington University St. Louis so from Boulder we went on to St. Louis. In St. Louis, the reception was very welcoming and warm. And we tended to have close connections with the university YM, YWCA. There…Mr. Arno Haack, who was in charge of the YM, YWCA, I would guess from his German name, very sympathetic to our situation and so, we had a very warm time upon arriving and studying there, you know.

PW: Did you or your family have any involvement from the Nisei Student Relocation Council who assisted many of the students and families? Was that true in your case or not?

TO: Yes, direct help.

PW: Really? Yeah.

TO: Yes.

PW: So, how did the, how were, what kind of communications took place? So, you talked with representatives of the Council before you left the Fresno Assembly Center?

TO: Well, as it happens, my aunt Kay Yamashita, you may have met her, looked out for me in a personal way. And so, upon graduating from Washington University in summer of 1942, she alerted me to an opening to teach at a school for boys called Star Commonwealth for Boys in Albion, Michigan. So…the job seemed fine. I didn’t have teaching courses but they were willing to accept any college grad on their faculty. So, upon getting my diploma at Washington University in about June of 1942, I’m sorry, 1943, I got to Albion, Michigan and taught there for a year and a half. Because of the shortage of men, I was also athletic coach and scoutmaster in addition to teaching math.

PW: I want to take you back and again, I want to pick up on this, too but I want to you back a little bit to Washington University. So, you had talked about getting there and arriving there with a friend that you had known from Fresno, which I think is interesting. And then you were able to finish your degree there. Do you remember what it was like with fellow classmates, were there other Japanese students like yourself that were accepted at Washington University? I think there were.

TO: Yes.

PW: And what was – do you remember anything about relationships with professors or other students or the people in the town where you stayed?

TO: We, we were very comfortable in St. Louis. In fact – and there were approximately thirty of us nisei students from different colleges – there were probably six or eight of us from the University of California Berkeley. None of us reported having any adverse experiences with the St. Louis public. Very, as I said before, warmly received at the University. And, I remember our nisei group meeting one time and we decided to report to the diverse relocation centers that the reception in St. Louis was very kind and warm so as to allay fears. We couldn’t report on other areas but Missouri was fine, you know.

PW: Did you communicate with your family back in – well, they were probably in internment camp by this time, right?

TO: Yes.

PW: So did you communicate with your family while you were away in college and –

TO: Oh, yes, yes.

PW: – with letters and… 

TO: Oh, yes.

PW: Do you remember the nature of your correspondence with your family? Is it the typical going away to college kind of thing?

TO: Correct. Correct. Yup.

PW: What subject did you study at Wash U?

TO: Economics.

PW: Economics.

TO: One interesting thing: St. Louis is not far in miles from Jerome, Arkansas where my parents were interned. And, so, Dick Henmi and I were able, during Christmas vacation, to travel from St. Louis to Jerome, Arkansas, the camp. We entered the camp and was surprised that we were asked to pay as visitors, twenty-five cents per meal and we were able to stay approximately a week.

PW: A week?

TO: And we were with the interned people but we were visitors.

PW: Wow. What was that…that’s an amazing story that… So, what was it like during that week and what was it like when you left?

TO: Well, we met our interned friends, went to social functions like dances, and church functions. Ate in the mess halls with our families of course. Had a good time. 

PW: Was it difficult, I mean, in some ways, it was both either difficult and easy to leave the camp to go back to school. Maybe difficult in that you were leaving your family behind and easy that you weren’t going to be in that internment experience like your parents were.

TO: Yes. Yeah, I think it was a bit difficult to me but, being young, I don’t recall that I was much disheartened, yeah.

PW: So you were telling us a little bit about after getting your degree, that you taught school –

TO: Yes.

PW: – for a period time in Michigan. And, so that’s when I interrupted you earlier. So, do you want to pick up the story from where you were in Michigan? So you taught there for about a year and a half?

TO: Correct.

PW: And then what happened? Because the war had not ended by this time yet.

TO: No. My draft board called me up and told me to report in December of 1944. So, ’43 to ’44 I’d been teaching.

PW: Right.

TO: And so, reported to a camp in Illinois. And then, was shipped by train from Illinois down to Florida for where our basic training camp – Camp Blanding – would be. So there was a whole Company of two hundred nisei that started training in January of 1945. We trained in 1945 and as you remember, the war ended in April, well, in Europe, ended April of 1945, just when our basic training ended. At that point, volunteers were sought for officers’ training and I was one that was selected and so I was shipped off to Fort Benning, Georgia for infantry training. And after three months of officer infantry training, just upon getting my Army commission, the war in the Pacific ended. So here I was trained as an infantry officer but having no battlefield experience so I missed out in a way not seeing combat but on the other hand, I’m glad to be alive.

PW: So, here’s this very unusual situation. It sounds like the European war had ended, you continued your training, however, with the only active battlefields now in the Pacific –

TO: Right.

PW: – and in the Pacific, against Japan, and as you began this conversation, you had talked about your feeling at that time of Pearl Harbor kind of strange that this was your father’s country –

TO: Yeah.

PW: – so now here, a few later, you’re getting prepared to potentially once again, go actively go into battle against your father’s country. Did that – did that create any complexity in your mind or was it very clear? And what did your family think about… I mean, obviously they had no choice about your being drafted but did they have – were they conflicted about what this might lead to?

TO: No. I don’t recall having a mind conflict about fighting against my father’s country. Many or most of the nisei in the military would be qualified after schooling to be interpreters, interrogators of Japanese captured soldiers, yea. So, right at the – upon getting my commission, I was sent to an infantry basic training depot called Fort McClellan. And I trained basic training soldiers for a couple of months and then a memo came out requesting volunteers for…the Counterintelligence Corps. I didn’t know much of anything about the Corps but it sounded much better than training infantry basics so I volunteered for Counterintelligence and spent, and was trained in the headquarters school in Baltimore, Maryland and taught there. We, they had a, what they called a language familiarization courses – German, Russian, and Japanese – and I taught familiarization, very basic Japanese to our agents along with a cadre of about ten of us. And taught there until 1949, three years. And then, was sent overseas to Tokyo where Counterintelligence were in Japan. Yea.

PW: So, obviously the war ended before you actually were deployed, certainly in the Pacific Theatre.

TO: Correct.

PW: So, you were in the military at the time of the end of the war. I’m curious, so, your family then, did they move back to California from Jerome or…?

TO: No. Strangely, upon leaving Washington University St. Louis and getting this job teaching in Michigan, my father, who was very proficient in both Japanese and English, was teaching at University of Michigan Ann Arbor. Well, Albion and Michigan – Ann Arbor – are only sixty miles apart. So, while teaching in Albion, I was able, on some weekends, to visit my family in Ann Arbor. After the war ended, my father’s teaching job, teaching Japanese, ended, so they moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and he – at first he found a job in a grocery store and then later found work in a nursery out in the farm area, outside of Philadelphia. So, my family stayed in Philadelphia for a number of years. Meanwhile, I left the army in 1952 and thought I would settle in Philadelphia but decided to come back to California and after a few years, was able to urge my family also to get back to California so they did. This would be about 195-… They would get back to California about 1955, ’56, yea.

PW: So I was going to ask you a little bit about your experiences then, sort of, after the war. And you mention you were in the – you were on active duty until 1952?

TO: Correct.

PW: Wow. Did you end up participating in the Korean Conflict?

TO: Didn’t get sent to Korea, Counterintelligence in Japan was responsible for information on various dissident groups.  The Japan Communist Party was quite strong. There’s a Korean element in Japan and they were troublesome so we were needed to keep tabs on what was happening with the occupation of Japan. So, some of our agents were shipped to Korea but I wasn’t, I stayed in Japan and headquartered in Tokyo until I left the Army.

PW: Uh…and I know this covers a long period of time – so after the Army, you started to pursue at least one career, maybe several careers, can you kind of give us a brief synopsis of what you ended up in terms of doing work and your life experience after the military?

TO: Strangely enough, with our military pay, because we had leaving the Army in mind, we saved up some money and with that, I had planned to open a produce market and upon returning to California from Philadelphia, I sought out several friends who were in the grocery business and they were not too enthused about the grocery business. One in particular had a store and in order to survive he had to extend…not cash payment but payment on account and that was difficult because sometimes the customers would pay their accounts at the end of the month and sometimes they would not. And so I changed thinking about a produce market and started thinking about a gift shop and that’s where… And in Berkeley, there was not at that time an Oriental gift shop. So, in November of 1952, we opened this little store called “The Gift Basket” and we had imports from Japan, which were limited. In fact, most of the goods were marked, “Made in Occupied Japan.” But we specialized in basketry and were able – we spent forty years…I did, as owner of a gift shop in Berkeley.

PW: After forty years, what happened to the business?

TO: We closed it. My wife had a severe illness and I decided I had to retire fairly soon. So, we closed the business, did not sell the business. We happen to own the small building that the store occupied and that store became a futon shop plus some Japanese and Chinese imports. So, that was it. We were located in Downtown Berkeley for twenty years and then in North Berkeley for another twenty years. Yeah.

PW: I want you to tell us a little bit, or give you the opportunity, did you have children? You mentioned your daughter who eats with you several times a week now. Did you have other children?

TO: Yes. Number two daughter, who’s now teaching at University of New England and a third offspring, a son who is a civil engineer in Honolulu. Three children.

PW: All scattered across different parts of the country.

TO: Much scattered!

PW: Right.

TO: From Maine to Honolulu.

PW: To here locally.

TO: But we get together at the holidays.

PW: Do you have an opportunity to be able to see occasionally, other people from that period of time, other people who might have been interned or in – who were relocated?

TO: Yes, yes. We – University of California, Berkeley, had an extension of the two Japanese American Clubs – the men’s club and the women’s club. And we would meet every other year, we would meet on the year that the Big Game, which was played every – not every year – but played in Palo Alto and then in Berkeley in alternating years so every year that we had the game in Berkeley, we met. And so most of us who were in college at the time of internment would attend.

PW: That was obviously Stanford and Cal.

TO: Stanford and Cal. Yes. 

PW: I want to close by giving you an opportunity to think about and share, if you’d like, looking back on this experience, and I know it was some time ago, here you are, you’re in college in Cal at the time of the start of the war, you’re removed to assembly center, there’s this decision made to try to continue education, of course, away from the Coast and you go to St. Louis, you finish school there. Anyway, that’s a lot happening to you at the age of twenty or twenty-one and I just wonder about, if you think about it, looking back in terms of the, that experience in terms of any legacies or lessons, what you’ve taken away from it or learned from that experience, either for yourself or are there any larger lessons about this for the country?

TO: Being incarcerated in an internment camp, an assembly center at that time, I felt very appreciative of the efforts of the Student Relocation Council, helped by the Quakers, at a time when we needed help. And so…I’m forever grateful for that help during that period. And so it was easy to enroll with the Commemorative Fund that you’re active with. And I think Nobu Kumekawa was right on target in thinking of a Commemorative Fund for [South]East Asian families, children, college-age scholarships. Yep. So, I’m happy that that’s been very successful and the Fund has grown to an impressive amount of money and so quite a number are helped. As a Kiwanian, I notice that our high school-level Kiwanis groups, strangely to me, are membered by Southeast Asian students and I’ve not yet understood why that happens. Kiwanis is a service club and so, Southeast Asian family, students are drawn to the idea of service, possibly because of their families’ dedication to education and service. Yeah.

PW: Well, that’s a nice, sort of, passing honor – carrying forward if you think about it the…I mean, just in your comment, you drew the link between the Council, Quakers for example, who it’s not obvious that they would show any interest in this Japanese American student population –

TO: Right.

PW: – and then you mentioned about the decision years later for some of the people in that Japanese American student population like yourself, to establish this Fund for Southeast Asian students. 

TO: Right, yeah.

PW: And now you’re talking about some of these Southeast Asian students now growing and participating in some of the service activities.

TO: Right.

PW: It’s a great story –

TO: Right. 

PW: – of continuation. That’s a great legacy.

TO: Right. Yeah.

PW: Do you have any final thoughts or comments?

TO: One other thing to add, at the high school level, Kiwanis has a club and at the University of California Berkeley level, Kiwanis also has a club. And it turns out that the majority, not all, but the majority of active members at the university-level are Southeast Asian family students. So, the idea of service is spreading, you know. I don’t have any final thoughts except to note that all of us who experienced leaving camp to go to colleges are now in our late eighties. The early ones who left college, I would guess that the first five years included most of us, and we are fast disappearing. My experience with Japanese American friends of my own age are getting fewer and fewer and so I’m very careful to read the obituary columns in the papers every day hoping not to find Japanese American names.

PW: Well, we’re fortunate to have come to your nice home and have this conversation with you for the past hour or so. So we appreciate it very much and thank you for your, you used the word ‘service’ – you served your community and the country in so many different ways so thank you very much.

TO: Thank you.