PERSONAL STORIES

QUOTES FROM THE EAF EXHIBIT:

"I was the first one arrested in San Jose…At 11 P.M. three policemen came to the front door and two at the back….They didn't even give me time to go to my room and put on my shoes.  I was wearing slippers.  They took me to prison."

-- Filippo Molinari, Italian internee who was the sales representative in San Jose, California for an Italian community newspaper, describing his Pearl Harbor Day arrest in a letter to a relative, 7/25/85

“I helplessly watched my father being led away in shackles by three Federal agents, I received so deep a wound, it has never healed. Were we so undesirable? Were we so expendable? Was I Japanese? Was I American or wasn’t I? My confused teenage mind reeled.”

--Kiku Hori Funabiki, former internee whose father, a Japanese immigrant living in San Francisco, California, was arrested by the FBI

 “On March 23, 1943, while in class at Woodward High School, two FBI agents arrested me.  I was 17.  When passing through the doorways, one would precede with a drawn pistol, while the other held my left arm.  When we got outdoors, I was handcuffed.  I never returned to school and did not graduate two short months later.  I lost not only belongings in my school locker, but my dignity."

-- Eberhard E. Fuhr, German internee who lived in Cincinnati, Ohio

 

"Going back to school was really difficult.  Few of our friends wanted to have contact with us.  One girl refused to go out with [my brother] because she 'didn't go out with Nazis.'  A good family friend parked a block away when he came to visit.  We even felt like outcasts with our own church because of our German blood.  Many were afraid of associating with us because it might mean they, too, would become suspects of the FBI.  Fear ran rampant."

 

-- Guenther Greis, son of a German internee who was arrested in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

"My father's interrogation by the FBI began in March 1941 -- well before the nation was at war -- and continued until September 1942.  At no time was he allowed to know the names of his accusers or the nature of their accusations.  The immediate results of the board's decision…were my father's automatic expulsion from California, the loss of his professional position, and most importantly, his forced separation from his wife, his 7 year old daughter and his 5 year old son."

-- Colonel Angelo de Guttadauro, recalling the ordeal of his father, a naturalized citizen of Italian descent, under the individual exclusion order

“I saw my Japanese friends moved out of their homes and taken away, former classmates and childhood friends.  My first reaction was one of disbelief.  Shortly afterwards we Italian Americans and Germans were similarly treated because they were part of the Tripartite Alliance, the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis…Non-citizens, my mother among them, were forced to move from their homes to other designated areas, but not to detention centers.”

--Sergio Otino, Italian American, recalling his family’s wartime experiences in Berkeley, California

 

"The [Peruvian] police came looking for [my father] several times, and after not finding him, they arrested my mother and placed her in jail to force my father out of hiding.  Our oldest sister, who was 11 years old, went with her, because she did not want our mother to be alone.  When word of this reached my father, he gave himself up."

-- Rose Shibayama Nishimura, Japanese Peruvian internee

"When I was 22 years old, I was abducted from Bolivia, where I had lived for nearly three years….No explanation was given…We were herded into DC3 airplanes marked with American symbols.  The windows of the plane were boarded up, and we were not told where we were being taken.  We were guarded by armed US military personnel."

-- Sadaharu Sakamoto, Japanese Bolivian internee and named plaintiff in Mochizuki v. USA lawsuit, recalling his abduction and transport to Panama

 

"We were put to work clearing the jungle around the camp.  One extra hot, humid day we had to dig a pit.  I had a terrible thought that it was to be my grave…. As we carried the buckets of human waste to the pit, we retched and were sickened by the indescribable stench.  The guards…laughed and jeered at us….The older men were so tired that they could not run fast enough to please the guards, so they were poked and shoved by the guards with bayonets."

-- Arthur Shinei Yakabi, Japanese Peruvian internee recalling his detention in Panama

"Without experiencing internment, no one can appreciate the intense terror of government power and the despair of hopelessness and endless time one feels.  In addition, an internee must suffer humiliation, stigmatization, and suspect "friends" who may have given damning 'evidence' to the FBI…many bear psychological scars throughout their lives."

-- Eberhard E. Fuhr, German who was interned at age 17

"They took us to the fields [to cut sugar beets] by truck with more guards and machine guns than prisoners.  When we said we would not work under such conditions, they agreed to take us back and forth without heavy guard. We made thirty dollars a month, although we never saw the money.  Instead they issued us requisitions for purchases at clothing stores and so forth."

-- Alfredo Cipolato, Italian interned at Fort Missoula, Montana

"My grandparents owned a department store in Callao, Peru.  And during WWII, they were among the first Japanese Peruvians to be taken hostage.  They were used in one of the exchanges for American civilians….We never got to see them again.

-- Rose Shibayama Nishimura, Japanese Peruvian internee

"What would I do in Germany?  Everything there was destroyed, my parents were dead, I had nothing there….My wife, my children were…in Guatemala.  I wanted to… come back right away and start working again."

-- Hugo Droege,  German internee who was sent to Germany against his will

"Finally, in 1947, we were shipped [from Crystal City] to Ellis Island….I spent too much time facing the back of the Statue of Liberty.  I always felt that even though she had welcomed immigrants promising the American Dream, she turned her back on us just because of our ancestry."

- Eberhard E. Fuhr, German internee who lived in Cincinnati, Ohio