ROBERTA: This was their birth country and they're Americans
and they fought on theside of the United States while
the rest of their family was incarcerated.
SATSUKI: They never committed a crime except to have the
face of the enemy.
WOMAN: I couldn't believe we were being corralled to
this concentration camp.
WOMAN: Families were split up.
SATSUKI: The government framed it as an issue of loyalty.
ROBERTA: My uncles felt compelled to
renounce their brother.
He was a very controversial figure.
SUSAN: I'm very proud of being Korean.
Unless you respect your heritage,
you'll never find identity.
SATSUKI: Many of us stand with the people who are
being targeted today by speaking up.
KAY: Now I look back and I say,
"Would my children believe me ifI tried to explain it to them"
SATSUKI: I'm here today so the rest of this world hears what
happened to us.
♪
(wind chimes)
SATSUKI: This is the metal box I found after my
mother passed away.
I was surprised to see my mother's
actual identification number
that she was assigned, number 14911.
I was surprised, I found her pin.
Her, her mug shot.
And this was the beginning of the dehumanization for her.
My parents didn't know how long they
would be incarcerated.
It's been heartrending to know the suffering that they
endured during that time.
NEWSCASTER: The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor by air.
NARRATOR: As the United States enters World War II,
many American-born Asians are forced to
make agonizing decisions.
This is the story of how families are torn apart,
and how their actions will affect them for generations.
One family in particular is shattered by conflicting
allegiances and accusations of treason.
Everyone will be impacted in radically different ways,
but each faces the same question:
What does it mean to be a loyal American?
NARRATOR: At the beginning of a new century,
immigrants are seeking opportunity.
One of them is George Kumemaro Uno,
who arrives from Japan in 1905.
ROBERTA: He changed his name to George after George Washington,
but what he found here didn't exactly measure up
to the ideals of democracy, because he couldn't own land,
become a citizen, intermarry with a Caucasian,
had he wanted to.
And yet he really believed in this country.
BRIAN: Asians were deemed not eligible to become naturalized
US citizens.
Japanese immigrants were always unable to vote,
and they were politically powerless,
and thus kind of easy to victimize,
easy to scapegoat.
NARRATOR: Despite these limitations,
Asian immigrants are planting roots across the country.
Little Tokyos, Chinese and Filipinotowns,
alongside South Asian communities,
provide places for Asian Americans to flourish in a
language and culture they understand.
George and his wife Riki eventually settle in
Los Angeles where they have 10 children.
ROBERTA: When I was growing up, we heard these stories,
how the Uno house on Broadway and 38th in LA was just this
place where all the young people wanted to be.
There was music, the Uno boys were all great dancers.
They would just have a lot of fun,
and our grandparents were so welcoming to everybody.
AMY: We were raised with the full American way of living.
We always said "mom and dad," where everybody else was
saying Otosan, Okasan.
My father used to always say, "We must be Americans,
but this is our adopted home."
NARRATOR: Parents George and Riki are part of
the first generation of immigrants, the Issei.
Their American-born children are the second generation,
the Nisei.
BRIAN: The Nisei are in many ways just typical Americans.
The all-American Tom Sawyer, boyhoods,
girlhoods, having the same kind of dreams
and aspirations of any other American youth at the time.
NARRATOR: The oldest child of the family is Buddy Uno.
In many ways he is a typical Nisei,
but will prove later to be a controversial figure.
ROBERTA: Buddy's like a mystery to us.
My sister and I always used to look at our family albums and
see this very handsome, distinguished-looking man,
who reminded us so much of our father and our uncles.
And we knew them all so well, but we didn't know Buddy.
TAMIKO: What I knew of Buddy was very limited.
Nothing too serious, never about the war,
or never about this sort of a bit of a
controversy around him.
BRIAN: There was a tremendous amount of
anti-Japanese discrimination.
Ironically, in many cases,
it was led by other immigrants, who were white.
That, combined with stereotypes that immediately
came into play, created this large-scale
anti-Japanese agitation.
NARRATOR: No matter how long they'd been in America,
Asians are turned away from certain restaurants,
swimming pools, and movie theaters.
In addition, restrictive covenants ban Asians from
living in white neighborhoods.
As for Buddy, he is rejected from his Boy Scout troop at
age 12 because he is Japanese.
It is a humiliation he will carry with him for
the rest of his life.
In high school, he finds an outlet to express himself,
a column for a Japanese American newspaper,
where he writes about the dilemma of
the Nisei generation.
Despite his ambitions, Buddycan never dream of getting a
job in the mainstream press because of his race.
BRIAN: The classic story of Nisei coming of age in the
'‘30s was ones who would go tothe best schools in the country,
come back with degrees from UCLA or Stanford,
and no one would hire them.
So they ended up typically working in their
parents' market, or their parents' business,
or their parents' farm.
NARRATOR: But across the Pacific,
Asia is an attractive draw,
especially for Nisei with limited opportunities.
(singing in Japanese)
If you are Japanese you are associated with
modernization and power.
Japan has started its campaign of conquest in Asia,
beginning with Manchuria and China.
BRIAN: Their propaganda messageis this idea of Asia for Asians.
For many Nisei, that was attractive.
People like Buddy who felt like their occupational dreams
were sort of thwarted inthe US because of discrimination
saw that as a place where therewere greater opportunities.
NARRATOR: But other Asian communities in the US are
incensed by Japanese imperialism.
Chinese communities are especially aggrieved by the
occupation of Manchuria.
WOMAN: Like a streak of lightning out of a clear sky,
Japan attacked and occupied Manchuria.
The Japanese army has overrun the whole country.
NARRATOR: But Buddy is willing to overlook
Japan's transgressions.
In 1937, Buddy Uno takes afreighter to Japan in hopes of
fulfilling his dreams of becoming
a foreign correspondent.
In an interview a year later, he explains his motivations.
BUDDY: I was treated like a yellow skibbie and not an
American citizen.
So I decided, "The hell with the US, I'd go to Japan
where my knowledge of the States would be appreciated."
NARRATOR: The 1930s are shaped profoundly by
the Great Depression.
The Uno family, with so many mouths to feed,
struggles to make ends meet.
Amy Uno, at age 12, moves in with a Caucasian family to
become their domestic help.
AMY: I decided after talking to my mother that this would
alleviate a lot of the hardships.
So I worked for this family for $8 a month.
ROBERTA: She started working in service, um,
living with various families, taking care of their children
and taking the streetcar to school,
then coming back and preparing dinner and giving what little
money she made to her mom to help with family expenses.
NARRATOR: In Asia, Buddy is able to achieve what he
couldn't in the US: work as a mainstream reporter.
He sets out to cover the Sino-Japanese war.
Caught up in the thrill of battle,
Buddy writes glowing dispatches from
the Chinese front.
BUDDY: Many believe Japan to be fanatical and mad,
but whatever she is, she faces the world with a clear
conscience, and the world looks at her with wonderment,
fear, and suspicion.
NARRATOR: Though his Japanese is limited,
Buddy finds a job with the Japanese army.
He works as a liaison with the foreign press.
TAMIKO: He was very pro-Japan, and wanted to affirm that
belief that he comes from a great country,
and that Japan is a great country.
ROBERTA: When I look back at Buddy,
I think not only the issue ofhis response to American racism,
but then the response that so many of us have when
we go to our countries of home origin.
He probably had that feeling of being in a setting where he
was no longer a marginalized person or a minority.
NARRATOR: But that pride he feels colors how he views the
Japanese army.
He writes numerous articles extolling its strengths,
while minimizing the violence and death committed
by its soldiers.
BRIAN: Many of the Nisei, because they'd been treated so
badly in the United States, I think there was a greater
openness to overlook some of the atrocities the
Japanese were committing.
NARRATOR: Tamiko Ishidate is Buddy Uno's granddaughter.
She was born in Japan, but has lived in the States
for almost 30 years.
She's talking to relatives for the first time
to understand why the family was split during the war.
She visits her uncle, Joe Uno.
He's helped collect some of the family archive.
JOE: So I hope this is the box.
These are the photos that Auntie Kay gave to me
to bring back, this whole box.
Is that, is that Buddy?
TAMIKO: That's Buddy! JOE: Yeah?
TAMIKO: Yeah! JOE: Wow.
Is that your grandmother, Tomoko?
TAMIKO: Tomoko. Yeah.
JOE: Wow. TAMIKO: They must be 38 here.
JOE: And they're in Shanghai there?
TAMIKO: Yeah. Shanghai.
NARRATOR: 1940s Shanghai is a bustling
international metropolis.
It is while working there that Buddy falls in love
with a Japanese national.
TAMIKO: My grandmother, Tomoko,
was working at the Japanese confectionery company.
My grandmother told memany times how he came back
for a bag of peanuts almost every day.
There's a lot of very nice photos of them,
group dating, going out, picnics.
It seems like a really very joyous time in their life.
NARRATOR: They marry in 1941,
a few months before the world will
turn upside down.
ROOSEVELT: December 7th, 1941,
a date which will live in infamy.
BRIAN: Hours and days after the attack on Pearl Harbor,
federal officials, with the aid of local police forces,
were able to swoop in and arrest a couple of thousand
mostly Japanese male immigrant community leaders.
My own grandfather, who was a newspaper editor in Honolulu,
was arrested on the night of December 7th.
NARRATOR: Soon after, Buddy's father is one of the
first Japanese to berounded up by the authorities.
His FBI records describe how Buddy, his son,
is employed by the Japanese military,
as grounds for his arrest.
AMY: By the time I got home the FBI was at our house.
And they tore the siding out of our house to see if we were
hiding things in between the walls,
and under the floorboards.
When they left, they took my father with them.
NARRATOR: For days the Uno family lives in dread,
unsure of their father's whereabouts.
One day they learn he was being held at a camp in
Griffith Park in Los Angeles.
AMY: We all jumped in the car.
And we took toothpaste and soap and wash cloths,
and all kinds of things with us.
And sure enough, as we got way into Griffith Park
we found the military police all around us.
And we yelled,
"Dad, if you recognize us, put your hands up."”
And of course my father recognized
immediately his bunch of kids.
So then, all of us took turns pitching.
We took the soap, and we took the toothpaste,
and we took his shaving kit and things and we just pitched
it as far as we could over into this thing.
NARRATOR: Amy and her siblingswill not reunite with their
father for two years.
For months the family lives under the strict curfew
imposed on all Japanese people.
They have to be inside by 5:00 PM,
and can only travel a few miles from home.
BRIAN: You had newspaper columnists,
opportunistic politicians, such as the attorney general
of California, Earl Warren, who were really agitating for
further action against Japanese Americans.
They wanted to remove every man, woman,
and child from the West coast.
JANE: It's a really difficult and challenging time for
Asian Americans because people don't always distinguish
between them very carefully.
You see Koreans wearing badges that say,
"I am Korean."
And sometimes they'll wear Korean flags
on their shirts.
And Chinese Americans do something similar that
distinguish them as non-Japanese.
They wanted to distance themselves from the
anti-Japanese hysteria.
NARRATOR: On February 19th, 1942
Franklin Roosevelt passes
Executive Order 9066, authorizing the incarceration
of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans.
Two thirds of whom were born in the United States.
A few weeks later,
the Unos are instructedto assemble at a nearby church.
Bringing only their personal belongings.
Like thousands of others,
they have no idea what will happen next.
BRIAN: You would typically have a week to dispose of
everything and show up at a particular place by
a particular date.
Many people lose everything.
REPORTER: At Los Angeles, 36,000 Japs
see the handwriting on the wall and sell out their
goods before their voluntary departure.
NARRATOR: Despite propaganda at the time,
the evacuation is anything but voluntary.
Japanese Americans are transferred to 10 newly
constructed detention camps in remote areas.
An additional 10 Department Of Justice camps are built in
places such as Bismarck, North Dakota
and Crystal City, Texas.
ROBERTA: That's where people who were considered dangerous
enemy aliens were sent.
As opposed to the Department of Interior camps,
which were concentration camps for kind of everybody else.
For families, et cetera.
And even still, people were split up.
NARRATOR: Amy Uno is sent with her husband to
a camp in Wyoming.
The rest of the family is sent to Colorado.
They still have no idea where their father
is being held.
SATSUKI: There was no due process.
The government framed it as an issue of loyalty.
But there had never been a question of loyalty in the
Japanese American community.
Nobody asked about loyalty before they were incarcerated.
NARRATOR: Satsuki Ina's parents were born in the
United States, but partly educated in Japan.
SATSUKI: My mother kept a diary from the day
that she married.
Kind of heart wrenching.
She starts out with all this hopefulness.
Finding the love of her life and looking forward
to having a family.
Nine months later, they find themselves imprisoned.
They were removed to the Tanforan racetrack,
which was a temporary detention facility.
If you had one-sixteenth Japanese blood,
even if you were a baby in an orphanage,
you are put in an orphanage in one of the camps.
This was based on race.
SATSUKI: There is a photograph of my mother standing in line
in San Francisco in front of a Community Hall,
that was taken by Dorothea Lange.
That photo captured the moment before she was assigned
to be number 14911.
It's really clear the anxious look on her face,
the beginning of the unknown for her.
My mother had morning sickness and placed in a
horse stable where they could still smell the manure.
And she wrote in her diary that she was sick every day
and unable to eat.
She was concerned about what was happening to the baby that
was growing inside of her.
From there, they were sent to Topaz, Utah.
There, my brother was born.
There was so much turmoil inside the camp.
There were factions.
Those that were supportive of the administration,
and then there was a growing resistance movement.
That gave them a place where they could
feel some personal dignity by opposing the oppressive
conditions and the terrible food.
There was not enough milk for the children.
There was a limit on how much coal you could have to heat
the rooms.
It was 1943 by then and they were required to
answer what was called the loyalty questionnaire,
asking them if they were one,
willing to bear arms against the enemy.
And two, if they would be willing to disavow
any loyalty to the emperor, which they never had.
NARRATOR: Though the vastmajority of inmates answer yes
to both questions.
Satsuki's parents answer no.
SATSUKI: By then they had already decided that they
would have a better life in Japan.
And eventually they would renounce their
American citizenship.
Out of despair.
People who answered no to those two questions were
considered disloyal by the government,
and then transferred to the maximum security Tule Lake
segregation center.
And this is where I was born.
BRIAN: We tend to frame these things in terms of loyalty.
In the situation they're in,
it's just not clear that loyalty is really the right
framework to be talking about it.
You know, it's a matter of survival.
It's a matter of having family in both places.
It's a matter of thinking about what your own situation
and future is going to be.
And there are no good answers in a lot of cases.
SATSUKI: I asked my mother, "Why would you have another
child in a prison camp?"
And she said, "Well, there were rumors that if you had
more children they wouldn't separate the family."
Which turned out not to be true.
NARRATOR: Satsuki's father iseventually sent to Fort Lincoln
in Bismarck, North Dakota,
a high security camp, for so-called enemy aliens.
Buddy's father, George Uno, is also held there.
For the next few years,
the government attempts to deport
him to Japan but he maintains his allegiance to
the United States.
♪
Now that Japan is America's war time enemy,
other Asian communities react in different ways.
JANE: Koreans in the United States see American victory as
also a Korean victory.
Because what they want is they want Japan to be
kicked out of Korea.
NARRATOR: In 1910, Japanestablished Korea as a colony,
suppressing any trace of Korean culture or identity.
This loss of country shapes how all
Koreans see themselves.
Susan Ahn, born in Los Angeles in 1915,
is part of the first generation of Koreans born on
American soil.
One of five siblings, Susan loves sports and is head of
her college baseball team.
SUSAN: I played basketball, field hockey, badminton.
I enjoyed playing sports more than anything.
And my brother was unhappy.
He wanted me to be genteel, ladylike.
NARRATOR: Though they live all-American lives,
Susan and her siblings have an unusual family background.
Their father is an activist who leads the movement for
Korean independence from Japan.
His name is Ahn Chang Ho but he goes by the pen name,
Dosan.
SUSAN: I grew up with people saying to me,
"Your father is not your father.
He's the country's father."
PHILLIP: Every house that the family lived in,
it was not just the family house,
it was the community house.
It was the independence movement activity house.
SUSAN: One thing he always said,
"Be grateful you're living in America,
and try to be good Americans,
but don't forget your heritage."
NARRATOR: In 1932, Dosan is arrested in China by
Japanese agents and sent back to Korea.
There he is jailed and tortured and dies of his
injuries in 1938.
The family is devastated.
PHILLIP: My mom's biggest thing was waiting for him to
come back home.
So when this happened, she was angry, hurt, you know.
Her biggest dream was over.
SUSAN: When you're a Korean, you have no country.
And the Japanese are the predators.
You have a father who gave up his life for it.
You go fight.
PHILLIP: My mom felt that she could go to
officer training school.
But because she was Asian, they rejected her.
And she said, "I don't care about being an officer.
I'm going to join this fight."”
SUSAN: There was no doubt in the whole family's minds that
we were loyal to United States, America.
It was just an opportunity to do something for Korea,
the country that your father and mother gave
up their lives for.
CHRISTINE: She joined the Navy and was assigned to be a
gunnery officer, which meant she had to learn how to shoot
a 50 caliber machine gun.
Which was pretty interesting for a five foot Asian lady.
NARRATOR: Susan Ahn becomes the first Asian woman to
enlist in the United States Navy,
and its first female gunnery officer.
SUSAN: I was teaching them how you should shoot at the
Japanese when they are in the sky at a
Japanese fighter pilot.
One time one commander said to me, he says,
"I'm not shooting until I see the whites
of those Japs eyes."
And I said, "I don't care what you do up there,
you do what I tell you to do down here."
NARRATOR: Susan's older brother,Philip,
contributes to the war effort in his own way.
He is one of the first Asian actors in Hollywood.
PHILLIP: When World War II happened my uncles movie
career was taking off.
And then the American government starts running the
movie industry.
You know, they're censoring, they're suggesting to RKO and
Paramount to make these patriotic movies about war.
And so Phillip starts playing these Japanese roles.
AHN: America will be crushed never to rise again.
CHRISTINE: He was thrilled tobe able to play a bad Japanese.
And to play a Japanese character that then everybody
who saw the movie would hate.
He thought that was wonderful.
(slap)
NARRATOR: The war provided Asian communities
a chance to prove their patriotism.
Chinese and Filipino Americans enlist in droves.
Before the war, Filipinos werebarred from enlisting in the
US military.
After Pearl Harbor, almost half the male Filipino
population in California signs up.
They create two all Filipino regiments.
DIXON: I volunteered for the First Filipino Infantry
Regiment and lo and behold,
I didn't see any soldiers that were my age.
These soldiers that I did see were at least mid-30's
I'd even say in their 40's.
There were some people that lied about their age just to
stay in the army.
MAN: Swinging the dreaded bolo knives of the Philippine
jungle, they work for the day when they will help free their
homeland from the invader.
NARRATOR: Japanese Americans have different motives.
They join the military to fight for their own freedom.
From the prison camps, tens of thousands enlist,
including three of the Uno brothers.
ROBERTA: I think what's so interesting about
the Uno family, those 10 siblings,
is that you have the range from a
very controversial figure like my Uncle Buddy.
And then you have my other uncles who volunteered
out of internment camp and fought on the side of
the United States,
while the rest of their family was incarcerated.
They knew this was their birth country
and they're Americans,
and they should join the service.
BRIAN: The war department and others began to realize that
it would probably be good to allow Japanese Americans to
serve in the armed forces.
Not only because you need the manpower,
but it's also an answer to Japanese Axis propaganda
saying that the U.S. is a racist society.
If we have Japanese Americanswho are serving in the military,
that's a rebuke to that.
That no, we're not racist.
NARRATOR: Howard andStanley Uno enlist as military
intelligence to serve in the Pacific war.
Their brother Ernest signs up to fight with the segregated
442nd battalion in Europe.
ERNEST: We had to voluntarily enlist.
We put our lives on the line.
We didn't have to be drafted.
REPORTER: It's become one of the most amazing fighting
outfits of the war.
It's the famous 442nd combat team.
Mainly Nisei Americans of Japanese descent.
JANE: The 442nd is the most decorated military battalion
in American history.
They embarked on a series of extremely difficult and
dangerous military missions, including the rescue of a
battalion of Texas soldiers called the Lost Battalion.
It was seen as a suicide mission but the 442nd managed
to save hundreds of Texas soldiers from behind enemy
lines in France.
NARRATOR: But back home,
the families of these soldiers are still prisoners.
In 1944, the Unos reunite in Crystal City, Texas,
at a special camp designed for families.
When Ernest Uno visits them,
he is met with a harsh reality.
ERNEST: My homecoming was somewhat of a painful one.
My parents were in an internment camp.
I went up to the fence, touched their hands.
My mother said,
(speaking in Japanese)
She said, "I knew you'd come home."
KAY: It wasn't like in the WRA camps
where they could go in and staywith the families, you know.
We had a visiting room, and they, it was just like
any prison in which they were on one side of the table and
you were on the other side.
ERNEST: I go in visitor's cottage and sit at a couch.
With the armed guards standing behind us.
You know, he had a pistol on his side.
And you know, just standing there.
Overseeing us as we had this family reunion.
And yet darn it, you know, forever the loyal American.
This is something we had to take.
Part of the ... we always take.
NAVIGATION: In a quarter mile, turn left onto Hualipai Road.
NARRATOR: Tamiko visits her great Aunt Kay,
Buddy's youngest sister.
She's the last remaining of the 10 Uno siblings.
Imprisoned at age nine,
she spent two years in Amache, Colorado before
moving to Crystal City with her family.
TAMIKO: Kay?
(speaking in Japanese)
Kay, do you remember about Buddy?
KAY: He was my big brother and he was so nice.
I loved him.
TAMIKO: But he also was putinto a very difficult position.
What do you remember about him?
What did you hear?
KAY: I won't say.
I told myself I wouldn't ever say anything.
I just loved him.
(artillery fire)
NARRATOR: In April 1942 Japanese forces invade the
Philippines, an American colony.
As they battle for control of the islands,
Japan humiliates the U.S.
First in Bataan and then in the battle of Corregidor.
These make up the largest surrender of US troops in
American history.
During the Pacific war, 1.1million Filipino civilians and
soldiers die during the fight to defend their country.
Buddy blames this defeat on the delusions
of American imperialism.
He continues to champion Japan's dominance of Asia.
Buddy Uno originally came to Japan to be a
war correspondent, but he has evolved into
an unapologetic propagandist.
He begins producing broadcasts in English,
aimed to weaken the morale of US troops.
Buddy's brother, Howard Uno,
is stationed in Australia in 1943,
serving as a personal translator
to General MacArthur.
One day he tunes into a radio program and immediately
recognizes his brother's voice,
speaking on behalf of the enemy.
ROBERTA: He was considered a traitor and I think my uncles,
especially because they were having to prove their loyalty,
my uncles felt compelled to renounce their brother.
MAN: "We wish to inform you that the Jap officer,
our brother, is a traitor to the American way of life.
We have pledged the destruction of him and all
those like him."
ROBERTA: But that issue became much more complicated within
the family because they still were brothers.
So in many ways it was almost like a classic
civil war story.
SATSUKI: This was 1988.
I had stopped at the Smithsonian because they had
this exhibit about the incarceration of
the Japanese Americans.
I turned the corner, there's this giant photo of
a man in a jail.
And instantly I knew it was my father.
And at that time I had no idea he had been
inside that jail.
And this was the Tule Lake jail.
Prisoners were beaten with bats and clubbed.
My parents were writing back and forth to each other,
trying to, really struggling to communicate about their
decisions about the future,
but the letters were severely censored.
So my father would actually strip his bed sheet and write
letters to her and then roll it up and he'd stick it inside
the belt lining of the pants, sew it back up and he'd send
the pants to my mother in Tule Lake and say that
the waist was too tight, so could she please adjust and
mend it for him.
And so she writes in her diary,
today she found the letter from Ina.
So then they began this exchange.
ITARU: Dear Shizuko, I feel more and more disheartened.
When I think about our children,
I can't help but worry.
SHIZUKO: Dear Itaru, these days,
nothing gives me more strength than your letters.
NARRATOR: In 1944 in the Philippines,
Buddy develops an unusual friendship.
Carl Mydans is an Americanphotojournalist locked up in a
Japanese prisoner of war camp.
As the tide turns against Japan,
Buddy regularly visits Mydans.
CARL: Buddy Uno was one of the most tortured souls
I have ever known.
He was an American in a Japanese uniform.
Despite his guarded and sometimes crude cover up,
I came to realize that Uno deeply loved the
country of his birth.
He needed desperately to talk to someone and to justify
himself to himself.
NARRATOR: As America retakes the Philippines,
Buddy escapes to the mountains.
After weeks of near starvation,
he is finally captured by Filipino guerrillas.
BUDDY: That day they took me will be the last thing I
remember when I die.
I came out with my hands up and something strange
happened to me.
I had a smile on my face and I recall a voice shouting,
"Look at that Jap son of a bitch laughing."
But inside me, I was crying as I've never cried in my life.
It was as though I was bleeding in there.
NARRATOR: Buddy is placed in a prisoner of war camp.
There he has an unexpected reunion.
AMY: My brother Howard happened to go
to where this camp was,
where they had all the POWs and lo and behold,
he saw his own brother.
They saw each other with a fence between them.
You can imagine the emotional upheaval.
KAY: In Amache camp, mother and I slept together.
One incident that I remember she woke up and she seemed
very calm, and she seemed, you know, kind of happy.
And she said, "“Oh, everything'sgoing to be alright,
with Buddy and Howard.
That they're going, that they have met."”
And this was before we even knew that they had met.
But she had dreamt that somehow they had met
in a peaceful way.
(explosion)
NARRATOR: The war is over,
but the death toll is staggering.
Conservative estimates bring the total to
70 million dead worldwide.
Buddy Uno will never return to the United States.
He dies of complications of tuberculosis at age 47.
Two of his children are still alive.
Katsumaro and Emiko, Tamiko's mother.
TAMIKO: My mother and uncle are among the last to see
Buddy as he was dying.
They were so young, and like me have a lot of
questions about his time during the war.
KATSUMARO: Wow.
(crying)
TAMIKO: There is no way ever knowing exactly Buddy's
thinking or thoughts.
It will forever be a mystery.
Some see Buddy as a traitor,
but I think it's way more complicated.
I just see him as a tragic figure.
NARRATOR: In her post war career,
Susan Ahn continues to buck tradition.
She eventually becomes a Russian code breaker
during the Cold War.
CHRISTINE: She went to work every day for the
National Security Agency
and she couldn't tell me what she did there,
but she was there all day long and she then came
home, was like a normal mom.
NARRATOR: Susan later moves back to Los Angeles to manage
a popular Chinese restaurant with her brother.
Both will continue to speak about their father's legacy.
SUSAN: I'm very proud of being an American,
born in this country.
But I'm very proud that I'm Korean.
I mean, I like it.
You know, I like being Korean.
Unless you respect your Korean heritage,
you'll never find identity.
NARRATOR: At war's end, allJapanese are released from the
incarceration camps.
But George Uno remains in Crystal City along
with his youngest son, Edison, age 16.
The entire family,
including his sons serving in the US military,
write letters and telegrams pleading for their release.
George and Edison are finally released in 1947,
two years after the end of the war.
Edison eventually becomes aleader in the movement to hold
the government accountable for what it had done.
EDISON: American citizens of Japanese ancestry were
incarcerated in total violation of their constitutional rights.
ROBERTA: Well, my uncle Edison had a beautiful
calm about him.
He had a lot of passion and he was definitely a
fighter for justice.
My auntie Amy was kind of relentless in just wanting to
tell the story of the internment.
AMY: Now I look back and I say,
"Could it have actually happened?"
You know, "Is it for real?"
"Would my children believe me if I tried to
explain it to them?"
ROBERTA: To raise awareness,
she would go to church groups, schools,
any gathering of people.
NARRATOR: Both Edison and Amy Uno die before they
can see the fruits of their activism.
They helped plant the seed that would grow into the
movement to restore the rights of those imprisoned
during the war.
Hearings are held around thecountry where these suppressed
stories can finally be heard.
WOMAN: I couldn't believe that we were being corralled to
this concentration camp.
WOMAN 2: The government we trusted,
the country we love,
the nation to which we hadpledged loyalty had betrayed us,
had turned against us.
YUJI: It's a devastating indictment of our government
and of our society.
KAY: Main reason I am here is because
my brother Edison Uno,
he died in '74, uh, '76 and then my sister Amy was
very active with the organizations here on the
mainland for redress and reparation and she
died in January, so...
WOMAN: I'm glad you werehere to speak for both of them.
KAY: I really had to come.
NARRATOR: In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signs
the Civil Liberties Act.
REAGAN: We gather here today to right a grave wrong.
NARRATOR: Which formally apologizeses and pays
reparations to all individuals incarcerated
during the
war.
SATSUKI: Nobody stood up for us.
There were no marches or vigils or petitions protesting
our incarceration.
NARRATOR: Crystal City wasthe final holding facility for
both Ina and Uno families.
Just miles away lies a newdetention camp where thousands
from Central America have been held for months.
It's called the South TexasFamily Residential Center.
SATSUKI: It's the same euphemistic language.
It's a prison.
Many of us are wanting to stand with people who are
being targeted today and not letting them feel like their
incarceration is justified and we're going to ignore it.
We're not.
ROBERTA: Being Japanese American,
we have personal and a special insight into what
it means to be captive people.
If we don't participate in the present moment,
the past will be recreated.
SATSUKI: My name is Satsuki Ina.
I was born in a concentration camp in Northern California.
For a total of four and a half years,
my family was incarcerated.
They never committed a crime except to have the
face of the enemy.
I'm here today to say how important it is for each one
of us to tell this story over and over again,
so that the rest of this world hears what happened to us.
♪ Say it loud, say it clear ♪♪
Protest and resistance now takes on a
whole different meaning.
♪ Say it loud, say it clear
♪ Refugees are welcome here ♪
I personally feel like it's a way of defining
my loyalty by speaking up.
DAVID: When the Chinese revolution comes,
there is this scare.
SENATOR: Are you a member of the Communist Party?
HELEN: Being Chinese made you an automatic suspect.
ERIKA: But Asian Americans, by the 1950's had risen to
a place of economic security;
so people see Asian's as the model minority.
We start to see the shift in political power.
HELEN: There are these amazing,bad-ass women who were
really making a difference.
♪
♪♪
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visit ShopPBS.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS
This program is also available on Amazon Prime Video.