VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Robert Wada, a 75-year-old Japanese-American Korean War veteran was forced, along with his parents and eight older siblings, to live in an internment camp during World War II. His oral history is being compiled by the J.A. Living Legacy Project.

Uyemura: Here we are with Robert Wada, a decorated Marine during the Korean War. He and his family, along with 120,000 other Japanese Americans, were placed in internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. So, Bob, as a Japanese American, can you describe for me what happened after the bombing of Pearl Harbor?
Wada: When Pearl Harbor happened, well it was just a big shock to, I would say, almost all of the Japanese Americans because we certainly were not aware of it coming. It was a big shock and it was just absolute fear for the families. My parents expressed nothing but fear. In fact, that first evening on December 7 the chief of police in Redlands even came to our house and advised my mother not to let the children out at night and that they didn't expect any trouble but they would have a patrol car by our house just to make sure that everything was okay. That was part of our fear and our other fear was that my father, that evening of December 7, built a fire in the back of our house and he was back there burning everything we had, everything from Japan. Anything that had to do with Japan he was burning. He burned books, records, photo albums, kendo suits sort of like an athletic [sport] in Japan, there were big kendo uniforms and equipment and he was crushing all of them and throwing them into the fire. He was just in absolute fear.

Uyemura: Describe for me your experience at the internment camp.
Wada: Well my first day going into the internment camp was probably the most surprising and shocking of all, I guess. But the first day we arrived we were assigned to a barrack. Every barrack was about 100 feet long and divided into four separate rooms so it became a 20 by 25 foot room. Each room was assigned to each family so there were four families living in one barrack. In our family, we had six of us living in this one 20 by 25 foot room. We used bed sheets, or other material that we could hang, to separate the bed cots as dividers to try to give us some kind of privacy. They had what you'd call a block manager so we went there and got some of our supplies. One of the supplies was a big bag - a mattress bag and outside of the barrack in the roadway were bails of hay and we had to go get the bail of hay and open it up - the same hay they feed horses - and fill the bags with the hay. That became our mattress that we slept on for three years.

Uyemura: After being placed in an internment camp, what prompted you to join the Marines?
Wada: Well I guess there were a number of things that entered into it. Aside from wanting to experience a war, I think that after being interned I felt I wanted to prove that I was an American. Putting me in an internment camp didn't make me un-American, it did not take away my love for this country. I joined because I had no animosity towards the country for putting me into an internment camp. It gave me a chance to experience a war like my two older brothers did in the 442nd. So when the Korean War started I called my friend from Redlands who I grew up with from kindergarten, Bob Madrid, told him I was going to join the Marines and he promptly came to Los Angeles and joined with me. Of course the sad part is that he didn't come home. That's my only regret of having joined the Marines - the fact that I talked him into joining with me and he's the one that got killed and didn't come home.

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