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You're listening to Code Switch from NPR.

0:15

I'm Laurie Lizarraga. You know the

0:17

bio section on your social media profiles?

0:21

Mine is always some version of, you know, Latina,

0:24

daughter of immigrants, middle child, Switch

0:26

co-host,

0:28

journalist, napper. I mean,

0:31

it's updated some through the years, but

0:33

to be honest, it reads today

0:35

a lot like it did a decade ago. Because

0:38

some of our personal qualities induct us into

0:40

certain identity groups for life,

0:44

right? And group identity is a hugely central

0:46

part of how we understand each other.

0:49

In a lot of ways, it shapes what

0:51

we come to know and to expect

0:53

from people in certain groups, people

0:55

outside certain groups, and

0:58

from ourselves.

1:00

Group identity often hangs on some

1:03

central experience, a formative

1:06

or historical event that

1:08

becomes this story we hear about

1:10

again and again, one that we

1:13

all know and go back to. It's

1:15

those big moments

1:17

that often come to define a group's identity,

1:20

for better or

1:21

for worse. Like slavery

1:24

for African Americans, or the

1:27

Civil Rights Movement. For

1:29

a lot of Mexican Americans, Tejanos specifically,

1:32

it's when the land that belonged to Mexico became

1:34

Texas, when the border

1:36

crossed us.

1:38

For Japanese Americans, one defining

1:40

moment was being forced into incarceration camps

1:42

in the U.S. during World War II.

1:45

But understanding the culture and character of any community,

1:48

understanding ourselves, relies

1:51

on the stories in the margins, the

1:53

less well-known

1:55

but no less formative experiences of us,

1:58

of our families. Corey

2:00

Suzuki's story is about one

2:02

such experience. Corey

2:05

is a San Francisco-based reporter who

2:07

wanted to look more closely at one of his own group

2:09

identities to better understand what

2:11

it means to be Japanese American. To

2:14

do that, Corey found a less

2:16

well-known, but no less formative experience

2:19

shared by tens of thousands that

2:21

defined another side of what it means to be Japanese

2:24

American. And he found it in

2:26

a personal story, the story of

2:28

his obachima.

2:29

His grandmother. Here

2:32

is Corey. Can you

2:34

just tell me what you see? It's

2:37

a big ship. Someone

2:40

that's on the ship. Waving.

2:44

Ha ha ha. Yeah.

2:49

Oh, little girl. This

2:53

is my obachima, my grandma. I'm

2:56

asking her to describe a drawing that's been in my family

2:58

for years, one that I've never really

3:00

been able to get out of my head. It shows

3:02

a little girl standing on the railing of a ship.

3:05

In my memory of the drawing, she stares out

3:07

over the water.

3:08

Her straight black hair dances in the wind.

3:11

Very lonesome. Pictures,

3:15

man. And this is

3:17

you. That's

3:20

so it's me.

3:22

This drawing is of Obachima

3:24

as a little girl, coming to

3:27

America from Japan in 1949. For four years,

3:29

Japan and the United States had been at war. I'd

3:32

heard Obachima tell these stories. She

3:34

and her parents were living in Tokyo, right in

3:36

the firing line. Some nights they would

3:39

watch as Allied bombers passed overhead and

3:41

the city glowed orange. In

3:43

this drawing, the war is over. The

3:46

war is over.

3:49

In this drawing, the war is over. And Obachima,

3:52

just 16 years old, is on her way to California, alone.

3:58

For the longest time, I thought it was over. This was the

4:01

moment,

4:02

the one that so many descendants of immigrants

4:04

hear about,

4:04

the moment our families made

4:06

the journey to this country. What I

4:08

saw in that drawing was a lonely moment,

4:11

but also a moment of hope, of

4:14

leaving war-torn Japan and

4:16

forging a new life in the United States. It

4:19

wasn't until high school that I asked Obachima about it. I

4:22

wanted to know what it was like to be born and raised in Japan.

4:25

But her response shocked me.

4:28

I was born in San Francisco,

4:30

California, August 1932.

4:36

That was the day I learned that Obachima was not born

4:39

in Japan.

4:40

She was born in California, an American

4:42

citizen, in the heart of the West Coast.

4:46

When I learned this, I didn't know what to think. It

4:48

was like my whole sense of where I came from had been

4:50

turned inside out. I

4:53

always thought Obachima was Japanese, but

4:55

really she was Japanese American.

4:57

That drawing of that little girl on the ship, it

4:59

wasn't of someone making the journey to a new country.

5:02

It was a picture of someone making their way home.

5:05

I had so many questions. Why

5:07

did Obachima and her parents end up leaving the United

5:09

States? What was it like to grow up on

5:11

the other side of the war? What

5:14

was it like to come back? And

5:16

then Obachima told me something else. There

5:19

were others, she said. This

5:21

wasn't just her story. There were

5:23

thousands of people, tens of thousands, Japanese

5:26

Americans who were in Japan when the

5:28

Imperial Japanese government attacked Pearl Harbor

5:31

and who were stranded on the wrong side of the ocean.

5:36

For generations, one story has defined

5:38

what it means to be Japanese American. It's the story of

5:41

the incarceration during World War II of

5:44

when the government of the United States uprooted more

5:46

than 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry from

5:49

their homes along the West Coast

5:51

and forced them into federal incarceration camps.

5:54

Of a group of people who spent their entire lives trying to prove

5:56

that they didn't deserve this injustice, trying

5:58

to prove how American they really did. were. This

6:02

is the flip side of that story. It's

6:04

the story of my Obachmas journey from San Francisco

6:06

to Tokyo and back again. It's

6:09

the story of a group of Japanese Americans who instead

6:12

of being forced to bury their Japanese heritage

6:14

were cut off from their American identity. And

6:17

it's the story of

6:18

me trying to figure out where I really come

6:20

from and what it actually means to be

6:22

Japanese American.

6:35

It was a bright day when I drove over to interview Obachma

6:37

for this story. Obachma

6:44

still lives in Richmond just across the bay from

6:46

San Francisco with my parents and

6:49

the house where I grew up. Some

6:51

parts of the house have changed since then. Others

6:53

like Obachmas room with its stacks of books and

6:55

greeting cards and picture frames are

6:58

the same. Oh, your room looks so

7:00

clean. I

7:04

didn't want you to come in

7:07

here. It really

7:09

was not that bad. We

7:11

sat down on her bed surrounded by her books

7:13

and photographs. And I asked her to

7:15

start at the beginning. I

7:18

went to kindergarten

7:21

in San Francisco, which is called

7:24

Kimo Gakuen.

7:27

Golden Gate kindergarten. I

7:30

didn't study English too much.

7:32

They were more or less teaching

7:35

Japanese. It

7:36

was the three of them, Obachma, her mother

7:38

and her father. They were living in San

7:40

Francisco in the 1930s when a lot of Japanese

7:43

people were working on farms or cleaning houses.

7:46

My father was ambitious

7:48

and what they did was making

7:51

Japanese produce because

7:54

at that time there were quite

7:57

a few Japanese immigrants.

7:59

in San Francisco and

8:03

bringing Japanese produce to

8:08

San Francisco was a good

8:10

business. Obachima

8:13

loved San Francisco. There was the

8:15

fog and the rolling hills. There were the

8:17

holidays like Christmas where the city would sparkle

8:19

with light. But there was nothing like

8:21

the crisp spring day that five-year-old

8:23

Obachima got to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge

8:25

for the first time.

8:26

The very day it opened.

8:29

Can you tell me about walking

8:32

across the bridge for the first time? 19, 37.

8:39

Weather was nice. You

8:41

know how bridges always

8:44

cool. Yeah, so

8:46

many people. And San

8:49

Francisco people were always

8:52

well-dressed.

8:53

Man is in the

8:56

suits and the hat. And

8:59

ladies with the hat and

9:01

gloves.

9:02

There were videos

9:04

of the day. It was May, 1937. The

9:08

sky was clear. Fuita planes droned

9:10

overhead. Thousands of

9:12

people had gathered to walk across the bridge for the

9:14

first time. When I came

9:17

to

9:17

the center of the bridge

9:20

looking up, it's very,

9:23

very unbelievable

9:25

how people could build that. San

9:32

Francisco was a beautiful place to live, but

9:34

it wasn't the easiest. Local

9:36

labor groups organized protests against immigration

9:38

from Japan.

9:39

The city's school board had threatened to segregate

9:42

students from Japanese families and bar them

9:44

from white primary schools.

9:46

The California legislature had passed a

9:48

law meant to stop the Issei, the

9:50

first generation of Japanese immigrants from owning land.

9:53

Issei people who came

9:55

from Japan first, they

9:58

had such a...

9:59

anti-Japanese discrimination,

10:03

and they couldn't

10:06

have children to

10:08

have a higher education, and

10:11

they couldn't even buy the house

10:14

property. So they

10:17

say people encouraged children

10:20

to go to Japan.

10:26

Historian Brian Nia has spent years studying

10:28

Japanese American history, and

10:30

he told me that for all kinds of reasons, thousands

10:33

of Nisei, my Obachimasu generation,

10:35

are turning to Japan at this time. A

10:38

lot of the kind of Nisei with

10:41

college degrees and so forth go

10:43

there because that's the only place they could get a

10:45

job, a commensurate

10:48

with their qualifications. And

10:50

then for many younger Nisei, their parents,

10:53

especially if they have means, send them

10:55

to Japan to be educated, feeling

10:58

that if they're bilingual, bicultural, they

11:00

just have a better chance going forward.

11:02

A lot of people Brian says also went back for

11:05

family reasons. One of my wife's

11:08

cousins, kind of a distant cousin,

11:11

but she's born

11:13

in Tacoma, then at age 13, gets

11:16

sent to Japan to take care of

11:19

a grandmother or grandfather who's

11:21

not well.

11:27

For a while, Obachima's parents didn't feel like

11:29

they had to leave California. The produce

11:31

business was going well, and it seemed like things were

11:33

stable.

11:34

Then they got the news. Obachima's

11:37

grandmother back in central Japan was sick.

11:40

Her health was failing fast. So

11:42

in 1937, the same year they

11:44

walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, Obachima's

11:46

parents told her they needed to talk.

11:49

They had to leave San Francisco.

11:51

They were going back to Japan.

11:53

We were just visiting half

11:55

a year or one year, planning

11:59

to.

12:03

Coming up, more on the story of

12:05

Japanese-Americans caught in Japan in

12:08

the line of American fire during World War

12:10

II.

12:10

It's kind of the biggest

12:13

unexplored episode

12:15

in the history of Japanese-Americans.

12:18

Stay with us.

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13:41

Lori.

13:42

Lori and Cory. I

13:44

had to. Code switch.

13:48

In every community, there are generations

13:50

of stories that define what it means

13:52

to be American and Chinese, American

13:55

and Indian, African American,

13:57

Mexican American.

14:00

One painful story that's been a defining

14:02

one for Japanese Americans is

14:04

that of the United States government uprooting

14:07

more than a hundred thousand people of

14:09

Japanese ancestry from their homes

14:11

along the West Coast and forcing

14:13

them into federal incarceration camps during World

14:15

War II.

14:17

But there is also another story, one

14:19

shared by tens of thousands of Japanese

14:22

Americans in the early 1900s of

14:24

American citizens, children of

14:27

Japanese descent whose families left the

14:29

US to return to Japan when suddenly

14:31

war broke out, stranding them

14:34

on the other side of the ocean, forced

14:36

to try and survive the violence in their homeland

14:38

inflicted by the nation of their birth.

14:42

While looking at what it means to be Japanese

14:44

American, reporter Corey Suzuki

14:47

uncovered the details and depth of that story

14:49

and its influence on Japanese American identity

14:52

through someone very close to him who

14:55

lived it, his grandma.

14:58

Here again is Corey. That

15:05

plan to stay for half a year, maybe

15:07

one year, stretched into two, then

15:10

three. And then in

15:12

the winter, they heard that something had

15:14

happened. At that time

15:16

we didn't have TV, so radio

15:19

was on the source.

15:21

Japan

15:24

had attacked a US Navy base called Pearl Harbor.

15:27

This morning, and it's the air

15:29

bombing of Pearl Harbor by enemy

15:32

planes, undoubtedly

15:34

Japanese. Obachima

15:36

remembers being confused. She

15:38

was still just nine years old, and she didn't

15:40

understand what the news meant. But Obachima's

15:42

mother was worried. They should have left

15:44

Japan earlier, she said to Obachima. There

15:47

was no way they could get back to San Francisco now.

15:49

She liked that America song,

15:52

so she was so regretful.

15:56

She didn't come back before. As

16:00

she said, I'm

16:02

going to put the American flag

16:04

on the top of the roof so

16:08

they don't drop the bomb, which

16:12

was a very ridiculous

16:15

thing.

16:18

They didn't actually end up putting a flag on the roof.

16:20

For a few months, things were quiet.

16:23

It was winter in Tokyo. Al-Bachama and her parents

16:26

were living in an industrial part of the city. She

16:28

was going to school, and her father was working in a factory,

16:31

something to do with electrical cords, she says. They

16:34

stayed with other workers in factory housing.

16:36

Then, in the spring, the

16:39

United States hit back. They launched their

16:41

own surprise attack, a retaliatory

16:43

air raid on Tokyo. The

16:46

planes sweep in without being discovered. They

16:49

separate into groups to attack the several

16:51

objectives carefully selected by means of accurate

16:54

intelligence. They targeted factories and industrial

16:56

areas. To ensure that only

16:58

targets of military value will be hit. Al-Bachama

17:02

remembers putting everything they could carry on a small

17:05

cart and running.

17:06

We didn't have truck or anything,

17:09

so we put the

17:12

immediate necessity on the

17:14

wagon, and

17:17

we

17:19

start running. And

17:22

I still remember fire

17:24

just getting grabbed

17:26

across and across as

17:29

we moved down. I

17:31

should say here, Al-Bachama doesn't go around casually

17:33

telling these stories about living through the war. But

17:36

when she does, she doesn't shy away from them. She

17:39

tells them with a smile, sometimes

17:41

a laugh.

17:42

I don't know why that's how she tells these stories, about

17:45

terrible things that happened at the hands of American

17:47

soldiers.

17:48

Maybe it's just because this is what things were like when

17:51

she was growing up in Japan. These

17:53

are her middle school stories, her childhood

17:55

memories.

17:56

Anyway, the company housing, Al-Bachama

17:59

says it was all burnt.

17:59

They couldn't go back. Instead,

18:03

she and her parents moved in with another family, the

18:05

Takemuras, who lived across the city.

18:08

It was a lonely time for Obachima. The

18:10

Japanese government was starting to evacuate children

18:12

and older people to the countryside, to try

18:15

and get them out of the path of future bombings. Obachima's

18:18

parents asked her if she wanted to go.

18:20

I wanted to go because I'm

18:22

the only child, and

18:25

to live with everybody is

18:27

kind of so nice. I

18:32

volunteered, and my

18:34

parents agreed, and

18:37

I went.

18:39

But she wasn't there for long.

18:40

Soon, her parents came after her. And

18:44

they said, if we

18:46

have to die from bombing

18:49

and whatever, they

18:52

wanted to stay together,

18:54

you know, family. And so

18:57

I had to come back to Tokyo.

19:06

As the war continued, life in Japan got worse and

19:08

worse. Food and other supplies

19:10

were hard to find. We were lucky,

19:13

only three of us in

19:16

the family, but people

19:18

didn't have enough to eat, and

19:21

clothes, you cannot

19:24

buy anything, you know.

19:27

Of course, no candy was

19:30

getting worse.

19:34

Even during all of this, there were also moments where

19:36

things felt normal. Obachima kept

19:38

going to class. Every day, she would commute

19:41

from Setagaya, where the Takamura's lived,

19:43

to

19:43

her school in the center of Tokyo. She

19:46

would take a train to Shibuya Station, where

19:48

she would catch a streetcar to the school. There

19:50

were exams and homework.

19:53

We had an English subject,

19:56

but I hated it. very

20:00

bad

20:01

student.

20:05

But the war also brought complex feelings. At

20:08

home, Obachima remembers her mother speaking

20:10

out against the Japanese government. At

20:12

school, she says, they were taught loyalty

20:15

to Japan.

20:16

We were all brainwashed.

20:20

And we

20:23

were told

20:24

England and US, they

20:28

were the enemy to

20:30

us.

20:32

So you felt Japanese?

20:37

During the war, yeah. Obachima

20:40

still remembered San Francisco though, too. She

20:43

thought often about Christmas and Halloween

20:45

and going to her kindergarten. That

20:47

was the one thing she knew for sure.

20:49

She wanted to go back to California. In

20:52

November of 1944, American planes returned to

20:54

the skies above Tokyo. US

20:57

forces had captured the Mariana Islands and

20:59

Archipelago in the Pacific and reusing them

21:01

as a base to bomb Japanese cities. Every

21:04

night, Obachima says she and her parents would draw black

21:06

curtains over the windows and turn off the lights to

21:08

hide their home.

21:10

That spring, Obachima learned there had been a major

21:13

air raid in the center of Tokyo, right where

21:15

her school was. They said it had

21:17

been burned. But I

21:21

liked it the high school so much and

21:25

I wanted to see

21:27

myself, you know.

21:30

She got on the train to Shibuya Station.

21:32

When she arrived, the streetcars she used to take

21:34

were gone.

21:35

So she started walking across the city, past

21:38

glowing embers and bodies. Sure

21:40

enough, school was all burned.

21:44

Obachima didn't laugh when she told that story.

21:54

Across Japan, tens of thousands

21:56

of other stranded Japanese Americans were all still

21:58

in the air. living through the

22:00

war. Researchers say their experiences

22:02

varied.

22:03

Some lived in the countryside, isolated

22:05

from the violence of the war. Some

22:07

were conscripted into the Japanese military.

22:10

Some were even sent over by the U.S. government

22:12

during the middle of the war. My mom

22:14

was also in this category. Historian

22:17

Brian Nia again. Her story

22:19

was that her father was

22:21

a prominent newspaper editor in

22:23

Honolulu, so he was arrested and

22:25

interned on the night of December 7. They

22:28

are among the handful of

22:30

Japanese who are exchanged,

22:33

basically, for American prisoners. So

22:36

she starts out in Hawaii, but she ends

22:38

up going to Japan in the middle

22:40

of the war. But, you know, her

22:42

situation is similar at that point. Conditions

22:45

are getting really bad, and here are more mouths

22:47

to feed, and there are Americans

22:50

on

22:50

top of that, you know, who in

22:52

some ways are being blamed for this

22:54

whole predicament. You

22:59

know, a really sad part of the story is that,

23:02

of course, Hiroshima is one of

23:04

the main prefectures that Japanese

23:06

immigrated from to the U.S., and of course,

23:09

many of them ended up back in Hiroshima. We

23:12

know what happened next.

23:16

Nine days after American forces bombed Hiroshima, Obachima

23:18

and her parents heard there was going to be an announcement.

23:20

People told us to listen to the radio 12 noon.

23:21

They

23:28

tuned in. At first, it was

23:30

just static.

23:31

Then, a voice. It

23:43

was the first time we heard

23:46

the Emperor's voice on

23:48

the radio.

23:48

He was very

23:51

sorry. We were

23:53

surrounded and told

23:56

us it's the end of the war.

24:00

more suffering.

24:06

In September of 1945,

24:07

when Obashima was just 13

24:09

years old, Japan surrendered. American

24:12

planes started to land, carrying soldiers and

24:14

military equipment, and they also carried

24:17

something else—hundreds

24:18

of American movies.

24:23

The very first

24:24

American movie I saw

24:27

was Madame Curie. It's

24:30

a nice movie theater it

24:33

used to be, but all

24:35

the chairs were burned, so

24:37

we sat on a concrete

24:41

where it used to be

24:43

chairs were placed.

24:48

If we can prove the existence

24:50

of this new element, it

24:52

may enable us to look into the secret of

24:55

life itself deeper than ever before

24:57

in the history

24:57

of the world.

25:01

Across the ocean, the government's incarceration

25:03

of Japanese Americans in the US was also

25:05

ending. One by one, the camps

25:07

closed down. People were handed

25:09

what would be about $350 today, and

25:12

were put on trains bound for the West Coast.

25:19

When I think about this moment, I think of a tide.

25:21

Thousands of people, like Obashima, swept

25:24

across the ocean for years. But

25:26

now, the water was turning. The

25:28

current was calling the back.

25:37

It was April 1949 when Obashima was finally

25:39

able to get passage on a ship to California.

25:42

Her parents, who had never been American citizens,

25:44

had to stay in Japan. But a distant relative

25:47

in San

25:47

Jose said they could take Obashima in.

25:49

Everybody wanted to come to America,

25:53

you know, because of

25:55

the influence

25:58

of those movies. and

26:01

American lives.

26:06

But for me, I still

26:09

remember

26:11

childhood memory

26:14

from San Francisco, so I wanted

26:16

to come. So

26:22

one morning, Obashima went down to the docks.

26:24

It was a bright spring day. She

26:26

said goodbye to her friends and stepped out

26:29

over the water onto the deck of an American

26:31

ship. She was 16 years old

26:34

and finally heading back to the United States.

26:35

Once I got on

26:37

the ship, of course, I started

26:40

feeling sorry

26:44

for my parents.

26:47

Obashima was sad to be leaving her parents behind, but

26:50

a big part of her was also thrilled. She

26:52

was so excited to be going home.

27:00

The ship was called the USS General Gordon. During

27:03

the war, it had taken American soldiers to

27:06

Normandy and brought German prisoners back to

27:08

the States. Now it was ferrying

27:10

passengers across the Pacific.

27:12

It

27:12

was a very plain

27:16

army ship, and now I got

27:19

stuck getting seasick

27:21

in the bottom of the

27:24

ship. But

27:27

it didn't burn too much when

27:30

you were only 16.

27:32

It was a long trip,

27:33

two weeks across the ocean. So

27:36

Obashima started getting to know the other passengers.

27:39

She was surprised to find out that a lot of them were like

27:41

her. Japanese Americans who

27:44

had been stranded in Japan.

27:46

I was treated

27:49

very well because I was the

27:51

youngest, and they

27:54

would look after me.

27:56

Halfway through their trip, the ship docked in the

27:58

Hawaiian Islands. Shima spent

28:00

a day wandering around

28:01

Honolulu with the other former Strandis.

28:04

We had one day we could

28:06

see city and

28:09

I still remember how

28:11

pineapple was delicious

28:14

and we had a good time. And

28:18

finally we had to get on

28:20

the ship again.

28:27

After two weeks, the moment came that

28:29

Obachima had been waiting for what felt like her

28:32

entire childhood.

28:34

In the distance, they could see land. Obachima

28:37

stood on the deck of the ship and watched

28:39

as her California appeared over the horizon.

28:42

It was the scene from that drawing, the

28:44

one I had been thinking about for what felt like my

28:47

entire childhood, of that little

28:49

girl on the deck of a ship staring

28:51

out over the water. That image

28:53

of hope.

28:54

But all Obachima felt was sadness.

28:58

When I saw Golden Gate Bridge

29:01

on that deck, I started

29:03

crying because I didn't

29:05

want to get off the ship. Everybody

29:08

was so nice. I

29:11

had to say goodbye to all the friends.

29:14

After everything, after years of

29:16

running from bombs and burning buildings, of

29:19

waking up hungry and tired, of trying

29:21

to survive long enough to make it back to the United States,

29:24

all she wanted to do was to stay with the other

29:26

Japanese Americans on that ship.

29:28

She knew that once they got off,

29:31

everyone was going to go their separate ways.

29:33

And she was right. So

29:36

every Japanese American who had been on that ship,

29:39

every Japanese American who had been stranded in Japan,

29:41

had something to share now.

29:43

There was a new name for them.

29:45

Can you read it one more time? Kibei

29:49

nisei. Kib

29:51

means return. Bei

29:54

means abbreviation

29:57

of Beikoku, which

29:59

is an

29:59

America and Nii

30:03

is number two.

30:07

Sei is a generation,

30:11

second generation.

30:13

Return to America. Return

30:15

to America. The Kibe

30:17

Nisei, the generation who

30:20

left and came back. I

30:24

guess, um, like

30:29

who, what do you, you know, what

30:33

do you, what do you consider yourself? Like

30:36

are you Japanese? Are you American? Are

30:38

you Japanese American? Um, what-

30:41

Japanese America.

30:43

Japanese American.

30:47

Not complete American,

30:50

not complete Japanese. Kibe

30:53

Nisei.

30:57

I think the general story of Japanese

31:00

Americans in Japan

31:04

during

31:09

World War II is kind of

31:11

the biggest unexplored

31:14

episode in the history of Japanese Americans.

31:17

Historian Brian Nia. It just does

31:19

not fit the kind of standard

31:22

grand narrative going to concentration

31:24

camps, the 442nd resettlement. I

31:28

mean, the grand story, the farewell

31:30

demands in our story, you know,

31:32

the Kibe, they're not part of that. This

31:34

is really a story that we need to know a

31:36

little bit more about and that

31:38

kind of complicate our understanding of

31:41

the whole Japanese American story.

31:44

Where are we?

31:49

Golden

31:53

Gate Bridge. Last

31:56

August, my sister and I took a bachama to walk

31:59

across the Golden Gate Bridge. We do

32:01

it every year for her birthday and every

32:03

year it's cold. Like that day

32:05

she walked across for the first time back

32:07

in 1937. How are you feeling?

32:09

Okay fine. Are

32:12

you excited? Yes. What

32:16

does it look like? Beautiful.

32:25

Beautiful. Beautiful.

32:29

I wonder if I can do it next

32:33

year. As

32:37

we walked out over the water, the clouds split

32:39

and the sun came through.

32:47

I've been thinking about something Obatchma said earlier.

32:50

About how she cried when they finally got back to

32:52

the U.S. What

32:55

I was expecting to hear next, what I was waiting

32:57

to hear next, was that those were tears of joy.

33:00

That

33:00

she was so happy to be back.

33:03

But that wasn't it.

33:05

She was crying because she didn't want to say goodbye to

33:07

the other Kibe Nisei on board with her.

33:10

She didn't know when she was going to be able to see them again.

33:14

I think I get what she meant now. I

33:17

used to think she looked so lonely in that drawing.

33:19

Staining there on the deck of the ship.

33:21

But I realize now that she wasn't alone.

33:25

Those other people on the ship,

33:26

they understood. She

33:28

didn't need to explain anything to them. About

33:30

her life, about the things that had happened. About

33:33

what it was like. They already knew.

33:39

We drove back across the bridge and

33:41

went home. That

33:50

was Corey Suzuki. He's a reporter and visual

33:54

journalist. currently

34:00

based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and

34:02

a recent graduate of the UC Berkeley Graduate

34:04

School of Journalism. And

34:07

that is our show. Thank

34:09

you so much for listening. If you're not already, you

34:11

can subscribe to our podcast on the NPR app or

34:14

wherever you listen to podcasts. You can follow

34:16

us on Instagram at NPR Codeswitch. More,

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codeswitch at NPR.org. A

34:23

quick shout out to our Codeswitch Plus listeners. Thank

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you for being a subscriber. Subscribing

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and it really helps support our show. So if

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please consider signing up at plus.npr.org

34:40

slash Codeswitch. This

34:43

episode was reported by Corey Suzuki. It

34:46

was originally edited by Shereen Marisol Maragi,

34:48

head of the audio concentration at the UC Berkeley

34:51

Graduate School of Journalism. Additional

34:54

editing came from Ethan Toven-Lindsey, Lisa

34:56

Armstrong, and Queenie Kim.

34:59

Special thanks to Scott Kurashige,

35:02

Michael Jin, and Naoko Waki. Thanks

35:05

also to Anna Sussman, Erica

35:07

Aguilar,

35:08

Lauren Delaney Miller, Olivia

35:10

Zhao, Corey Antonio Rose,

35:13

Nish Harjani,

35:14

Sabrina Pasqua, Ruth

35:17

Dusseau, Jia Wu, Catherine

35:20

Stier-Martinez, Andrew Lopez,

35:22

and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of

35:25

Journalism. This episode was produced

35:27

for Codeswitch by Kumari Devarajan and

35:29

edited by Leah Dinella. Our engineer

35:32

was Brian Jarbo. And

35:34

last but never least, a big shout out to the

35:36

rest of the tremendous Codeswitch massive. Dalia

35:38

Mortada, Courtney Stein, Christina Kala,

35:41

Jess Kung, L.A. Johnson, Verilynn

35:43

Williams, Steve Drummond, and my

35:45

co-hosts, Gene Demby and BA Parker.

35:48

I'm Laurie Lizarraga. Call

35:51

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