Interview with Kazuko "Kaz" Fujishima, internee at Jerome Relocation Center in Arkansas

Kazuko "Kaz" Fujishima and her family were poor fruit farmers living in Hanford, California, barely making ends meet. Times turned for the worse after Pearl Harbor and unknown members of the community lashed out at the family. Kaz and her family were eventually forced by the government to leave home and move to Fresno Assembly Center, where they would eventually be transferred to Jerome Relocation Center in Arkansas. They were among 110,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans who were sent to internment camps under Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066. Signed on Feb. 19, 1942, the order granted the U. S. government authority to relocate both citizens and non-citizens based on the fear that anyone with Japanese ancestry was a potential spy or saboteur. This clip is a selection from an hour and a half interview of Fujishima and her husband for the documentary, Time of Fear, which shared the stories of Japanese Americans who were interned in Arkansas during World War II. Fujishima talks about her parents' struggle with poverty, how internment changed her family structure, and her new life as a domestic worker in Chicago. This interview is a part of UALR's Center for Arkansas History and Culture's collection, "Life Interrupted." Every month, the Center will release a new interview clip, leading up to our exhibit on Japanese American internment in Arkansas, which will open in September 2014.