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Title
Oral History Interview with Noboru Taguma
Created Date
February 14th, 1994
Description
Nisei male, born April 3, 1923 in Broderick, California to a farm family. Noburo graduated from high school in June 1941 and Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, when he was eighteen. In May 1942 his family was evacuated to Merced Assembly Center, then to Amache, Colorado. The family lost income from the crops and gave away horses, which were too costly to maintain during internment. The owner of the farm they worked allowed the Tagumas to store farm equipment in a shed. Noburo saw Amache Relocation Center residents as either conservative farm people or boorish zoot suiters from Los Angeles. In 1943 the loyalty questionnaire was a divisive issue and three community meetings were held. Kibeis (Niseis educated in Japan) were more likely to vote no-no to questions 27 and 28, thus labeled as draft resisters. Noburo wrote on the questionnaire his willingness to serve in the army if the government released his parents. Noburo received a draft notice but did not report for duty. He was arrested with thirty others and sent to Englewood penitentiary where he was visited by two Nisei lawyers - Minoru Yasui and Joe Masaoka - who urged him to join the army. His refusal resulted in solitary confinement in the Denver County Jail. His trial resulted in a sentence of one year and one day in Tucson prison. He was paroled after nine months. Noburo visited his parents clandestinely in Amache Relocation Center as he was not allowed to enter camp. He asked the government to withdraw his citizenship so that he could live with his family in a camp designated for high risk detainees. In response, the government sent him to a Department of Justice (DOJ) camp in New Mexico where he met German prisoners and Japanese who spoke a variety of dialects and Japanese from Latin America who spoke Spanish and Japanese. Attorney Wayne Collins represented the renunciates and stopped the government's deportation order. Noburo was among those transferred to Crystal City, Texas, a DOJ camp. Collins obtained probation for Noburo and others to go to Seabrook, New Jersey farms. There, Noburo maintained farm machinery for seven months. He was released in 1947 and joined his family in Clarksburg. He started his own farm in 1948, contracting with Campbell Soup Company. In 1958 Noburo's fiancee was able to return to the United States under a private bill sponsored by Congressman John Moss. She was born in Sacramento, thus was an American citizen, and was able to return as a citizen. Noburo doesn't understand why he resisted. He wanted to do what was best for his parents and family
they had worked so hard and lost much. He felt that if the loyalty issue had strong leadership, e.g., a Gordon Hirabayashi, there would have been fewer resisters. As a group, the resisters were held in contempt by many Nisei. The Japanese American Citizens League and WWII veterans on one side against the resisters. By 1990, the National Japanese American Citizens League convention passed a resolution to move toward an apology to the resisters for past acrimony. See appendix in the bound copy for a copy of the Japanese American Citizens League resolution and press items about Noburo Taguma as draft resister.
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