Barry Saiki grew up in the Sacramento Valley in Stockton, Calif. While he studied economics at the University of California, Berkeley, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.
With only one semester left before graduation, Saiki returned from his winter vacation in Stockton to UC Berkeley hoping to finish school. However, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, the FBI picked up his father for questioning in Stockton and Saiki decided to return home. He took his finals at the College of the Pacific (now University of the Pacific) and received his diploma.
The Army moved Saiki and his family into a temporary assembly center. For the third and final time, the FBI came to the assembly center to pick up his father. Saiki remembers the incident well:
[We] went to our barracks and about an hour later, a car pulled up with two FBI agents, had my father, said, he could take only one suitcase.... They pulled him out of this camp and took him to a special internment camp. [Uncommon Courage]
I walked in and he looks at me and I looked at him. He stands up and walks towards me, leaving the center of the room. This lieutenant is looking at us and he (brother) said, "Is that you?" And I said, "Is that you?" And I said, "Yes." And the lieutenant says, "Hey, what's going on here?"... So I said, "Oh, he's my brother." And he (the lieutenant) says, "Yeah, yeah. He said he had relatives. Why don't you go in the mess hall and have a coffee." That's how I met [him] on the second day in Japan. [Uncommon Courage]
They took the [United States] passport and tore it up and put it in the garbage can. And I said, "What does that mean?" And she said, "That means he lost his citizenship." [Uncommon Courage]
Just before I dumped my powdered egg into the garbage can, there's a young kid standing there.... He saw the piece of omelet, put his hand into my tray, you know, and I ate it right in front of me. And I thought, gee, this guy's a nut, you know. But then I went back there and I asked the kid, "What are those women doing there?" He said, "They're waiting for garbage."... I went up to them and said, "What are you going to do with that can, when you get that?" They take it home, make a fire and warm it up and eat it. They're eating the garbage. [Uncommon Courage]
There was a moat that surrounds the Imperial Palace grounds.... Ken and I were walking and we saw this guy, this old man fishing. And a couple of kids also were fishing. And I said to the man, "What are you fishing for?" "I'm fishing for Imperial carp." "Did you catch any?" He said, "No. I don't catch anymore." "But," he says, "Before the war ended, if anybody was caught standing here, even thinking of fishing, he would have been arrested." "But," he says, "After we lost the war, a period of time passed, everybody around here came over here to fish. And the fish of this moat saved a lot of people, you know. We fished out the moat. [Uncommon Courage]
It [the Occupation] opened the road for many Nisei.... They were in Japan and they worked for the military and they worked for the Occupation.... There were many Nisei, MIS people, who later became foreign-service officers who worked for the U.S. Consulate in Japan.... And so in a way, the war created a situation that was bad for Japan. At the same time, it opened avenues for Nisei in other occupations, something that they would not have done if there hadn't been a war. [Uncommon Courage]Saiki, Barry - Bio.doc