00:03I am the grandson of immigrants from Japan who went to America.
00:09I was four years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941 by Japan.
00:18And overnight, the world was plunged into a world war.
00:33My brother and I were in the living room looking out the front window, and we saw two soldiers marching
00:40up our driveway.
00:41They carried bayonets on their rifle.
00:45They stomped up the front porch and banged on the door.
00:50My father answered it, and these soldiers ordered us out of our home.
00:55We were taken from our home and loaded onto train cars with other Japanese-American families.
01:03There were guards stationed at both ends of each car, as if we were criminals.
01:09We were taken on that train for four days and three nights to the swamps of Arkansas.
01:16I still remember the barbed wire fence that confined me.
01:20I remember the tall sentry tower with the machine guns pointed at us.
01:27I remember the searchlight that followed me when I made the night runs from my barrack to the latrine.
01:34When the war ended, we were released and given a one-way ticket to anywhere in the United States.
01:42My parents decided to go back home to Los Angeles, but Los Angeles was not a welcoming place.
01:49Everything had been taken from us, and the hostility was intense.
01:56My parents worked hard to get back on their feet.
01:59Ultimately, they were able to get the capital together to buy a three-bedroom home in a nice neighborhood.
02:06And I was a teenager, and I became very curious about my childhood imprisonment.
02:12And so I engaged my father after dinner in long, sometimes heated conversations.
02:19He told me that our democracy is a people's democracy, and it can be as great as the people can
02:26be, but it is also as fallible as people are.
02:31He told me that American democracy is vitally dependent on good people who cherish the ideals of our system
02:41and actively engage in the process of making our democracy work.
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