For many, Donald Trump's recent proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country raises grave concerns about history repeating itself.
Though the GOP candidate has said that he hates the concept of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, Trump also admitted that he doesn't know whether or not he would have supported rounding the Japanese up and placing them in camps. Speaking on the subject, he told TIME Magazine, "I would have had to be there at the time to tell you.”
Donald Trump was not there at the time, but Mas Yamashita was.
At just 6 years of age, Yamashita and his family were sent to the Tanforan detention facility in San Bruno, California. A former racetrack, the site would become the temporary home for thousands during World War II. Yamashita vividly recalls his time in confinement.
The beginning
“My memories of my childhood really began with the internment,” Yamashita said. “They put us in these horse stalls … one family to each stall. [It] was just a stall which had cots, and we didn’t have mattresses. We had to stuff straw in these bags and that’s what we slept on. One day, a truck came in with some mattresses and we went crazy. [The] mattresses were only about 2 inches thick, but it was better than the straw,” Yamashita said.
The assembly center at Tanforan Racetrack was just a temporary holding spot for Japanese American families. When construction of the Topaz internment site was completed, Yamashita and his family were put on a train, an experience that Yamashita recollects clearly.
“I always could remember because I could never [understand] why they did this — they covered up the windows with black paper, so I wasn’t sure if they didn’t want us to look out or people to see us from the outside …”
After release
The Yamashita family was finally released from Topaz in 1945, but the hardships did not end there. When asked about his time after the war, Yamashita’s voice broke. The pain of the aftermath still too real to speak of, even 70 years later.
Yamashita said the experience left him ashamed of his Japanese heritage.
“When we got out of the camp, I was about 10. [My] first year of grammar school — it was all Caucasians in the classroom and my teacher was caucasian — and she couldn’t pronounce my name, you know? And I hated my name because people couldn’t pronounce it,” Yamashita said.
Yamashita recalls getting into fights with students who would make fun of him. Having lived much of his life in an environment that penalized him for being different, Yamashita avoided anything that would set him farther apart from others. For example, when his father urged him to attend a Japanese school.
“[There] were a couple in the city, but I lied because I didn’t want to have anything to do with the Japanese,” Yamashita said.
Yamashita says he became a volunteer docent at the Japanese American Museum to "make up" for the time he spent distancing himself from the Japanese community.
The importance of history
The recent terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have created a new wave of anti-Muslim sentiment in the country. Confinement and restrictions are once again part of the national conversation. Yamashita says many people may support this notion simply because they’re not aware of the dark chapter of American history brought about by Executive Order 9066.
“I hate to say this, but we’re going to make the same mistakes because we don’t study history and learn by what we’ve done wrong,” Yamashita said.
Press the blue play button above to hear the full interview.
(Corrections: The previous headline referred to Mas Yamashita as a "Japanese internee." It has been corrected to read, "Japanese American internee." Executive order 1066 was corrected to 9066 in the story tease. We regret the error.)