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Sansei
Prisoners in Japanese internment camps who answered yes to two particular questions on a government questionnaire were called yes-yeses. The questionnaire was intended to judge their loyalty to the U.S. and their willingness to serve in the military. Yes-yeses were allowed to enlist and were placed in a segregated, all-Japanese unit.
Yes-yes Quotes in They Called Us Enemy
The They Called Us Enemy quotes below are all either spoken by Yes-yes or refer to Yes-yes. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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They Called Us Enemy
Quotes
Question 27 wanted us to pledge our lives for a country that had upended our families and put us behind barbed-wire fences.
Question 28 rested on a false premise: that we all had a racial allegiance to the emperor of Japan. To answer “yes” would be to agree that we had such a loyalty to give up. Yes or no, either response would be used to justify our wrongful imprisonment—as if they’d been right to call us “enemy aliens” and lock us up in the first place.
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As President Clinton said that day, “Rarely has a nation been so well-served by a people it has so ill-treated.” These brave soldiers clung to their belief in the shining ideals of their country.
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Though they responded in different ways—caring for their families...
Fighting on the battlefield...
Or serving time for their principles—all these Japanese Americans showed incredible courage and heroism.
They proved that being American is not just for some people. They all made difficult choices to demonstrate their patriotism to this country even when it rejected them.
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Yes-yes Term Timeline in They Called Us Enemy
The timeline below shows where the term Yes-yes appears in They Called Us Enemy. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
They Called Us Enemy
Other people, mostly Nisei, answer yes-yes. Although they find the questions ridiculous, they want to fight for their country and prove...
(full context)
