Interviews

1. Parents were willing to send her to medical school

2. Differences in discrimination

3. Getting good guidance

4. Unable to work when the war broke out

5. Traumatic experiences before camp

6. Joining the hospital unit in Santa Anita Race Track

7. Lost respect for the flag after incarceration

8. No use in having citizenship

9. Never married

10. “Everybody went in like sheep”

Sakaye Shigekawa

(1913-2013) Doctor specializing in obstetrics in Southern California

Traumatic experiences before camp

I know my father was coming home from Long Beach, he was..from the hog ranch, you know and he didn’t come home. And he was put in jail, my father came out – but he was released the next day – and his experience there must have been quite traumatic because he could hardly talk about it. He said he saw these drunks in there being hit over the head and, you know, mistreated. And, I mean, he told about it just once – he never talked about it after that. I mean, it was quite traumatic to him I think, that experience.

But worst of all though, at least my father got, was released the first day afterwards, but so many of them, like if they were head of an organization or if they held any position of merit, you know, they put them in the…well they took them away without the family knowing where they were gonna go.

So, the rumors at that time was, be sure – to the men – you have a coat or something to wear, cause they’ll take you, just spirit you away. And I think that was such a traumatic experience for me to see, when I was there. So I couldn’t even talk about it for a long time, but you never hear about it from anybody else, you know. Yeah, you only hear about the camp experience, but to me, I think the experience before was even worse.

discrimination imprisonment incarceration interpersonal relations racism World War II

Date: March 31, 2005

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Gwenn M. Jensen

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Dr. Sakaye Shigekawa was born January 6, 1913 in South Pasadena, California. When she was a child, her father was hospitalized from double pneumonia and while visiting him, she got acquainted with the doctors and nurses and decided then to become a doctor. After studying premed at USC, she was accepted to Stritch Loyola Medical School and was only 1 of 4 women in her class. She persevered through medical school despite sex discrimination from instructors and fellow students and began practicing medicine in the Los Angeles area.

She was one of the first to be incarcerated at the Santa Anita Race Track on March 1, 1942. She was invited to join Dr. Norman Kobayashi and Dr. Fred Fujikawa treating patients while there which helped her overcome the bitterness and depression she was in. At first she was only allowed to treat skin conditions, but after a while she asked to be able to do other things and began to do obstetrics and other parts of medicine.

After the war she continued to practice medicine and eventually opened up her own practice, which she continues. In her thirty-nine years of obstetrics practice, she calculates that she delivered over twenty thousand babies and never lost a mother. She passed away on October 18, 2013 at age 100. (April 2020)