Beyond loyalty: the story of a Kibei

Abstract

Beyond Loyalty is the powerful and inspiring story of a young man whose life and education were rudely disrupted by the U.S. government's imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II. A high school student when interned in 1942, Minoru Kiyota was so infuriated by his treatment during an FBI interrogation and by the denial of his request to leave the camp to pursue his education that he refused to affirm his loyalty as required of all internees. For this he was sent to Tule Lake Segregation Center in northern California - a holding pen for dangerous and disloyal individuals. While imprisoned there under deplorable conditions, Kiyota learned of a new law offering Japanese Americans the opportunity to renounce their U.S. citizenship. Although barely old enough to do so, Kiyota took this drastic step. Throughout his four long years of incarceration, he refused to resign himself to the injustices he witnessed and experienced. His story shares the fury and frustration aroused by gross violations of his rights as a U.S. citizen and shows how the painful years of internment determined the course of his life.