Densho Digital Archive
Emiko and Chizuko Omori Collection
Title: Hiroshi Kashiwagi Interview
Narrator: Hiroshi Kashiwagi
Interviewers: Chizu Omori (primary), Emiko Omori (secondary)
Location: San Francisco, California
Date: October 1, 1992
Densho ID: denshovh-khiroshi-01

[Ed. note: Correct spelling of certain names, words and terms used in this interview have not been verified.]

<Begin Segment 1>

HK: Yeah, I grew up in a small town. I didn't speak English until I was about five-and-a-half. I went to an all-Japanese kindergarten to learn English, but I didn't like it. And other kids knew English, so it was kind of hard and foreign. And I, yeah, I wrote something about that. But then we moved into town. And we would walk to school. And I had some friends who were living in town, these were white kids. So I remember them. Loomis. Loomis. And, but we had this teacher... a classmate of mine, I saw the other day, and he says, "Oh, she didn't like Japanese, you know." And I don't remember that she, she was that way, but apparently he, he got it from her. And sometimes he would do something and then he'd be forced to walk home. [Laughs] She'd force him to walk home. And then when he told her that, that he lived six miles from school, then she thought better, and then says, "I'll punish you some other way." [Laughs] But our class was all, almost all Japanese, 'cause they figured we, we didn't speak, know English well enough. And so they segregated us, actually. And she would harp on our pidgin English, and so forth. But in a way she was good. We learned good English, yeah.

But from there we went on to high school, and this was about, about 8 miles up. And whenever we hit the thousand feet on the bus, then our ears would pop. And we'd go there, and it was a union school. And there were all kinds of different people, but we were pretty much to ourselves. And the town, town kids were the elite, and they kept to themselves. And they became all the class officers, and the most popular, and so forth. So that there was this separation and most of us were workers or, or sharecroppers, or... and then we had bosses. So even in school, you had that, you know.

CO: Even in the Japanese American community.

HM: Yeah, uh-huh. So that my father felt that I should know Japanese because later I probably wouldn't be able to get a decent job. So he, he sent us to Nihon gakko -- Japanese language school -- from the time I was about five, five or six, six, I guess. And then later, when kendo came around, then he started kendo for me, which I didn't care for very much, but that went on for a couple of years. And in kendo, there was not only the physical training, but there was also this propaganda -- shuushin, they called it, you know, ethics and stuff, so that you had to oyakoko and all this. So it was very Japanese and very nationalistic. So I had that kind of background.

And then, when I was a junior, after I was, I became a senior in high school, then I was sent to L.A. And later, later I found out the reason for that was that my father had TB and it was rather active TB and he didn't want me to catch it. In fact, I had already had it, but at least to protect me then, I was sent away. And so maybe I owe my life to that. But my sister, two of my sisters, one died when she was three, three and a half, and then my other sister caught it after the war, so maybe it was there. And she had to, after the war, there were some drugs that cured TB so she, she finally, after many visits back and forth to the hospital, she, she recovered, and she's still living. But TB was a thing in our family, although it's pretty common in a lot of families.

CO: So what were, like, did the Japanese American kids keep to themselves or did they mingle with the white kids at school?

HK: Not so much. Especially when, when you were bussed to high school. Then you're bussed home, and then they, all the social activities are after school and in the evenings. You don't, unless you drove or your parents drove, you didn't go to those things. So the only way that Nisei got involved was through sports. And so, and they were active that way, but those of us who didn't do sports, we didn't do anything. We'd go home and then we'd work or whatever, do chores. And then get up and take the bus. So, yeah. You might know a few friends between class or something, but no, I don't... I had a few fairly good friends. But after high school, you know, different.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 2>

CO: -- when the war started, your family was in farming.

HK: Yeah. Well, my parents were in the, running this store. And before the war, I guess, in 1939 or '40, when I went to L.A., he stopped the store and moved to a farm and they were sharecropping. And by the time I was through high school and I came back, and I helped there, and then my father decided, well, he better go and get treatment. So he went to the sani-, sanitarium. And so he was there when the war started.

CO: In the sanitarium.

HK: Yeah. And we were all of us, sort of running the ranch, my mother and my brother and myself. And my brother was still going to high school. So we had to make our own decisions. It was pretty far up the mountain, about... how many miles was it? About 15 or 20 miles. And so yeah, we had to make our own decisions. Some, some friends came by and gave us advice, and sometimes it was good, sometimes it wasn't. We had to, we, a friend came and said maybe we should move voluntarily before the order and so we went out and bought a car because we only had this old panel that was cut down into a pickup for a ranch truck. [Laughs] And so we bought this old car, thinking maybe we'll use it to move out. And it was really a bad car, and we didn't know anything about cars... you know, it made a lot of smoke. And then the order came, and so we had to leave the car. And so we brought it back to the dealer. And he was pretty honest. We thought we lost money. But he was one man who came to the assembly center with a check. We left it so that he could sell it. And he sold it and he brought the check and he was one of our first visitors at the assembly center, which was very nice. Another man that I befriended during that time before evacuation was the postmaster. And he was also the notary public. And I think I had to do something with my, my birth certificate, and he notarized it and all that. So I got to know him, and he came to visit us at the camp.

EO: Which assembly center?

HK: Marysville, Arboga. It was an old pasture. Lots of gnats and mosquitoes, terrible.

CO: Tents or buildings?

HK: No, it was a building. Temporary, very temporary building. And kind of fancy outhouses. It was really awful. I think in many ways, that was the worst part of camp experience: the assembly center experience, because everything was so temporary. And we had to line up all the time for food and line up, and line up for the latrine -- [laughs] -- and it's terrible. But... let's see. So there was my mother, my sister, and my brother, and myself. So we went to Arboga and from Arboga we went on to Tule Lake. And we didn't see my father all during the time that we were in camp, which was almost four years.

CO: He was in the sanitarium?

HK: Yeah. And maybe I should say this now, but I really feel that the tragedy of the whole thing was that, you know, we were in Tule Lake, and here my father was in the sanitarium, at the mercy of the white nurses and doctors who were, probably were very racist, and knowing that the family's in Tule Lake, and very bad reputation, I don't know what kind of treatment he got. You know, he never told us, but it must have been awful, real bad. And he tried to convince us that we should sign and leave, but then when we were so determined not to, he said, "No, I won't say anymore." And we never knew what happened to him.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 3>

CO: Let's back up now. We need to have you explain what happened in Tule Lake, this registration.

HK: Oh, yeah. Well, Tule Lake was real good right after assembly center. We had permanent bathrooms and so forth. But, and I was having a lot of fun doing theater, joining clubs and stuff. But then they brought this registration and that really turned it around; it was awful after that. We all decided, and most of us were from Placer County, the people in the block. In fact, the whole, almost the whole ward, there were how many blocks in the ward? Six, I think, five or six, but we all decided not to, to resist the registration, and then people of course changed their mind gradually. But we decided not to register, and, and then we didn't know what was going to happen to us.

EO: Why did you decide not to register?

HK: Oh, well, we felt that, why should we say "yes, we'd be loyal," when we're, you know, treated, we'd been treated the way we had been? And, you know, not as citizens, our rights were taken away and so as a protest, we weren't gonna... and then of course, the draft. Why would anyone want to join the army, you know, and put your life on the line, when the way you'd been treated? So that's the, the attitude we had. And so we, we resisted. And, and it was a group thing, and we looked to each other to see if we were still together. And that's maybe the reason why we got a little hard on those people who changed their minds. But yeah, that's what happened. And so we never registered, and we were considered "no-nos," and we were held in Tule Lake. I don't remember ever... [laughs]

EO: Was there some dissension in your family over this?

HK: Not during the registration. My mother, her first idea was to keep the family together. So that if one of us decided we would register and leave the camp, then, of course the family would be broken up. And she needed us because my father wasn't there, although she had some friends who helped her out. We had an uncle whose family was in Japan, so he was very pro-Japan, so he was a bad influence, actually, for us. I mean, bad in the sense that we, we'd be, we were "disloyal" and we were in Tule Lake. But she depended on him a lot. And I guess we also did, too, because he was a father figure. And, but, yeah, her real concern was to keep us all together. Yeah.

EO: How old were you?

HK: I was, I think I was about twenty. I'd been...

EO: Eligible for the draft.

HK: Yes. My brother was a bit younger, so he wasn't, actually. But he went through the whole process and then later we learned that he wasn't eligible. So even though he also renounced, he didn't have to go through that legal process. My sister, too.

CO: Then the segregation process took place where people were moved out of Tule Lake and a whole new contingent moved in.

HK: Moved in.

CO: Do you remember that?

HK: Yeah, I remember people coming in, and you wonder what kind of people they were, because they had to be very militant to, to come to Tule Lake. We were in Tule Lake. And so there was a lot of friction at first, and they thought that we, we were not as like them, that we, we were probably more Americanized. They were, a lot of the people who came in were Kibei. They spoke Japanese and they acted very Japanese. But in time we got to know each other. But there were some who were in that bozu group, very nationalistic group, and they were, they had shaved their heads and went around doing exercise early in the morning and things like that. So that there was this indirect kind of pressure we got. But they organized a Japanese language school where they taught the Japanese nationalistic, real old-style education and so we, we all were kind of forced to go to the schools. And we were told not to speak English, which was another difficult thing for us. And so we were picking up Nihongo and trying to use it and try to become Japanese as possible -- [laughs] -- which is pretty hard to do.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 4>

EO: Do you remember the stockade situation at all?

HK: The stockade, the leaders, the agitators, I guess, the administration figured that they would pull in the leaders because they were bad influence. And so they pulled in a lot of these leaders and put them in, in the stockade and family members could only visit from a fence or somewhere and wave. It was a really terrible, inhumane thing that they did. I don't really know too much about it, because -- although at one point we thought we would be taken in, and we were all set. We had our suitcase packed and ready to go. And then they decided they wouldn't take us in. But there was about thirty-five boys from a neighboring block, we were 40 and they were 44. But one, one night around five o'clock there was a real commotion and they, somebody banged the mess, mess bell. And everyone gathered because this two army trucks came, and soldiers with bayonets forced these guys onto these trucks, and they took them away and there was a lot of farewells and tearful parting, because they thought, we didn't know where they were going to go. And they were actually taken to the county jail, which was outside of camp. And they were kept there maybe a week or so, I don't know, but they were released. And it was just a power play on the part of the administration so that we would change our minds and register. [Laughs] We were going to go, they, but they didn't... so, yeah. We realized later that it was just a power play, but it made things very miserable. As I say, I was having a good time until then. And I was, actually, I was in a play and you know, we didn't do any kind of original plays, so we would do these white plays, and we'd be white characters. And after the registration business, you know, we decided, well, I thought that it wouldn't be right trying to be white in a play, and so I said, "Oh, I wouldn't do it." And so that stopped.

CO: I'm also aware that people had no access to legal counsel in any of this.

HK: Oh no, no. No one told us of any, or... yeah, we had nothing. And we heard that they could go to Spanish consul or something, and I guess for some things, they did go to, because the Spanish consul would send us shoyu or things like that... mochigome, and we made mochi. So that came from, through the Spanish consul. So I think they did things, they kind of looked out for us. But that's the only thing that we heard of. And, no, we didn't. And then there were a few lawyers in camp, among the Nisei, anyway. So that, no, we didn't get any kind of legal counsel until later, after things were all completed, and then we were desperate.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 5>

CO: So tell us about that renunciation program.

HK: Yeah, after the registration, we didn't know what was going to happen to us and we want to clarify our situation, and they would tell us, "Why don't you sign up for repatriation?" And I don't remember that I ever signed that because I didn't want to go to Japan. And, but as a family we might have signed it. But then we heard of people wanting to renounce their citizenship, and they would send requests. And they said, well, maybe we should write letters and send for that form, and so forth. And it was again, a thing done as a group. If so-and-so was doing it, so you'd do it. And again, my mother wanted us all to be together, and act together and so... and my brother was very adamant about making our decision clear. If we're going to go to Japan, or if we're on Japan's side, well, we should, you know, declare that. And I was gonna let the whole thing ride, but then, the... anyway, everyone else around us were doing it and so we went through that and we had a hearing. We could have changed our minds, but we were too determined and didn't. I read a report of the hearing and the officer wrote down saying he's very determined not to go to Japan but he's very hurt by the kind of treatment that he got as a citizen, and as a protest he has taken this course and he's a very Americanized young man who speaks excellent English, etcetera. And that's about all it said. I thought there'd be a whole lot more, but apparently it was a short interview. And that's it. And we were, we had kind of coached before we went to the hearing that we would be asked certain questions and it's better not to say too much. [Laughs] And so we were just anxious to get it over with and so there was no way of changing our minds. We had all decided as a family. Thinking back, I thought that was a very bad move because we were fooled again, I think, by the government and put into that kind of situation where, to think that the citizenship didn't have any meaning, you know. And later on you realize that it really meant a lot, and you threw away a lot, yeah.

EO: Has it affected you?

HK: Oh yeah, it has. It has. Well, you know, we were so close to being deported, and then we had the attorneys from San Francisco come and visit us and they realized what was happening, especially this Wayne, Wayne Collins. He decided, well, he would stop this deportation, and he did. And according to what he said, he saved us. And I... but we didn't know that we were going to be sent, that it was so close. But, and then we decided that we would organize and hire him because he offered his services and so we, we organized and we collected some money and we hired him. And it took many, many years. And it wasn't until about 19-, mid-1950 that I finally recovered it. But then, until then, you know, I was going to school, and not knowing what was going to take place even if I graduated, so I kind of messed around in school, waiting, biding my time, actually. And UC was very good about this, that they allowed us to go to school, and pretend that we were citizens. We, of course, would say we are citizens, and so we didn't have to pay out-of-state fee. And so I hung around school longer than I would have, really. [Laughs] And then it wasn't until about 1955, I think, that we finally... but, yeah, it... yeah, it changed the course of my life. I wanted to be, work in the State Department, which is strange. [Laughs] But I had some facility for Nihongo, Japanese, and thinking back, I could have volunteered for the language school and you know, been very useful that way, but... 'cause I had a good background at that time, I didn't have to learn it, as many Nisei did. But then I also, early, before the registration, I was interested in going on to school, so I applied at the student relocation. They were the first to leave camp. But they said that they preferred people who were already in college, or... and that you had to have a thousand dollars. [Laughs] That was the thing that turned me off, and I couldn't, so I didn't pursue that after that. And then the registration came and then the whole thing happened.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 6>

HK: So, but as I said earlier, I thought that the renunciation was a big mistake. That we didn't really have -- we made our point already. And I don't know, they really wanted to make it clear, I guess, that we don't need this citizenship. And so I think it was started by some people who were going to go back to Japan anyway, and then we got kind of suckered into that so that... but, yeah, there were many times when I wished I hadn't done that. That was unnecessary, I think. But... and then being in Tule Lake was, you know, you don't dare say that you were in Tule Lake, because then right away, you know, they know, "Ah, you were there and you were disloyal, and you were a 'no-no,'" and so forth. So to kind of hide that all the time was a, was a real burden, yeah. But I find that people don't, have never, some people have never revealed that. And slowly I get to know people who were in Tule Lake. I came out, so to speak, in 19-, I don't know when it was. Pretty early, 1974 or '5, yeah, when the Sansei started this camp, trying to look into the camp experience. And somebody heard that I was in Tule Lake and they asked me to speak, and I spoke. That was in 1974 or '5. And I went to the second Tule Lake reunion, which was in '75, so it must have been around '74. And so... yeah.

EO: Who were you hiding this from?

HK: Probably from... well, I don't know if I should say myself, but from, from other Japanese, and then from people in California who knew about the camps, Tule Lake, they read about it in the papers, I guess. But I don't know. It was easy with the veterans, you know. They didn't care where you were, because they probably didn't know. And I went to school with a lot of veterans after the war, and made some good friends with some of them. But they thought that we were treated wrongly and they were for us. But I think it was mainly from other Japanese Americans. And they, in a way, to make themselves look better, would say that they had been east. You know, they were, they were loyal Americans. People, even people in Tule Lake, to make it look good, they, when they were released, they took a trip east on the government expense, and then they stayed there a short while and then they came on back to California so they could say that they were back east. I don't know, there was a great stigma of being in Tule Lake. Of having been "no-no" or disloyal because of all that bad publicity that Tule Lake had.

EO: So within the community...

HK: Yeah.

CO: There was a real shame with that.

HK: Yeah. And I think that's the reason I didn't go back to my old community. Because JACL, you know, took the leadership of resettling and so those who were in Tule Lake, in Placer County there were a whole lot of people from Tule Lake. And some of them had to live this down all the years, and they never talk about it. And they feel that they get along as a community. JACL. Of course, some people don't like the JACL so they don't take part in any of the activities, but it was the JACL that first, right after the war, they sort of made it easy for the Japanese with their public relations and activities and things like that. So I guess people joined the JACL and participated and they tried to forget. And in trying to forget, of course, they never talked about it.

CO: Of course, it was JACL that opposed restoring citizenship.

HK: I know. I know. And they opposed on the resisters, and the Tule Lake people. Yeah, they were responsible for all that. So I never joined the JACL, I had nothing to do with them. But if you lived in a small community as some of these people did, they had to join. And, and... yeah, they don't talk about it.

EO: So does it make you feel like a criminal?

HK: Yeah. Yeah. In many ways, we felt like we had done something wrong, yeah. So I didn't go back, and I went to L.A. and tried to be, you know, get lost, lose myself. And that's pretty hard, if you meet other Japanese Americans, they always ask you, "Well, what camp were you in?" you know. And then you're forced to say a lie, but I didn't like to lie. So yeah, that was that problem.

EO: I just want to take it a little step further for our audience about what it did to the community.

HK: The community.

EO: The divisions.

HK: Yeah. There, there was a division, and I guess it still exists. When you really come down to it, I was doing a play on this loyalty problem and I wanted to interview some veterans and I asked the museum people, and they said, "Well, it's going to be hard talking to some of the veterans." And so I didn't pursue that. I talked with a veteran who was willing to talk, and I really didn't get that. But yeah, some of these veterans won't talk to those who were in Tule Lake. And I, I was trying to get the whole picture, get their side, but couldn't because they wouldn't talk.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 7>

EO: Well, let's see. We were, we better just pick up about the veterans, and your writing the play because if we want to use that then we should clarify which veterans...

HK: Yeah.

EO: You know, how... it's sort of going back to talking about this whole concept of keeping Tule Lake -- I mean, feeling, among the Japanese Americans, being in Tule Lake was like being in Folsom prison or something like that.

CO: I don't know, it's deeper than just plain prison. I don't know what it is...

EO: But, but I mean, it's, it's like we were all in camps, but then there were the good camps and there was the bad camp which was like being in --

HK: Yeah, right.

EO: San Quentin or some hard time prison, and that you're sort of stigmatized --

CO: Outcast.

HK: Yeah. You feel like an outcast, yeah. You, you keep a low profile all the time, and never being yourself. And I really felt that these people who stayed in the, in the communities in my old home, they kept a low profile. And they let the so-called "loyal" people run things, all these years. And I thought, "Oh my goodness, what a life they had." And even though I had some difficulties, I feel that it was mainly my own doing and that I feel guilty or something, but I wasn't under that kind of constraints, you know, I could be myself. And so that was pretty bad.

EO: And writing this play...

HK: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So I was working on this play and it had to do with the loyalty question. And so, well actually, there was this couple, they fall in love in camp, and then they take opposing views. The fellow is opposed to the registration and the girl, who comes from the city, and has had a year or so of college, is more sophisticated, and has friends outside of camp and, who write to her, so that's an influence. And she, she tries to convince him that he should register and go out together. And they break up because of the registration, loyalty registration. And then years later, they meet again. This is forty years later. And meanwhile, they've had a life. They've married. She married a veteran, a Japanese American veteran, 442. And he married a girl in the town that he went to. And she, it turns out, really cared that he was a "no-no" and so it broke up their marriage. And she, on the other hand, though she married a veteran, has second thoughts about it. He suffers from his war experiences, has nightmares, and remembers the friend he lost in battle and so forth, and so that their marriage was not all that great. And she, by the time she comes to see him, feels that maybe, you know, she made the wrong decision, that they should have married.

But in writing this play, I wanted to get the veterans', Japanese American veterans', point of view. And I tried to arrange some interviews and I was told that the veterans would not speak to me, knowing that I was at Tule Lake. Now I wanted the whole picture and so I wanted to talk to a veteran, but I, I couldn't do that. So I talked to this guy who was also a veteran, but he was willing to talk and give a kind of... and in a way, I was able to find things. He said that when he was in camp, maybe he was already -- oh, he volunteered for the army, and his parents got very rough treatment from, from the people in camp, and especially this one person. And so he, after the war, he saw him on the street, and he says, "I would have really popped him if I had met up with him, but I crossed so that I wouldn't do that." So he was still very angry that this other fellow, who had been a "no-no," had done this to, to the parents. And he, of course, had every right to feel that way. But, yeah, so I was told that the veterans wouldn't want to talk to me. So I had to make it up. [Laughs] I did talk to a farm leader and I made this guy into a farm leader. So I interviewed Harry Kubo, and got a lot of information from him, although it's, the character is hardly, is not Harry Kubo.

EO: How many years has this, were you, when were you writing this play?

HK: Oh, about three years ago. Three or four years ago, yeah. So it's been in my mind for years and years. And I finally, I joined this Tale Spinners group that develops plays out of oral history interviews. And, although mine was not oral history, it was really interviewing myself, I finally was forced to write the play and I finished it.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 8>

CO: Yeah, well, I'm aware that us Nisei have had to struggle with coming to terms with the internment. It's taking a long time.

HK: Uh-huh.

CO: Maybe it will never be fully resolved for some of us. But it certainly was a traumatic and powerful experience --

HK: Right.

CO: -- that questioned us very, down to our core, really, it seems to me.

HK: Yeah, it's...

CO: Don't you think that's still going on?

HK: Yeah, I think so. I don't think it will ever go away. Yeah. We try not to talk about it, really. [Laughs] I mean, I've talked about it, but I, I haven't avoided it. But I don't know. I don't really talk about it, actually, unless I'm forced to. [Laughs] And yet, I try to use it as material and it's very difficult to write about it, too. I don't know why after all these years, you know, I should be able to filter things and put 'em in right perspective, but I don't know. I find it very hard. I guess I'm still too close to it, and I'll always be.

EO: You said that you were happy there, I mean, at the beginning.

HK: Yeah, we were happy. Happy in the sense that many Nisei say that they had a good time. And we did have a good time, you know. I was doing things that I always wanted to do. I was able to read; I read Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath in camp, the first part of camp. And I was able to do theater. I was just beginning to get interested in theater. I was in L.A. and I had taken up drama in high school. And so it was really, I really wanted to act. And so whenever there was any kind of theater being organized, then I went to it. I was very active in that. I acted in, well, with Yuki Shimoda. And then I did other things; I took courses. I was, I wanted to go on to school, so I took some public speaking courses from Shibutani. And, you know, he thought I was a good speaker and he was trying to encourage me and all that. And other things, you know, you play games and go to dances and you meet other people, people from other areas, other states. And so it was, it was a good time, yeah. This was before, you know, wanting to get out, feeling the pressure of confinement, I think, while things were still rather novel.

EO: But did you, what did you think was going to happen? Did you, I mean, when you went in there?

HK: We really didn't know, you know. When nothing happened, we were happy. We didn't really think. That was one of the big problems, that we didn't think. We just let things happen. I don't think I ever... I started a diary for a short while, I kept it. I wish I had really kept it. I wrote a story about going to camp and I was in this writer's club, which was mainly students from Cal, college students, and I felt very intimidated and so forth. But I'd just go there, and they would be writing stories, you know, kind of in a fashion of Dos Passos, that kind of adjective, adjective, adjective. And I thought that was the greatest thing, and they thought it was, too, what they were writing. And I wrote this story about going to camp with my zenith radio, which I bought, and it was a big deal to buy this radio, and I took it to camp and so forth. And somehow that seemed to symbolize the camp thing, and I read the story and no one said a word, and I thought, "Wow, they didn't like it." And nobody said anything. Maybe they were just moved by it, or I don't know, confused, or what. So I just threw the story out and forgot it. And many months later, the editor of a magazine that came out of that group wanted the story. [Laughs] By that time I didn't know what, where it was. I didn't remember it, either. So yeah, that was a new experience for me. So it was exciting, but this was all before the registration. Yeah, that really changed everything.

EO: How did it change everything?

HK: Well, I don't know. I didn't feel that I wanted to do all these frivolous things. Everything kind of got artificial and meaningless, it seems. Because here was this very important issue that probably was going to change or shape our future, and we were taking a stand, yeah. And then there was a division of, in camp, certain people wanted to go one way and others went the other way. And... yeah.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

EO: You wrote something about liking to work in the hospital?

HK: Oh, yeah.

EO: Tell me about -- well, first of all, that you had a job. I mean, what is that about?

HK: Well, yeah, we all had jobs. My first job was to, to put plaster boards in the apartments, because they were not finished. And so we went around acting like carpenters, you know, with aprons and we put up plaster boards. [Laughs] It was all a bunch of amateurs. We'd cut a hole and it wouldn't be right and we had to patch it and all that, but that was my first job. And then after that, I guess I went to work at the hospital as an orderly. And this was because my father was in the hospital and somehow I felt that I wanted to, to help others who were in the hospital and so I used to go into the TB ward because I felt that I was already exposed, and so I'd give back rubs, and bedpans. Did those things. But somehow I didn't like it. You know, every Nisei who wanted to go to school wanted to become a doctor. That was the biggest thing, and, you know, I was no exception. I wanted to be a doctor, too. [Laughs] But after working in the hospital, I didn't want any of it. Catheters and stuff like that. [Laughs] So, then after that, I worked in the mess hall, which was really just washing dishes, a mindless job. And after that, I think towards the end, I was a block manager's assistant, and then I became a block manager.

EO: Well, and the thing about working in the hospital, you talked about using the, using the latrine, but you had private toilets.

HK: Oh, that was during the assembly center, yeah, when we had these outhouses, and they, actually, they filled up. It was really bad. And then there was just one partition. Women were on the other side of the partition and we were on this side, you see. And it was really bad. So we'd go out to the hospital, where there was, there were flush toilets in the hospitals for the patients, but we'd go there, and if we worked, then, worked there, then we could use the toilets. So we all joined the hospital corps just for that. [Laughs] But that was a very short time. That's very... yeah, bad memories of that.

EO: How much pay were you getting?

HK: Hmm... how much was it? Doctors got $19, and we got... was it $16? $16, yes, plus a clothing allowance of three or four dollars.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 10>

CO: Do you think that the Issei were affected differently than the Nisei in this experience?

HK: From the loyalty experience or the camp experience? I think they were affected a little differently because they lost so much more. We lost our future, you know, in a way, but they lost whatever they had. And the more they had, you know, the more they lost. We didn't have very much but what we had meant a lot to us, so it's the same... so they, they lost a lot. Although many felt that they were free to take it easy for, for the first time in their life, so in a way that was good for them, but I don't know, I think they lost a lot, 'cause they had worked so hard. Yeah.

EO: That's, it's a tough call, isn't it, to say the Nisei lost their futures and the Issei lost what they had.

CO: Lost their past.

EO: I don't know which is worse.

HK: Yeah, well, it's a pretty sweeping statement to make.

CO: Still, though, is it really different if you were fifty or twenty?

HK: Yeah, yeah, because they were still active. My mother was about forty, I think. And she had some active years after camp, 'cause she lived to be eighty. But the thing about her, and if you want to go... about her, she had some dental problems, and she went to the dentist during the, after the war started, and there was curfew and all that, and she couldn't go more than five miles or something. Well, she went to the dentist in Sacramento and somehow we got her there and the dentist pulled out all her teeth at one time, because of this curfew business. And she came home and she started to bleed and there was no way to reach the dentist. And finally when we did, he says, "Well, bite on some gauze or something." And he couldn't help her in any other way. So, luckily there was a dentist who had moved to the town from somewhere along the coast, so we knew about him, so we went to him. And we went back to him two times. And finally it stopped bleeding. She would have bled to death. But after that, she had to go to camp without teeth. And she was only, as I say, about forty. And she had to go like this all the time. [Covers mouth with hand] And it must have been miserable for her. God, she never got over this hiding her mouth. And then in camp, they wouldn't make her false plates. And I wrote about this in the play, you know, Laughter and False Teeth. But there was a dental technician who made plates -- [laughs] -- illegally, I guess, and finally she was able to get her teeth that way, by bribing this guy. But for a woman to go that way, and then to go to mess hall, and gum her food, it must have been awful for her. And then, she was supposedly a very attractive woman and well... I think that's pretty bad. It was bad enough to be in camp where you lose all your privacy. That's another thing about camp. That you lost all privacy. There was no privacy. Everybody's, you know, wide open.

EO: Were you at Tule Lake, you were there for the whole time?

HK: I was there the whole time. I was there almost to the end.

EO: So you were there when that murder took place.

HK: Yeah, I don't remember. I kind of vaguely remember the man, who was a kind of pompous, officious kind of man who wasn't too well-liked. That's probably why he might have been targeted. But I really don't know what happened.

CO: It was never solved.

HK: No, it was never solved. So, yeah. It was a man in his, about forty-five or so, fifty. And the leader, he was the head of the co-op, but a controversial man. Yeah. Never soft.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 11>

HK: Okay, this is a play that I wrote about three years ago. It has to do with the loyalty question. Its title is A Question of Loyalty. And there are two characters, Grace and Tak, who are twenty years, twenty-year-olds. And they fall in love in camp. They meet in camp, and they fall in love. Grace is from the city, Seattle, and Tak is from a small town, a farming town in California. And they have a difference in approaching the registration. Tak has refused to register, so in this scene they're discussing the registration. Grace says, "You'll be going against orders if you don't register." "I know." "They can put you in jail." "Hey, we're already in jail." "But they can put you in the stockade. You want to risk that?" "I'm fighting for my rights as an American." Grace: "Yes, you're an American. You're loyal to your country. And of course you'll defend it. That's all they want to know. Why can't you tell them that?" "They've already taken away my freedom. Now they're questioning my loyalty." "You're just making it difficult for yourself." "Grace, you're being so Japanese." Skip over to this: "Did I do something wrong?" Grace: "No." "What is it, Grace?" "You know why they put us in camp, don't you? Because they didn't trust us." "Well, the registration is a way out for us, it's a way we can prove we're good Americans." "We're not good Americans?" "They want proof." "Why do we have to prove ourselves over and over again? Aren't we good enough the way we are? I'm sick of saying 'yes, yes' to everything. Yes, yes, I'll go to camp. Yes, yes, I'll register. Yes, yes, I'll declare my loyalty. Yes, yes, I'll serve in the army and prove I'm a loyal patriotic American." "People are making a commitment to go to war and putting their lives on the line. It takes courage to make such a commitment." "I know it takes courage." "Then why were you mocking it?" "I wasn't mocking anything. I was just making a point. I'm proving my loyalty by fighting for my rights." "Tak, how do you feel about the draft? You know the question asks if you're willing to serve in the army." "I know what the question asks. Grace, what are you driving at? That I'm trying to evade the draft? That I'm afraid of killing and dying? Are you saying I'm a coward?" "No, but you thought it. It's all right, it's all right." "It may be all right. I don't know. It's so mixed up. I know I don't like the idea of killing. Never have." And that's the end of that scene.

The people who were from the country tended to be "no-nos." And those who were in the city, I don't know, for some reason, they, they wanted to abide by the registration order and say they were loyal. And also, people who were Buddhists, who had Buddhist backgrounds, tended to be "no-nos." And the Christians, on the other hand, were more supposedly "assimilated" and felt that they were more, already more American and so they took the other route. But we tried to be as normal as, lead a normal life as we could. And my mother, who had been in the fish business a long time, and with the help of the uncle who was also a businessman, they decided they would sell fish. One, because we liked fish ourselves and we would get very fresh fish by ordering it from a wholesaler in San Francisco. So they, they sent for some fish and it came in a box full of ice, sent by railway express. And in camp, they -- I don't know what it was -- but they, they delivered it to, to our door. And if we kept this box of iced fish in the shade, then it would keep for several days, until we, we sold everything. So that's how the word got around and people came from pretty far off to buy the fish. And we were quite popular selling the fish. And then those that we didn't sell, we would, they would salt, salt it. And then people would really, those who liked salted fish, would come for that. [Laughs] So my mother was able to make some money that way. And then my mother-in-law, whose husband was one of the camp leaders who was pulled into Santa Fe and went to the internment camps, several times back and forth, well, he drank a lot. And she always had to keep him supplied with sake, so she decided to start making sake. So she made sake and sold, sold, sold it by the glass -- [laughs] -- to sake lovers. So that went on. And they, they also made little jewelry, pendants and stuff out of seashells that they gathered. Being a lake bed, a lot of shells.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 12>

HK: Well, while we were in Tule Lake, for, I don't know, we got special dispensation to leave the camp. And we went with the, the reports officer. And he drove us, and he gathered up a few of us who were supposed to entertain. So there were some people who played musical instruments and somebody who sang. And then they asked me to go along, but I didn't do any of those things. So I took along a joke book. I memorized some of the jokes; Little Audrey jokes, or some corny joke, and that was my contribution. So we drove and we went to Tule Lake, I guess. And man, it really felt different being out of camp, and walking along, you know, free. And I don't know, I guess we bought a pack of gum or something, just to buy something, when we got, stopped in Tule Lake. And then we rode and rode a long way through Modoc County. And it was a place called, it was a small town. It was way up high, so they had a lot of snow. But it was a very small town high school and we entertained there. And it was a special odd call, or program for these kids. [Laughs] It was like a date for them, you know. They would be paired in couples and they would be kind of necking and stuff. [Laughs] And we were up there and we were entertaining and we were Japanese and they probably never saw Japanese Americans before. And they played the music and that was great. And then I told my jokes and these jokes went over so well, it was really hilarious. [Laughs] They loved them. And so the whole program went very well. And we made a good impression because we were as American as they were, you know.

And then we were invited to the Lions Club, which was meeting for lunch. So we went there, and we were fed whatever they had, chicken or something. And then we did the same program to these, these guys. They were farmers and businessmen, and they were as hillbilly as the kids. And we did the same program, and they roared at my corny jokes again -- [laughs] -- the same jokes. But that was great, you know, and we felt really as though we were like them, as American. You know, in camp, you feel that you're Japanese; not Japanese Americans but Japanese. But here on the outside, you feel go up and then you feel like you're American again. And so that was a great experience.

And then on the way back, it was quite late, because it was a long distance, it was about eight or nine o'clock when we got back. And this man, I guess, felt good about the whole trip. He bought steaks, thick steaks for all of us, and there were about five or six of us. And his wife cooked the steaks for dinner and we had it, and that was another great experience. [Laughs] So that was really nice. If we had had a chance to go out like that, I mean, registration, loyalty, it wouldn't have been any problem at all. But being confined, you know, as I said earlier, you forget to think. And then, I don't know, people told us, "This is very crucial. It'll determine your future so that you have to really give serious consideration." Well, our minds were made up already. You know, we weren't going to budge. So, yeah.

And then when we came out of camp, we were in, we took this old train, and it came as far as -- I guess it came to Sacramento. And then we were going to take a bus from Sacramento, I think, to Loomis, which is about 25 miles. So we got off in Sacramento, and we were walking outside, and we met this guy who was in Tule Lake not very long ago. And we were going to say, "Hi," to him, someone we knew, and he turned the other way and walked past us. And I never forgot that. And I've seen him around, he's still around. But I remember that moment, I'll never forgive him for that. I don't know why he did that. Maybe he was trying to find his way, himself, and he didn't want us, to be seen talking to people who just came out of Tule Lake. But that's another example of the kind of pressure that we had. But as soon as you come out of camp, you experience that, and I haven't forgotten that. And I see him once in a while, and he says, "Hi," to me, and I say, "Yeah, hi." But I let him know I remember that incident. But...

CO: You didn't confront him?

HK: I didn't confront him, no, but I think he knows. Yeah.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 13>

EO: Did you have any really scary times in camp?

HK: Scary time...

EO: Or worst moments?

HK: Worst moments... I don't know.

EO: Other than the loyalty issue.

HK: On the loyalty issue?

EO: Other than that. --

HK: Other than that. No, I don't remember. I, when we had the curfew, I remember this friend of ours coming over. He used to come over all the time and stay and then go, go back to his place, which was about a couple of blocks away. He had to cross a firebreak. But after curfew, you know, he's not supposed to be walking around. Well, he got caught by the MP and he's trying to tell the MP that he had spent the evening at our place. And so the MP drove up and knock, knock, knock... and we were frightened, of course, after curfew. And, and then he says, "You know this guy?" And I remember saying, "No, we don't know him." [Laughs] So he got pulled in and spent the night at some, wherever they kept him. [Laughs] But I think he was drunk anyway. But we didn't want to get ourselves in trouble, you know.

EO: In camp?

HK: Yeah, in camp. And so when you see the MP and they're knocking on your door, you say, "Oh, no. We don't know him at all." [Laughs] Poor guy, he got hauled in. I use that in one of the plays.

EO: So there was a curfew in camp?

HK: Oh yes. When there was this riot, they put a curfew and they had tanks rolling around. Yeah, it was like war. Tear gas, bombs, and... yeah. They really wanted to scare us.

EO: Which riot was that?

HK: I think it was... it was after the segregation, I know. It might have been... uh, there, it might have had to do with the registration, yeah. I think so. A group of them went over and threatened the administration. And so they were frightened and so they called in the military, and curfew and all that.

EO: Did you guys, like, plant a garden or anything?

HK: We didn't plant, but the people did. They had little gardens outside. And it was, we all tried to make a porch in front of the stoop there. And I'm not a great carpenter, so I had to have help from another of my mother's boyfriends. She had quite a few boyfriends. And so we got up this porch. But I used to do a little, made chairs, crude chairs. We used to make rice gruel, okayu, and there's nothing to scoop that. So I carved one of those things out of wood, a 2 x 4, and we used to use it. [Laughs] I don't know what happened to that, I wish I had kept it. So I did things like that.

CO: Did you ever meet men like Joe Kurihara?

HK: No, I didn't. I didn't... no. There were leaders, I guess, yeah. So I didn't, although I, I heard of him. When, yeah, there were some problems, and he was involved, and I heard... yeah. But there was so much rumors that we didn't believe half of the things we heard.

CO: You also had your isolation...

HK: Yeah. And we lived in, towards the end, we were in our own block. We didn't, because of the curfew and all that, we were just stuck in our own block. And I was working at the mess hall so I didn't go out, and you'd just see the same people every day. I learned to smoke because of that, nothing else to do. Just to be sociable, you'd take up whatever. So I learned to smoke. I had to quit years later, I had to fight hard to quit. But we smoked and things like that.

EO: Did you know, by now, here you say you were in isolation towards the end, and you're just going to the, working in the mess hall. Did you feel like you were never getting out? I mean, how was your feeling now that you'd been in there for a while?

HK: Uh-huh. Yeah, we were wondering what was going to happen to us, people were going out. But I don't know. I always felt that we would be coming out, yeah. And we always also knew that nothing drastic would happen to us. We had that much faith in the government, in the humanity of the government. So that we didn't really worry about that. And we, we weren't aware that we were so close to being shipped off to Japan. We weren't aware of that.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 14>

EO: I just want to step way back, because when you were talking about renunciation, I don't think that it was very clear what that was, that is, that was different from the loyalty questions. Could you just define what that was?

HK: Well, we requested that we give up our citizenship and I guess it was Congress that passed the legislation that made it so that we could. And so we signed away our citizenship and that was it. And we did it in protest, I guess, and to make our positions clear. But it was, as I said, a rather stupid thing to do, because it wasn't necessary. We had already made our point. But it was one of those things that the more militant people, you know, started, and we were the victims of that.

EO: Did this make you without any country?

HK: Yes, uh-huh. Right. But we didn't even think about those things. Yeah, I think that was due to the, that we were confined and we were kept there so long that we weren't thinking straight. We weren't even thinking, actually. And after it was done, maybe we thought, we might have started to think, and then it was kind of late. And you didn't want to change your mind. One could have changed, but I think that that was due to being in camp, yeah.

EO: So when the registration happened, how did it happen?

HK: It came in 1943. Early in 19-, I think it was latter part of '42, they started to talk about it. And then the recruiters, army recruiters, among them Nisei soldiers, came to recruit volunteers for the army. And then they wanted to open it for everyone so they started this registration. Which was a, a clearance for us to not only -- it was a way to segregate the "loyals" from the "disloyals," but also a clearance, so that they would release those who were all "loyal" Americans. And then they found a lot of resistance to it, so it became an issue. So it was a two-pronged thing.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 15>

EO: How did you feel when the war ended?

HK: Uh...

EO: And knowing how it ended.

HK: I felt, in a way, I felt relief that it was over. I didn't feel the, the emotions that the Issei felt. You know, they were, you didn't see them whole days or several days, they didn't come out. They were in mourning, especially when they heard the voice of the Emperor. That they were, that this was unconditional surrender. And it took them days to get over that. I didn't really feel... I thought, relief that it was over. In a way, the whole thing, in my case, was that I was a pacifist. And that I, if I had, even if I had been outside, I think I would have been a conscientious objector, because I didn't like the idea of killing. And so when the war was over, even when Roosevelt died, people went around celebrating, saying, "Hey, Roosevelt died." Well, I felt kind of sad that a great leader -- even though he had put us in camp -- had died. So, I really didn't have much feelings for Japan. I'd never known Japan.

EO: You didn't lose any family?

HK: No. Well, I had family there but, yeah, they were not in Hiroshima. On my wife's side, I guess. But I didn't know, know her then. So we went to visit the relatives and it was interesting that when I talked to the uncle, he said, "Oh, we had a very hard time. We had nothing to eat, and we ate a lot of things," he says. And I thought that said a lot. Ironna mono tabeta. But they were very grateful for packages that my mother sent after the war. And this woman, who was very successful and elegantly dressed and all that, but she said, oh, she remembers those dresses, those out-of-date dresses that my mother sent. She says, "I was, I was the only one wearing such stylish clothing." [Laughs] And the food that we sent, she sent, I guess, but they were really happy about that, and that's why they were being so nice to us now. But, and then when I went to Hiroshima, that's another story. The, her aunt's family, I guess, we were visiting, well, they were within that epicenter of the bomb. So they were A-victims, even now. And they have to go for check-ups. But the roof fell on them, and they were on the, it was a two-story house, and the roof fell. And somehow they were able to crawl out. And there were two boys and a mother, and the father was an engineer and he was away from Hiroshima, building the zeroes, so he was safe, yeah. She described the people.

EO: Oh, yeah.

HK: Yeah. It was really something.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 16>

EO: Now, way back we forgot to ask you, what were you doing and how did you feel when you heard about Pearl Harbor?

CO: Oh, didn't we ask? Did we ask that?

HK: Well, yeah, I remember, I wrote a poem about, I was chopping wood left-handed. I don't know, I'm sort of ambidextrous, and I remember I chopped wood. We used to have to chop wood for winter, it was December, so, and that was one of my chores. And I was chopping wood and that's when we heard the news, yeah. It was kind of frightening, because my father was away and to get that news. Another story that I like to tell is that we had a flock of chickens. And we, we raised them from day-old chicks. And they're red, I don't know what kind. I'm sure...

CO: Rhode Island Reds.

HK: Rhode Island Reds. And we'd eat the roosters and we had, still had quite a few, about fifteen or twenty. And when camp, when the order came to leave, we didn't want to leave the chickens to the boss. And so I had to kill them all, one after another. Boom, boom, boom. [Makes chopping motion with arm] And then we had to dress them. My mother made tsukudani with it, and we put it in jars, in the duffel bag, and that's what we ate during the assembly center, when the food was so bad. We ate those, and they were so good. [Laughs] But they were nice red chickens so that, that we had raised. Golly, to kill those things, I got so expert that I could do it without much struggling. [Laughs] But, and then we took salami to camp. Do you remember taking salami? Dry salami. And those are so good. Yeah. And we'd slice it and I'd have some every night.

EO: Did you have to dispose of your other things?

HK: Well, we stored our things there where we were, in the barn or somewhere. And we had a Coleman stove and when we came back, it had been used. People had been in the cabin, and I guess the boss brought it out and let them use it. And it wouldn't work when we got it. And then we had this, as I said, this pickup. And we sold it to the boss for fifty dollars or forty dollars or something. But that's how we got to the town, about three miles away from where we boarded the bus. And then we drove ourselves to town. And then we, I drove the pickup to a garage in town. The garage from where once, as a new car, we bought the pickup. And the boss, of course, knew that garage so that later in the day, after we had left, he would go there and pick up, get the pickup and drive it back. But that's how we got, got ourselves to the town where we left for camp, yeah.

EO: Did you destroy any of your things?

HK: We had big butcher knives that we buried. These were fish knives, really long knives, that my father had for filleting fish, and we buried those. And we had a nice snow cone machine. It had things... and every time I see a snow cone, I remember. But we sold that for five dollars, yeah. And it happened that my mother was doing the wash, and she had a ring, her wedding ring, and she had taken it off, and left it there. When these people came to buy that thing, I guess they saw the ring and picked it up, too. So she lost a ring.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 17>

HK: But the night before leaving was really an experience. Because everything was packed and so we had to sleep on the floor. And roll out the blanket, and then, then in the morning you had to roll it up, because we took some blankets, I think. Anyway, if we didn't, we left the blankets there. But, so we hardly slept the night before. But I don't know how else other people, how other people got to that loading zone, but somehow they managed. Because we didn't have anyone helping us to get there. We did it all on our own because people didn't want to do that. And there was only one man who came to see us off, and he was a fruit house manager or something. A good friend of the Japanese. He'd go around and have beer or wine with them and I don't know. He just came out to say good-bye to all of us. And years later, when we came back to that town, people who came back to the town, when this man died, and they had the funeral, the whole Japanese community came because they remembered that he was the only one who came to see us off. Mr. Hall, I think was his name. So few people.

I remember going to buy a razor blade, because I had forgotten that. And I wrote a poem about this; I wrote a poem. But we knew this druggist because our store was right across them and I, I would see him all the time. But on that morning when I went to buy a razor blade, my God, he flung it at me practically, and sneered and all that. Terrible. And those are, I mean, experiences that contributed towards my later decision about loyalty. I wrote to my English teacher in high school, asking for materials that, you know, we could use for theater and stuff. I got no answer, you know. I was one of her star students. And you get no answer from people like that. And you, you write to your boss and the woman tells you how busy they were, how hard they're working, and, as though we weren't doing anything, just languishing in camp, while they're working for the first time in their lives, they're doing some work. [Laughs] And no compassion, nothing. I think those contributed toward my feelings about America. Yeah.

EO: Did you have a pet?

HK: No, we didn't have a pet. No.

EO: Did other, did other people?

HK: Some people brought in pets. Yeah, we saw some dogs and cats. But I don't remember pets.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 18>

EO: There are these reunions.

HK: Yeah.

EO: Have you been going to them?

HK: Yeah. I've been to some, I went to the last Tule Lake reunion, which was interesting. But I found that I knew so few people. You know, in camp, you only know a small... because I didn't get around. And that was deliberate on my part, that I just didn't want to go out. After the segregation, I didn't want to go out. So earlier, when I was involved in different activities, I did go out and meet people, but after a while, you just stop doing that. So at this reunion, I realized, gee, all these people and I don't know them. And there were a whole lot of people. It's a huge reunion. And so, but it was nice to meet the people you knew. Yeah, that was nice. Of course, some of these people I've already seen in Loomis. We have a place in Loomis now so we go there quite a lot. So, I see some of these people. I met someone we knew in the block, and they had come in from Arkansas. And they were in Gardena, I think, Torrance, and he was there and his wife and sisters. That was nice, to meet them. So, reunion, yeah. We went to a high school reunion, Placer County. There were four high schools, I think.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.