<Begin Segment 17>

SS: Have you told your children or grandchildren about this experience, or is it something that's kind of private?

EW: Well, we don't like to tell them if they don't want -- if they want to know, they'll ask. But I don't want to dwell on it, you know. Because it's something that you... I think you try to forget as much as you can.

SS: Do you have many friends from those days at camp? It seems to me that you probably met Japanese Americans from all over.

EW: We did.

SS: Do you still keep in touch with some of them?

EW: No, not from the camp itself. But from after we were able to leave camp and move to Columbus, Ohio, where we were married, and then to Minneapolis, and that's where we met -- and have kept up our friendships.

SS: It sounds almost like once you left camp you closed that door.

EW: Yes, I think so. That's a chapter that I don't want to happen ever, ever again, to any group of people. It's wrong.

[Interruption]

SS: Edith, is it important that your grandchildren know what you went through at camp?

EW: I think so. I think so, because there is very little of it in textbooks at school. I think they would have a greater appreciation of grandparents, that we're just not old fogies, that we had a life. And it wasn't always easy.

SS: Have any of the kids, the grandkids, ever asked about camp?

EW: Oh yes, uh-huh. In fact, each one as they come along into high school or whatever their later, junior high, then they have to write a report, and they choose that topic. And so, we kind of put together a packet to give them, and they can write their report. They each receive an A-plus or something on the paper because oftentimes, the teacher, it's new to them, too.

SS: For you, it's got to be gratifying that the kids are learning, and that they are learning about their grandparents.

EW: Oh yes. That we're not just that aged people or old fogies and that we never had a life, and that we didn't have fun, and we didn't experience...

SS: Have the kids ever said, "Gee, Grandma, I never realized that..." I mean, what kind of things would the kids tell you?

EW: Well, I think that's what they would say, that, "I never realized that you had hard times in your life. And that, look at you now, you lived through it." And they show us a lot of love, and respect.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 1996 Densho. All Rights Reserved.