<Begin Segment 33>

AI: And, and that time was April 1943 that you went to Chicago.

GY: Roughly about that time, yeah.

AI: About that time?

GY: Yeah.

AI: So you would have been about twenty-one years old.

GY: Yes, yeah. Between -- yeah, I think that's right. Twenty-one years old, yeah.

AI: What stands out in your mind about when you, when you first went out to Chicago?

GY: Free at last. Free at last. [Laughs] Two things: free from the confines of being in camp, but also being free in terms of parental guidance and parental looking-over-the-shoulder kind of thing and behavior and so forth. And it was a coming of age of Niseis in general. Looking for a job, finding a place to live, paying rent. Washing old clothes, we washed our clothes in the wash -- the bathtub. Ironed the same shirt that was washed in the bathtub. Everything that our parents did just prior to our leaving for camp. And meeting others from different parts of the, of the... California and Washington and Oregon. And when you'd meet, we'd say, "Hey, what camp were you in, from?" Because that was a common experience. We still do that. You might see, meet a Nisei from someplace where -- when I don't know this person. Every Nisei, "Hey, how you doing? What camp did you -- were you in?" And that's really a very powerful part of, significant part of lives that gave us this common sense of community, what camp were you in kind of -- that's a question that comes out, yeah. And say, oh, yeah. So there's a commonality, common element that makes us brothers and sisters, I suppose, to some extent.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.