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TI: Well, and after you volunteered for this one you also volunteered -- once they decided to establish more permanent camps, I understand you also volunteered to be sort of in the advance party to help prepare --

TY: Yes.

TI: -- the camps? I'm curious; how did, how did people go about in terms of deciding whether or not to volunteer for something? Was this something you talked with your friends or your family or -- to make these volunteer decisions?

TY: Well, I really can't remember the exact circumstances, but my guess is that they had had general announcements going out all the time. And I imagine they might have asked for volunteers for hospital or whatever and people volunteered accordingly. I think. But I really don't remember.

TI: But do you recall, did you talk to your siblings or your mother or your friends to help decide, especially if it impacted the family? You know, in one case by volunteering for the medical, your family would move or if you volunteered for the advance party you would actually be separated from the family.

TY: Well, my guess was that, once I told the family that I was gonna volunteer to work in the hospital and that we'll probably be moving to Area D, as I recall, I think that everybody thought Area D was better than being in area A, B, and C. So I think they probably didn't object to the idea that I worked there in the hospital. So... I really don't remember the detail.

TI: And how about your older brother during this time? Was he also volunteering for different things?

TY: Well, no. He was still recovering from -- he had TB and he was recovering from that. He was ambulatory. He wasn't in bed all the time anymore so... but he didn't do much of anything, actually, when we were in camp. Because physically I think he wasn't quite capable of doing that. He was spending most of his -- until December 7th he spent most of his time in bed, so physically he was probably not -- he wasn't able to stand much physical. His physical stamina was not very good yet. As I recall, he didn't, he just took it easy and he didn't do much of anything as far as volunteering goes.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.