<Begin Segment 7>

AI: So, then when you left Minidoka, you left with your mother and your...

WW: My mother...

AI: And your sister.

WW: It was my mother and sister and brother, right.

AI: And, and your baby brother.

WW: Baby brother. He, my brother was just learning to walk as we were moving out to Illinois from Minidoka. Right, so he was, he was a baby.

AI: So then when you left Minidoka, and I guess that would be another train ride.

WW: Another train ride which I don't remember. [Laughs] That I don't remember.

AI: And then, then you arrived in West Chicago.

WW: Right.

AI: So tell me what, what your home was like in West Chicago.

WW: When we first moved out to West Chicago, we were living on the premises of where my father was employed, in an apartment, so to speak. And then later on, there was a fire in the apartment, and we had to evacuate the apartment, so at that time my dad purchased a home. And then from there until the time I (graduated), I lived there until the time I got married.

AI: And that also was West Chicago.

WW: That was also in West Chicago, correct.

AI: So could you give me a picture of what West Chicago looked like? Was it fairly rural at the time when you were young?

WW: It, West Chicago was a very small town at the time, over, oh, I don't know how many thousand, just a few thousand, actually. Very small community, predominantly people of German ancestry.

AI: And so, and what, what school did you start attending there?

WW: I started in fourth grade at a school called Lincoln school, and 'course, the first person that I recall meeting was a, a boy, 'course, a man now, but he, his parents had a greenhouse adjacent to the greenhouse where I grew, where my father was employed.

AI: And was, was he also Japanese American?

WW: My friend? No, no, he was not. We were the only Japanese family, people in West Chicago.

AI: Oh, so you were literally the only Japanese Americans in that town?

WW: Right, right.

AI: Was that strange for you, coming from a camp where there were thousands of other Japanese Americans, and then going someplace where you were the only ones?

WW: I don't recall too much it being strange for me, however, I do recall it was a novelty for the kids in school, seeing someone like me whom they had never associated with...

AI: What kind of treatment did you get from the other kids?

WW: It was not bad treatment, but it was more treatment, I would say, from them, of curiosity, and then knowing that I was of Japanese ancestry, I recall one situation where a boy had asked, "Well, say something in Japanese," this kind of thing.

AI: And did, were you able to say anything in Japanese?

WW: Oh, just very briefly, I said something. What it was I don't remember. I must have told him, "My name is such-and-such," or something like that. 'Cause my language proficiency in Japanese, of course, was pretty limited, so I couldn't tell him very much.

AI: And what about your teachers? Did you receive positive treatment from your teachers, or did you ever receive any kind of feeling of prejudice?

WW: From, I, she, no, I felt no prejudice whatsoever from my teachers. I have good memories of my teachers all the way through grade school and high school. So that, that was a positive, there.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.