<Begin Segment 21>

TI: I guess I wanted to continue, when, at Minidoka, so what, what, after the initial shock, what was your life like then? What did, again, what did you do to keep busy?

YN: As you know, it was, the buses were military trucks. You went through a gate, all these things you don't vividly make it a part, to be a part of your remembrance. It has to be dramatic enough that you remember you went over a little bridge or whatever. And until I re-walked it by going back, I had to sort out that which is mythology and what really was. The interesting part, my childhood memory was very, very accurate.

TI: Of, you mean of what it looked like and how far things were?

YN: What were the perspective of, of the camp. Wasn't that, there's nothing left. I looked out there and green farm fields to my left, and some basic little stones of the guardhouse, but nothing, but, but my perception was pretty correct.

TI: And what things were correct? I mean, what did you --

YN: Because most people says, "This doesn't look like where we were." 'Cause when they came (to Minidoka today) there's green farms and everything (changed). What I'm trying to say to you is what we saw today, they couldn't see in the imagery of their mind when they were there. What confused them was everything there's, there was no honor roll, there was no garden. What they wanted to remember was what was done by that which we did to make life survivable. What the image I kept that I say was accurate was what it really was, not what we made it to be in our, living in our internment. That's why there's an honor roll, that's why Kubota made a garden, you see? What I'm saying is simply my remembrance of what I saw is not what many of us are saying was Minidoka, and that is why I feel privileged to be working on the internment story.

TI: Okay, good. I mean, so Minidoka, what, what activities did you do?

YN: I sold papers again.

TI: So which, which newspaper?

YN: Twin Falls, and the Twin Falls News or whatever it was called, the Tribune, but it was never successful because by then people weren't interested because it was a town that they knew nothing about. They'd rather have bought the P-I or the Times. And in those days, there must have been a paper called the Star. But, but it's very interesting. With a much larger audience (to sell papers to), it (was not) successful. I (quit selling papers very quickly).

TI: So you stopped doing it after a while?

YN: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.