<Begin Segment 22>

TI: Well, part of the time, too, you had to go to school.

YN: Right.

TI: And what was, how was school different than, than Summit?

YN: Real simple. The one commonness is I had to walk a distance from the Block 3 I lived in, to the school. 'Cause it was not in my block. For some that was a distance, for me, that was normal. I walked to Summit. The only difference was now I was back into my ethnic community outside of my teacher. Everybody was of Japanese American, or of the heritage of being Japanese, related. The irony is I didn't even understand enough to know (why) the Indians of Alaska, who weren't Japanese, were my classmates. I didn't even understand that significance. And his name had nothing to look like mine, his name was Speardon Hunter.

TI: And he was a classmate of yours?

YN: He was a classmate, lived behind my barrack.

TI: Did you ever interact with him?

YN: Absolutely. He was a hero. We had no sleds or anything. When, when snow came to Minidoka, (his parents) made a sled, and we were the dogs and we pulled the sled. For I again as a child, it's clear as a bell. None of our parents could make a sled that the Eskimos might have used for every day, but I never understood why they were there 'til much after I studied (the internment story).

TI: He was just another playmate of yours?

YN: That's right. But we didn't, not all treat him well. The Japanese, they looked down upon them, (and) I remember that (feeling of being outside the community).

TI: And that was through what kind of actions did you know that people looked down on upon them?

YN: Because their mother and father didn't have friends. And some of my classmates didn't like him to be on our team because he was different.

TI: So how did you make sense of that, or what did you do?

YN: I couldn't, I didn't make sense of it. I wish I could have said I was so smart that I knew the... no, he was, at best he was my childmate playmate. He was my friend and that's it. Not the sophistication of friend, he came and we played. And he was good, in camp we had marbles. For some reason, some of the parents must have thought it was important, they took marbles with them, so we played marbles, and he was very good.

TI: Did you ever have conversations about him in terms of what Alaska was like?

YN: It never dawned on me. I didn't know Alaska from Siberia. All I knew, clearly in my mind, he wasn't Japanese.

TI: I'm curious; after the war, did you ever stay in touch with him?

YN: I, not in that sense. Today I've been trying to locate to see if he's still alive, as I've been locating many people of this nature that because of my experience as youth in camp. But it's very interesting again, the influences. We talked about school and the strength. It's when I left the internment to go to the summer camp, north of Sun Valley and met another group, I had another experience I could not explain. When the white kids came to see us at the camp that we went to, they wanted to know what tribe we were from. That's the first time in my life I was perceived not being Japanese. We had to be Indians. And we, as children, said, "Well, we're Shoshones." We know the town Shoshone, and they believed us.

TI: So was that done as a joke, kind of, or...

YN: Yes. We, we thought they're kidding us.

TI: Oh, because you thought that it was so obvious that you were Japanese...

YN: Absolutely. I, everybody knew I'm imprisoned, right? By then I knew it was a privilege to get out of internment to go to a (church) camp.

TI: So this was a, like a church summer camp up in the hills of Idaho?

YN: Right, beyond Sun Valley. And I could still remember knowing (...) that Sun Valley was (...) a rehab (area) for the (U.S.) Navy who were there on R&R, and so I knew it was not a place where people of our background would be welcome. It held for the rest of my life. I never returned to Sun Valley to ski (in my working years of being in the ski industry).

TI: So let me just summarize. So while you were in camp, there was an opportunity to go to a summer, sort of church camp, and so you and a group of other Japanese Americans...

YN: Were selected to go.

TI: ...were selected to go up there, probably through Reverend Andrews or somebody?

YN: He was the key. Again, the same reason I bring up, right.

TI: And as you go up there, when you went up there, you found that there was a, a military sort of R&R, and, and so were you not treated well?

YN: No, because we didn't go to that area. We were at a church camp.

TI: But you were just aware of that.

YN: Aware that we would not be welcome. If we got caught, we might get beat up, so we had a, a fear, a healthy fear that (my) presence would be not good for our welfare. I mean, that's the survival of the child.

TI: That's interesting; so that fear has stayed with you to the point where you avoided Sun Valley.

YN: Through my, my life.

TI: All these years.

YN: Just like I avoided Puyallup fairgrounds (and never was comfortable but) embarrassed to tell 'em I was inside of (the fairground known to me as "Camp Harmony" during World War II).

TI: Oh, that's interesting.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.