<Begin Segment 22>

TI: Okay, so let's talk about leaving Topaz. So, so your sister threatened to leave, finally administrators said, "Okay, we found this"...

RE: She left in June, I believe it was June.

TI: Oh, so she left ahead of the rest of the family?

RE: Oh, yeah, she and my brother Hank and my dad left for Cleveland in June of '43. The war was raging, it was at its peak almost. They left for Cleveland. The Quaker people found accommodation and a job, jobs for them in Cleveland.

TI: And then after they got established, then that's when the rest of the family joined them?

RE: Yeah. They skipped a meal a day so that they can provide for us financially. So we ended up in the Hungarian district of the west side of Cleveland where a Hungarian, elderly Hungarian family had a house that they rented to her.

TI: And were there any other Asians in Cleveland at this point?

RE: No, we were the first family there. There was another couple a Caucasian woman and a Japanese American man, who lived on the east side of Cleveland. But other than that, we were the first family to arrive in Cleveland.

TI: And so what was the reaction of, of people in Cleveland?

RE: Well, we were Chinese. [Laughs]

TI: So people just thought you were --

RE: We passed as Chinese for at least a year if not longer. Until more and more families, Japanese families came out of camps. And then we no longer had to do that. You know, in numbers there's strength.

TI: And as more and more Japanese families left camp and went to Cleveland, and people started realizing there were Japanese resettling in Cleveland, how was it then? I mean, did, were the Cleveland people accepting of you?

RE: Yeah. Cleveland people were pretty kind, I think, in the greater part. There were no hate crimes or anything like that that I heard of. I think we also knew that we had a job to do and we, and our parents even at the supper table would say, "You gotta do your utmost to prove that you're a worthy American, you're a better American than your counterparts out there." That was what we had to do.

TI: So in Cleveland, did the schooling improve for you? I mean, you talked about not --

RE: Yeah, I was now in the first grade at Cleveland's Clark Elementary School. I was ten years old.

TI: But finally you were getting the proper instruction.

RE: Yeah, and so then my other brothers and sisters, they missed some time. But they, fortunately, went through a year of schooling in Topaz where I didn't. I mean, I just, I just messed up. So it didn't take them too long to catch up. We were allowed to skip certain grades, so I graduated from high school at the age of nineteen.

TI: Okay, so you caught up pretty --

RE: Pretty much.

TI: But what was it like? So you're ten years old, going to first grade. How did people accept you?

RE: Yeah, because we looked like we were, if you were ten, you looked like you were seven anyhow, so it didn't matter.

TI: So physically in stature, you were smaller, and it wasn't that difficult.

RE: Yeah, that's the way it was.

TI: And were you able to make friends?

RE: Oh, yeah. We had friends. You know, war was raging, and so we would play war. That was the kids' game, war. I was always the enemy, so it didn't matter. [Laughs] But yeah, the first few weeks, the kids at recess would say, always say, "What are you?" And I would say, "I'm Chinese." But not everybody accepted that fact. The kids, when they're little, it didn't matter, you look like the enemy. At the end of the school day, I had to run like hell to go home because they have little stones and they'd be throwing stones at us. But we survived.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.