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MA: And you mentioned that your mom, your mother was very angry about what had happened to her during the war.

EH: Oh, yeah.

MA: So what did you, what did she share with you about camp? Anything growing up, or was it something that you found out on your own?

EH: No, bits and pieces from other people, this and that. But I can distinctly remember when she got the twenty thousand dollar check from the government.

MA: The redress?

EH: The reparations. She made a comment like, "What? Government think they can buy my loyalty for twenty thousand dollars?" [Laughs] She was going to throw away the check. I said, "Mom, you throw away the check, government win, you know." So she divided among the church and whatever charity. She said, "I don't even want penny of their money." I said, "Mom, give it me." "No." [Laughs] But she refused to even take one penny.

MA: So growing up, so you were born in Tule Lake. Was that something that you felt, I mean, when people would ask you where you were born, what would you say? Or did you know?

EH: Yeah, after the war, it was kind of... I shouldn't say really embarrassing, but you were pretty embarrassed that you were born in a camp. And kids being kids, "Hey, you, prisoner of war camp," this and that, right? So I distinctly remember when people asked me where I was born, I would say, "California. Newell, California." Never mentioned Tule Lake at all. "Where's Newell?" "Oh, about fifty miles from Oregon border." I don't think I ever mentioned Tule Lake at all.

MA: Because also, I think that in Hawaii, right, not everyone was, there wasn't the mass internment.

EH: Yeah, very little. In fact, I think from Hawaii, there may have been couple thousand at best that were shipped out.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.