<Begin Segment 15>

TI: How about, sort of, first impressions of Tule Lake?

JN: Gee, I have first impressions of Jerome, but I don't have that... I remember, I guess, us being way high up in the camp area. We were, I guess we were latest ones to get there, but we were way up there, Block 80-something, I think. And again, I think the Hawaii people were put, bunched together up there, up in the higher area. Higher being the way the landscape was. It wasn't that high. So I remember the, somehow the ground was not muddy, it was sandy kind of a ground, kind of grayish. I seem to recall... you know, for some reason, I think in Jerome we didn't have any barbed wire fences around the camp. But certainly there were barbed wire fences in Tule Lake, with armed guards in the, what do you call those towers? That stuck in my mind.

TI: How about, like the size of the camp? Was it about the same as Jerome or did you get a sense...

JN: Somehow it felt like it was much larger. I'm not sure why, but I just got in my mind that this was a larger camp than Jerome was. But it might have been just the fact that I'm higher up and I could see the whole, the rest of the camp.

TI: How about when you came across the kotonks, the mainlanders? Did they seem any different than the mainlanders in Arkansas, to you?

JN: No. I think by that time already, there were not, they weren't anything new to me anymore. So I don't have any, particularly, impressions of them being any different.

TI: Now, with your father joining your mother and your brothers, did the family pattern, life, change from Jerome to Tule Lake?

JN: No, not really. I don't think it did. I remember -- why I remember this I'm not sure -- but in camp, again, my father must have been a very enterprising kind of a guy because as soon as we got into camp, he became, he had, I know the most important thing was, prestige thing was he got a bicycle. So mode of transportation, he had a bicycle. So his job had to do with the cafeteria, maybe making sure people, the cafeteria's got enough food or whatever it was, but he was riding around, going to different cafeterias, I think, riding around the block. But I was thinking, gee, he's got a bicycle. That was a matter of big concern for thirteen, twelve, thirteen year old saying, "Wow, my father got a bicycle." And then I remember barbed wire fences, I remember the soldiers on top. And of course, there was one time -- and the other thing about the camp was they had birds, I don't know what kind of birds did we call them? Anyway, we bunch of us were on the second floor, we, bunch of us little boys, twelve, thirteen years old, went out, and my memory is that we went out to capture the birds, and they had large wings, and they were white. And we were gonna put the Japanese hinomaru.

TI: The red dot or circle.

JN: Red dot on it.

TI: Right.

JN: On the bottom of the, on the bottom, and we would paint it onto the bird and it would fly, let it fly, and hope the guard would look at it and get upset and shoot it, because we'd never seen the guard shoot a rifle, right? I don't think he ever did, but I seem to recall that was our purpose. And then we went out and... the way we captured those birds, by the way, we put bread or something to eat, we made a hook, and we had a string or rope or whatever it is. Oh, and the other thing was, common in camp was this rolling, dried up, what do you call them? Bushes.

TI: Sagebrush?

JN: Yeah, they were all over. So we'd line up, get a whole bunch of it, we'd hide behind the sagebrushes, and we're holding onto that rope for that bird to come in to go after the bread and then we'd hook it. And then we'd run over and catch the bird, flip him over, and we had the red paint, put the paint on it, hinomaru paint or mark on it and then fly it up and hope the guard would shoot it. As I said, my guess is he never did, but it was a big disappointment that used to let it fly. But anyway, that was one of my memories of what we did when we were there.

TI: During this time period, there were activities like from the Hoshidan or Hokokudan in terms of early morning exercises. Do you recall any of that?

JN: Yeah, as a matter of fact, yeah. We then dropped out of school, English school, of course, and we went only Japanese school. My guess is, again, we were all gonna go back to Japan, so we only had Japanese school. And then we had those exercises, that's right, and we would put the, what do they call the headbands on, and we would be going and saying, "Wasshoi, wasshoi," or whatever it was that we had to sing aloud. I'm not sure if we did that or I saw my brothers or others, older people do that. I may have done it myself, I'm not sure, yeah. And then, so we went to only Japanese classes. And I already relayed the incident of Hawaii kid punching back the teacher. I'm not sure.

TI: That's good.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright ©2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.