<Begin Segment 10>

TI: Earlier you mentioned how when you were in school, you didn't get enough food sometimes and you were always hungry. How about when you were working as, in these shipyards? Did they give you more food then?

PY: Well, I guess we had more food, but the food wasn't good at all. But we had every meal, some kind of food.

TI: And how did you communicate with your, your family? Did you write letters or did you see them very often?

PY: Well, I guess we communicate with letter, but I didn't communicate too often.

TI: And so how were they doing? Like for, if your food wasn't very good, how were the families doing? Did they get enough food and how were they doing?

PY: I guess in the countryside it was okay, but not in the city area. The city area, we had a very hard time to get enough food. So we ate all kind of food. Normally you don't eat that kind of food, but we used to, you were forced to eat whatever you can eat.

TI: What would be an example of something that would be hard to eat that you would normally not eat?

PY: Well, some kind of seafood that you don't eat now, those seafood, but we were forced to eat seaweed, like. And the pumpkin, pumpkin leaf and the pumpkin stem or whatever you call that, all those things. Normal pumpkin, you eat only the meat. But other place we used to eat, too.

TI: What were some of the other memories you have from this time? Anything else that was hard, or was there some times when there was fun things to do also?

PY: Well, although I was a student at that time, but I think we were all very geared to win the war. The military trained us like that, and even though we were young boys, we were willing to give our life to win the war. This was, I guess everybody felt that way, young boys and girls.

TI: So what did that mean? I mean, so then were people more serious? Would you describe them as serious, or how would you describe that? When you're being trained to, as a young boy, to fight in a war, what kind of things go through your mind?

PY: Nothing special. Everybody felt that way. So it's not, it's not a special thing, but that's how we were trained.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.