<Begin Segment 11>

TI: So let's go back to, so now after December 7th happened, what did your family do? What was next after ... so after December 7th, you mentioned you heard about it after watching the movie Sergeant York.

WY: Sergeant York, uh-huh.

TI: So what happened, like, for instance, when you went to school?

WY: I went to school, and I remember I went to the history class, and they talked about "Japs" attacking Pearl Harbor. And it became very uncomfortable. So all of us quit going to school in January. Besides that, they were talking about incarcerating us. So that's what happened. Our history teacher started talking about "Japs," and it was very uncomfortable. I think by the beginning of January, we were all out. And then I think in February we were processed (into) camps.

TI: And so where did you first go? When you had to leave, where did you go first?

WY: Poston, Arizona, that's all I remember. That was the place, and I stayed there until I could get out.

TI: And what was your reaction or your... yeah, your reaction when you went to Poston? What did you think?

WY: Well, I thought it was very unfair. But at the same time, I was just a kid, you know, and it was fun. I got to meet Hisaye, and we became very close friends. But Hisaye didn't have a mother. The father was kind of, didn't take care of the kids at all, and Hisaye was like a mother to three of her brothers. So she took her kids, her three brothers, and started going to Massachusetts to relocate there. And she was the cook and did the cleaning, and the big brother was the butler and the chauffeur. Those days, the war was going on and all that. Boy, she had a lot of nerve. She went to Massachusetts with three kids, three boys.

TI: Interesting. Before she left, though, she was working at the Poston Chronicle. And you also worked at the Poston Chronicle. Can you tell me what you did at the Chronicle?

WY: I was a cartoonist. I couldn't do it, but I was a cartoonist. [Laughs]

TI: So you were a pretty good drawer then, you would draw things?

WY: Yeah, well, I used to... art was my major in high school. I never dreamed I would write, never.

[Interruption]

TI: Well, so you first mentioned how you first started at the Chronicle. You were just drawing cartoons and didn't think of yourself as a writer. So when did you start writing?

WY: Well, that's when Hisaye had a nervous breakdown and I thought somebody should be telling our stories. But her son said, "She never stopped writing." I don't know when I started.

TI: So describe, when you first started writing, how did you start? What did you do?

WY: Well, first, I started, first I wrote a story called And the Soul Shall Dance.

TI: That was your first one?

WY: Uh-huh. And I thought it was a pretty good story, you know. So I tried to sell it to Redbook and those American journals. They sent me a nice rejection, but they weren't interested in Japanese stories. And so I quit writing. I said, "I'm not going to write stories I don't know about. If they don't like it, then the heck with it. I'm going to write just Japanese stories for the Japanese papers," and that's what I started doing. Rafu Shimpo, Kashu Mainichi used to have a Christmas edition that they took stories for, and so I started writing short stories for them.

TI: But when you first wrote And the Soul Shall Dance, do you know where you were when you wrote that?

WY: I was out of camp, I think. I think I was... I think I must have been married already. Because I was married in 1948. I showed it to my husband, and he said, he read the first two pages and he said, "I can't read your stories," like that.

TI: Because it was painful for him?

WY: I guess it was.

TI: Interesting.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.