<Begin Segment 9>

TI: So let's go back to Oceanside. So after your father's crop failed that year, he became a laborer in Oceanside, and your mother worked at a boarding house. So what did you do in Oceanside?

WY: I went to school, I was still going to school, high school.

TI: So you're in high school, and what did you think of Oceanside? Coming from the Imperial Valley to Oceanside, which is sort of nearby San Diego, by the ocean.

WY: Lot of fleas in that beach. Oh, I hated (...) to go to the beach, 'cause there were so many fleas. but there was a group of Japanese that lived in an area called Kumamoto mura. And I made friends with some of the girls there. So it wasn't unpleasant, but I missed the Valley kids, you know.

TI: And was there a difference between the kids growing up in the Imperial Valley versus the kids more in the city?

WY: Yeah, I guess so. Basically, these girls, they were, the Mori sisters, they came from one family. But they danced, and we never went to dances and things like that (in the Valley).

TI: And so how did you feel about fitting in? Was it hard sometimes for you?

WY: It was a little hard. But there was a guy that was interested in me, I guess, because he would call me up and say, "You want to go to the dance?" He liked to dance, I guess. I said, "I don't know how to dance, I don't want to go." And then one day the girls said, "We want to go to this dance but we don't have a way to (get) there. (You'd) better ask Henry if he would take us." I said, "I just told him I didn't want to go." "Well, tell him you changed your mind." Well, I was really, I was always doing what people tell me to do (...). So I told him that. He said, "Okay." He took us all. I had to swallow a lot of pride, but I had to ask him.

TI: Well, and then eventually, who taught you how to dance? Was this Henry or the other girls?

WY: I never learned how to dance. [Laughs] I never learned how to dance. I have no sense of rhythm.

TI: So did the people in the city just seem just more sophisticated because of the dancing and things like that, or how would you characterize...

WY: They were more carefree.

TI: Oh, more carefree.

WY: They were more carefree.

TI: And part of that was because they didn't have as many, like, chores or responsibilities as...

WY: Well, I guess they didn't have, the parents were working so hard that... well, ours worked very hard, too, but we went to Buddhist church or the Christian church and they taught us manners and behavior and all that. but I don't think these people had that kind of thing (in Oceanside).

TI: Interesting.

WY: Yeah. Later on, much later on, there was one guy that was interested, from Japan, that was interested in getting a community center together. See, they didn't have that kind of thing.

TI: So this is 1940. And then why don't we move to the war? 1941, December, do you remember where you were when...

WY: Yes, I do. I went to see Sergeant... we lived in town, my mother was running this boarding house. And I could go, just two blocks down, there was a movie house. I went to see Sergeant York and I came home and my mother met me at the gate. It was a fenced-in yard, and she met me at the gate. She said, "Japan is at war with America." And she had just finished paying for the car, just finished paying for the silverware and the dishes, and we had to go to camp.

TI: That must have been hard.

WY: Yeah.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.