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TI: And then your brother found the...

TN: Yeah, my brother was... before the war, right after the war started, he went to Texas A&M during the war, and he got really sick in San Antonio. And I received a permit to leave the camp from General Eisenhower's brother, who was Milton Eisenhower, he was in Washington, D.C., and he got me the permit to go see him. But I was told to come back to Tule Lake, you know. [Laughs] I tried to stay in Texas, but they said I had to come back. And after he got well, he rejoined us in camp.

TI: Now, why would your brother, because he was in Texas at this point, why did he join you in camp and not stay in Texas?

TN: Well, he was ill, see, and he couldn't swallow anything for a long time, it was paralyzed. And there was a Japanese family in San Antonio that... and she was a very religious lady, and she said, "I'll take care of your brother, so don't worry and go back to camp." So I left him with her. Gradually, he recovered, gradually, and I couldn't impose on the other people to take care of him, so we told him to come back to the camp, we'd be all together. We didn't know what was going to happen, you know.

TI: Okay, that makes sense. And then later on, when you were on seasonal leave, he was at camp and was able to help you get this job.

TN: Yeah. He was working for the canteen or something like that, and he was able to contact a lot of people in the camp.

TI: And so I'm curious. There was some friction with people who worked in the canteen, especially after the segregation.

TN: Oh, yes.

TI: Was your brother involved with any of that?

TN: Well, he was, he had a little accounting background. He worked for Mitsui Bussan before the war. So he had a commercial knowledge, and they asked him to work, help him in the administration. And there was naturally a friction between the people that was in Tule Lake at the beginning, and there was a lot of other people that came in from other segregation camps, especially Manzanar, they were the tough ones. They wanted to take over the whole canteen. [Laughs] So he told me who was the head of the canteen at that time, was (Hitomi) in Tule Lake, you know. And after that, everybody said, "No job is worth that much." They all resigned, you know.

TI: But your brother, did he resign also?

TN: Oh, yeah, he resigned, and he was working someplace else after that. But you know, the wages were very nominal, nineteen dollars, and get a three dollar and seventy-five cents clothing allowance. [Laughs]

TI: And so I'm curious, when your brother resigned, did you and your brother ever talk about how Tule Lake had changed sort of before segregation and then after segregation?

TN: Oh, yeah, I noticed the difference, tremendous, yeah. And I was able to go across the... there was double fences inside Tule Lake, where the personnel, Caucasian personnel were residing. And since I was in the project attorney, was always up in the front, so I had occasion to go through there, so I could see a tremendous friction between the Caucasians and the internees. But you can tell, the internees, we had eighty-four blocks in Tule Lake, and each block had so many thousand people. And naturally, when you have a big city like that, eighteen thousand people. [Laughs]

TI: Yeah, I'm tempted to ask so many questions, but I'm going to keep moving along here. So you mentioned in the legal aid office, one of the things you did was you helped fill out income tax returns.

TN: Yeah, well, like people had problems. They had... a lot of 'em had life insurance, they wanted to cancel their life insurance, or they had a pending lease on a property, or they left behind some goods and things like that, and they'd like to get into Tule Lake. They tried to resolve a lot of differences without getting the outside attorneys. So I helped them as best as I can.

TI: Okay, good.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.