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TI: Thinking back now about your experiences again in Manzanar and perhaps the time right after it, were there any experiences that you can remember that sort of stand out as like a defining moment, or something that it was really important that happened?

WH: Defining relative to what?

TI: Well, defining... what I'm trying to think about are, if there's anything that happened back then that helped you to prepare for what you did during the redress movement.

WH: Well, there's one thing that happened after camp, but it's related to Manzanar. And that is, I left camp in '44. Graduated high school in June of '44. High school was not... was very poor. A lot of the graduates think it was a great high school, but I, objectively, I'm pretty sure it was very, very poor. And there were just a lot of things that we didn't get taught. Chemistry, you know, we didn't have Bunsen burners so the experiments didn't work. It was just, it was crazy. I don't know why they had chemistry. And the physics teacher was a good teacher, but he says, "We're not going to use the textbook, because the textbook is so poor." So he taught us out of his college textbook, but he was a good teacher. But the rest of the classes were... English and things like that, were... I just learned wrong English there. And that's one of the things I really resented. And then as I grew up I had to correct all the things that I'd learned in school. The teachers just didn't know the subject matter. Some of the best teachers were Nisei, but they weren't really teachers, 'cause they had, they were still students, UCLA students. And they were very good because they knew the subject matter. But when they taught, there'd be a white professional teacher sitting in the room who didn't teach anything. She was the teacher and this Nisei guy would be doing all the blackboard work. This is in advanced algebra.

But anyway, I left it in June of, I graduated in '44 and I left about a week later. And the thing that's interesting is most of my friends left the day after graduation. And we all -- I left with my brother -- and almost all my friends left alone, on their own. And I think the reason that we did this was because we felt that we had to get out of the place, because the place was just sucking us away. It was destroying our morale. And that's something that hasn't been talked about very much. But you know, when you're... confinement is, it's bad. It's really hard on people. And I know one of the things I thought about when I was leaving and going through this whole experience was the experience of Indians, Native Americans. And they've been cooped for a long, much longer, generations. And boy, that's really got to be devastating. Because even within the short period of time, you could see what was happening to ourselves, and our friends, and it wasn't good. There was something, something... this was really bad on our morale, sense of, whatever, self-esteem, or whatever you want to call it. But it was a bad experience. And I don't know, you know, these reunions, everyone says they have a great time and so forth. But I'm not so sure about that. I'm very skeptical. Because why did they leave? Because leaving was a real challenge, you know, they didn't know anybody. They went to these little towns in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota. They didn't know anybody. Then they had to work a little bit and then they went to school. But, you know, zero support. I just can't imagine any kid today doing that. Just going out in the world and trying to find a job, and making a living.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.