Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Mae Iseri Yamada Interview
Narrator: Mae Iseri Yamada
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: November 13, 2009
Densho ID: denshovh-ymae-01-0025

<Begin Segment 25>

TI: Okay. I'm going to bring you now back to... so you're now, you're still in Thomas, and then you now leave. So can you tell us where you went from Thomas?

MY: We went to Pinedale.

TI: Which is located in Fresno.

MY: Yeah, outskirts of Fresno.

TI: And so what were your impressions of Pinedale when you got there?

MY: Oh, it was so hot. I passed out the first day, 'cause it was so hot. And I remember these two boys, this older boy was packing this little kid on his back, and he let him down, and he was barefooted, and he landed on the hot rocks. And he started screaming, you know, and I thought, "Holy cow, what did he do to that kid?" And then he was just stomping and jumping, and I said, "Oh, that poor kid." Says, "His brother or whoever that was just put him down to get the load off his back and he's burning his feet." And I thought, oh, man. I often think about it and wonder where that kid is, if he remembers it.

TI: So it was hot, but also Pinedale, you mentioned earlier, this is, your father, you had a reunion with your father. He was picked up on December 7th, eventually went to, I think, Fort Missoula, Montana, then he joined the family at Pinedale?

MY: Yeah, just before we left Pinedale to go to Tule Lake.

TI: So do you remember that reunion and what that was like?

MY: No, because I didn't know that he was coming back. All of a sudden I saw him coming toward the, toward the building, and I thought, "Holy cow." And apparently, Mom, George had gotten the information or something and told Mom, so she knew about it. I didn't know that he was coming back. That was a real thing, just seemed like it came out of the blue, you know. And so I think it was, I think it was more than a month, then we got transferred to Tule Lake.

TI: But how was your father returning? Did he seem the same, or was there any difference?

MY: Huh?

TI: Were there any changes with your father? Was he the same, or how would you...

MY: Well, he was real quiet, he never said much anymore. Just... I don't know what he was thinking. He never, never ever said anything about anybody being unjust to him. After all, he tried to -- he never, ever mentioned how hard he worked to try to get the PTA going and have them get together and make a good community. (Narr. note: In 1928, he helped organize the Japanese American PTA, checking national records, the only one in the U.S. His part's on the first page of the Washington State 100th Anniversary.)

TI: So do you sense that he changed? I mean, you said he got quiet, so do you think he was different after?

MY: Yeah. He was, he wasn't the jolly old chubby, fat man that he used to be. [Laughs] He was more serious about things.

TI: And so he never really, but he never really talked about it.

MY: No, he never really talked about it, and I figured, well, he probably doesn't want to talk about it, doesn't even want to think about it. So I thought, "Well, I'm not gonna push it."

<End Segment 25> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.