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TI: And so I want to kind of move along now and talk about that period when the war is ending and people start leaving the camps. So why don't pick it up around there someplace, a good place to pick up.

SY: We knew that the war was ending, because we went to the movies. We knew how the map was shown, and how the United States was overtaking islands after islands, so we knew it was just a matter of time, and that the war was ending. But on August the 14th, 1945, for the first time, the sirens went off from the administration building, not for a minute, but for thirty minutes or longer. But prior to that, we were playing basketball, and it was a real windy day. And if the basket is here, we would shoot way over here with the hopes that the wind will carry it over towards the backboard, not expecting the ball to go into the (basket), we just wanted it to go near it. And immediately, when the sirens went off, we thought, our assumption was the war has ended. So we laid down on the ground, laughing, crying with happiness, but that wind was so strong that, as we looked up, we could see a little tornado, not a real tornado, but a whirlwind of dust swirling around above us. Most normal adults would go indoors to get away from dust, but we were so ignorant, we didn't care about our hair, we didn't care about our clothes, we were boys. And now we're talking about going home.

TI: Explain your, your happiness at that moment. You said you were on the ground, laughing and everything, so what was, what were you happy about?

SY: Going back to San Francisco. Going back to what we used to do. Not that there was going to be a World's Fair, but the Golden Gate Park, Coit Tower, Muir Woods, the San Francisco Zoo, the activities that we remember. And of all things, milkshakes, hamburgers, can you imagine a banana split, all the things that we did not have that we talked about all throughout camp, that we dreamed about. The popcorns that we didn't have, we remember getting at the theaters. Oh my gosh, we talked about the types of soda water we drank and so forth. Not that, when we went to Cody we could have got those things, but these are the memories that was embedded as kids that we wanted to resume. And so the friendships that, the Japanese Town that we frequented, the Japanese, the Chinese restaurants that we used to frequent, these are the activities, the friends that we had that we wanted to resume our activities again.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.