<Begin Segment 6>

MN: Let's talk about the visa, because once your family were gonna be released from Rohwer, what happened, what did your parents receive?

RO: The U.S. government sought to deport 'em.

MN: And can you explain --

RO: And so my mother and both of 'em, they were on some visa connected to trading. And since they're not in the business, they need to leave the country. So they had to go to San Francisco for the deportation hearings, and the kids were sent to stay in Elko, Nevada, which is a train stop in the northeast corner of Nevada. Bing Crosby had a sheep ranch there, but it's essentially a train stop. And I guess that my father's uncle worked on the railroad roundhouse with his dad, which would have been my father's, my grandfather's brother. And anyway, they bought this laundry, and they took in laundry, Bing Crosby's laundry. So we stayed right there in Elko. It's actually just a train stop.

MN: So Elko -- I don't know where that is, but it was outside of the military zones and they did not go to camp?

RO: Yes, yes. It's, I don't know, the military zone is... I don't know whether it goes to Nevada, whether it went to Nevada. But they were already there.

MN: Do you know how your family got to Elko?

RO: I think that his, my father's uncle... would it be uncle? Yeah, my father's uncle probably worked in the roundhouses somewhere in Nevada, Utah, wherever. The trains.

MN: Yeah, how did you, I don't know if you still recall how you got to Elko, your family, after you were released from Rohwer.

RO: Probably on a train somehow.

MN: Is that just not... you don't recall that.

RO: Yeah, not there, not there. But I do, but the most prominent place in town is the tracks and the railroad. And so you have all these soldiers coming through, coming home, especially in the winter, Elko's pretty much covered with snow, and the soldiers would make snowballs and throw 'em at people, but at me. "You dirty Jap." And I'm talking about now, how old am I? Like six, seven years old, and I might have gone to the bakery and walking. And so you're exposed to a lot of hatred and anger at a very young age.

MN: And, you know, as a child, how did that make you feel?

RO: I don't know. I don't, I don't ever think that I felt bad in the sense like I was less. Somehow, my parents managed to make you feel very good about who you were. My mother was someone that always liked to discuss and talk about something that I would raise, after something happened in school or whatever. And she would always try to kind of scope it out and help me understand that, I think the word is imi, or the significance. And she'd do that all the time. There was always, she talked a lot of little Japanese parables. So I didn't have a Japanese education, I didn't have Japanese language, and we were, frowned upon us doing much Japanese things. But at home, she'd tell me stories or share philosophies, whatever. So in many ways, I feel like I became very Japanese.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.