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TI: Now, you mentioned that people would say sarcastic things or see the irony of things. Did, was there very many, like, discussions or bull sessions where people would just talk about the circumstances, what's gonna happen next? Do you recall?

HN: Yeah, we'd say, "What gonna happen next?" Says, "How can we know?" And there's no nothing, no clue because the government elected to disregard the law of the nation. There were a lot of educated guys, too. There were a few Cal Tech assistant professors there. They taught us all the mathematics, math and so forth. And they say, you know, we'd ask them, "So what do you think is gonna happen to us?" "No clue," they says, "because we don't come under any constitution, so how can we guess any? We may be, all get killed." And we didn't bring it up in our discussion, but I'm sure each of us, in a way, must have... was ready to, for the eventuality, you know, maybe get wiped out.

TI: Was there much discussions about just how, what was happening with the war between the U.S. and Japan and who was gonna win and things like that?

HN: No, we were hoping it ends, soon. To us it didn't matter which one, which way it went. And it didn't matter when we heard that... the atomic bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And there were many people from Hiroshima. Their families were still in Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. And that event brought everybody to a real different outlook toward life.

TI: So tell me about that, when you say different outlook on life. So here are men whose families, or ancestors, were from Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and they're devastated.

HN: Yeah, devastated. They... and until then they were hoping this would end not in that manner, you know, with a surrender and a peace treaty and so forth, and everybody eventually go back to normalcy. When that happened people said, "Oh, this is a different world. This is a different world. We don't know what gonna happen."

TI: And that gets back to something you said earlier, that there was some discussion that some people were talking about possibly all being wiped out.

HN: Oh yeah. We didn't discuss it too open, you know. And I knew, by indirect discussion. I say most of the people were ready for that.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.