<Begin Segment 30>

TI: Okay, so before we go to the city, let's talk about your family property. So it sounds like it wasn't that affected.

HN: No, it wasn't.

TI: And it was more in a farming area, so there was food for people.

HN: Well, it was a small town. It's not a... like when you talk about farming in the U.S. you talked about isolated, and another one way out. Over there they have a town and they have, on the suburb, they have their own land and so forth. But that area was, luckily, was not damaged by the war.

TI: Now, were people curious about you and your family? Did a lot of people have questions, or...

HN: Yeah, a lot of questions, but I didn't feel it there, feel that, feel that kind of influence. My kid brother did, though. He was in school, must've been about ten years old. So living in a concentration camp, Tule Lake, he were, he was wearing, for the kids, jeans and those cowboy-like boots and had this knitted snow cap, hat, and went to school and everyone in the school went around to look at... made a circle around him, saying, "Who is that?" As if he was a person from Mars. [Laughs]

TI: 'Cause he just looks, his clothes were so different.

HN: Yeah. So different, yeah. And he later told me about it. "Boy," he said, "what a, what an experience."

TI: So, so you mentioned after about a month and a half you left the family place. Why did you leave?

HN: Well, because there were, we were looking for work, you know. The future. And the future wasn't there in the countryside, and people, my father said, "Look, maybe you should go out to Tokyo and find a job," and that's what we did. Our uncle was living in Tokyo, and we went to uncle's house and our cousin helped us find some job, you know, locate a job.

TI: Okay, so earlier you mentioned that when you, you really saw the devastation when you went to the city.

HN: Tokyo, yes.

TI: Tell me what you saw.

HN: Oh, my uncle's house... they were bombed out, too, see.. They built a shack, like, you know, structure, just a roof on there, and they were living there. And other places completely flat, bombed out. They used to let me -- you know where, do you watch Japanese sumo once in a while? Kokugikan is that, the main sumo hall in Tokyo. My uncle was living fairly close, about ten blocks from there. That whole area, everything was wiped out. There wasn't any single building there.

TI: So where would people stay and sleep?

HN: So, people who were... my uncle was a construction contractor, so he knew how to build, so he'd gather, scraped up all the parts and built a roof over their house so they were able to survive. But other people weren't able to do it, so his house was the only house I could see for, about ten blocks down there was another house and so forth. And other people evacuated to the countryside during the bombing, so there weren't hardly anybody living around there in 1946.

TI: And so for, you said you went to Tokyo, and when you said that, you said "we," so did you go with your brother?

HN: Yeah.

TI: Okay, so the two of you went to Tokyo. Was it hard for your uncle to have two more people?

HN: It must have been, but he never showed it, you know.

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.