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MN: Now, let's see, December 1943 there was a riot at Manzanar. Where were you when that was, when that occurred?

AM: Let's see, I was in my apartment with my father and I told him, "I just want to go see what's going on," so he said, "No, no, you stay here 'cause I don't want you to get mixed up over there." And he was afraid, you know, something'll happen to me because, well, the MP were very, pretty nervous at the time, so you never know what they might do if so many people gathered around 'em. So he told me to stay in the apartment, don't go anywhere, 'cause he wanted to stay together. So I just stayed and with, with the rest of the family, and we just waited for the news, see what was going on.

MN: What was the atmosphere like the days following the riot?

AM: It was very, kind of uneasy. We were very, well, we were very concerned what's gonna happen. There were some groups that were pretty sensitive about the whole thing. They were very anti type of thinking that they had. You could almost say they were sort of pro Japanese type, Japan type of attitude, but... of course, the U.S. government was very sensitive, too, because it started from just one person that tried to take some food and he was very, they accused him of something, I guess, so things were very touchy, I guess. But, well, by then my father was fairly good friends with camp director, Mr. Ralph Merritt, and my father had a lot of respect for him and he thought that he should try to stay, stay out of this, this thing as much as possible, so he was very sensitive that way.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.