Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Nancy K. Araki Interview I
Narrator: Nancy K. Araki
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: September 3, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-anancy-01-0011

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TI: Going back to Amache, what memories do you have of Amache?

NA: I started, I guess, kindergarten there, preschool, kindergarten. It was a very short time that we were there. I just know that we, the school was at the top of this hill, which now you see and it's barely a slope, but you forget that you were very short. And it was up the hill and so it wasn't too far away. I made a friend there that after the war we just kind of reconnected, but we were there a very short time. What I remember were kind of like quibblings going on in both the camps that I went in, I was too young to be running on my own and so I was really around, if I were out walking anywhere, it was a lot with my grandmother or my mother. There was always that kind of relationship, and as I said, Japanese was my, my main language, my strong language, and so you're right there hearing all this, too. But I guess the remembrance is not just kind of like bickering but also a lot of crying among adults. Now, I had already gone through losing my grandfather, so I knew big people do cry, but this one was troubling and a puzzle and I know I remember asking my grandmother, "How come so many big people are crying?" She explained, "Well, you know how we're, had to move and we all had to be where we have to be and all without really knowing, so everybody's kind of mixed up and wanting to go back home, so naturally," so it was told to me that way, right, but I knew that's strange, adults crying.

So that was kind of like, that's kind of the remembrance I have of, the biggest, I guess, remembrance, the going up the hill. But then we left and then remembering the bus, boarding the bus. But I remember, this is the one, I, just struck me, I do remember getting, our trip from Merced on the train and here now the Moriguchi family's kind of intact, and I remember being on the train and then being able to visit my auntie in the one end of the train and we might've been in the other, but going back there and one time somebody says, "Oh, look, it's the Grand Canyon." So Grand Canyon, what's that? And just trying to look out but not seeing, what is a Grand Canyon? So I don't even know if I really saw it or not and maybe I was on the wrong side of the train. Who knows? But I just remember people saying Grand Canyon and it must've been something to observe, but didn't, not in my remembrance. But the other part was just kind of like leaning against the train window and trying to see through, as it was going around the curve, to see if I could see whoever on that part and all of a sudden a train passing and just throwing me on a loop. So those are kind of remembrance, but I remember when we got off the train and getting frisked, you know, pat down. And I had, my grandmother had packed a little valise for me with, from my little play toys, and I had little kitchen stuff, like a little toy knife and... I'm almost saying it all in Japanese, I, mamagoto, and it's all the play toys, but they took away my knives. [Laughs] And I, like, what? So it's that kind of remembrance of getting off the train.

TI: Good.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.