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TI: So you're at the farm in Utah, your father's crops get dried out, and, but you've had this experience with school, you mentioned going to Topaz, so...

NA: Yeah, so this vigilante activity happened and I think my father probably even told the local whatevers because then a WRA man came out or some federal or military guy or, I think it was a WRA person 'cause that's, I don't know, but that's what my father said later on, and he's just saying, "You know, you've got a very young family and your wife's expecting momentarily, and I think you better get yourself back in. That'd probably be the safest thing for your family and, but you don't have to go all the way --" I mean, 'cause, do we have to go all the way back to Utah, I mean Amache? And he said, apparently said, "No, just get yourself into any camp and Topaz is the closest." So I think the farm equipment my, my uncle was able to take that because they were farming, and my father went and put us into Topaz and we arrived there in December, it must've been December four or five of '43, so you could see how short a span this whole thing is, lot of activity, '43 and on December 7, 1943, my brother is born.

TI: Oh, on December 7th, interesting, so two year anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

NA: My mom, later of course, everybody says, oh my god, what a birthday, but my mom says, all she knew is she gave birth and then for supper or whatever the meal was it was all this kind of like red bean rice and stuff like that, and she said, "Oh, my god, do they do this for every birth?" And they said, "Oh no, this is Pearl Harbor Day," or anniversary, so whatever the mess hall people were, they were kind of celebrating the anniversary, I guess. But for my mom it was like, oh my goodness, she just felt like this was gonna be, perhaps, a burden. So my brother was born, and what I remember about that is he came home, and we were in Block 23 in Topaz and it was just one of the end units, and there were, let's see, there were six of us about to become seven in this very small end because they were trying to clean up the unit two units across the way in Block 22 for our family, 'cause by then people were leaving camps, and so there were units being opened and so they were gonna give us an end unit and the next unit, and so our address later became, shortly later became 22-9-E-F, but in the beginning, that first couple of weeks, we were in this small unit in Block 23, which little was I aware that that's where my future husband's family was, in that same block.

TI: So your brother Francis was born there.

NA: Born, and he came home in a, he came home and his crib was a banana box. [Laughs] And we came home from, like looking for him and there he was in a banana box. Poor baby.

TI: What other memories of Topaz?

NA: Lots. Lots. I don't know where to start, but one of things is, when you think about it it's the most ridiculous image possible, in a confinement site. Here, I remember I used to hate it, every morning I got to get up early and to have my hair done in Shirley Temple curls.

TI: And whose idea was that?

NA: I don't know, but there I was. I had to get up early and huddle by the cold stove because it was so cold in the wintertime and here the iron hot, gets hot, and here I'm getting Shirley Temple curls. And we have pictures like that, Nancy with the bangs and Shirley Temple curls.

TI: And who would do that, your mother?

NA: Either one.

TI: Your mother or your grandmother.

NA: My grandmother, yeah. It was probably most like, I don't know which one. I just did, I just remember it was cold, but I had to be, I had to be coiffured, I think. The other thing is that I remember the school. I was, I don't remember the first, the first half of first grade. My first grade teacher remembers me and all, but I, frankly, did not recall her. I think it's a blurry blending into the second grade. I remember my second grade, of course, very well. Her, the teacher's name was Emily Light and Emily Light, we got reconnected after the Third World Strike at San Francisco. We put on a program and she was one of the teachers we found and came and shared. I mean, there's all kinds of wonderful stories about that, but Emily Light originally practically volunteered to become the person to establish schools in Tule Lake before it was a segregation center. You know, when Tule Lake first opened it was where Northern California folks went and all, and she apparently had a lot of, she was a woman born and raised in the Midwest and then, but she was talking about being a teacher, but eventually, by the time she came to Berkeley area, that's when the U.S. government established, like, teaching credentials. Before that it was a different system. And so she went to Berkeley to then really firm up her teaching credentials and got to know a lot of Nisei students there, and so when this came about and her friends were being taken away and she being a teacher just thought, wait a second, or whatever, so she started to write to the government. They said, "Well, if you're so concerned go up there and establish." And that's the story she told me later on.

TI: So she first went to Tule, Tule Lake.

NA: Yeah, and then when the segregation camp happened, and she was a little bit of, I guess, a rebel herself because she had told me where, the children weren't getting milk. There wasn't milk. There were, and yet the staff were getting ample, and so she would kind of try to, not sneak, but get it to the internees as much as possible, the inmates as much as possible, but so there was that kind of discrepancy, that she was not happy and made enough noise, I guess, that they sent her to Jerome. So she got to Jerome and was there and they closed that camp and then was sent to Topaz, and it's about that time that I landed into Topaz and our paths met. And she's the one that just said to my parents, "You know, we're just gonna have to beef up her English. We don't know what's gonna happen, but once you all get out of here, Nancy's English language is gonna have to be a whole lot better." So she had a summertime program, which was clear across the other side of the camp, but I was to be part of that program and she was gonna give me intensive English language training. And I remember that she had me do bulletin boards, and bulletin boards, what do you do? So she kind of gave me ideas of making flowers. I became a very good bulletin board monitor.

TI: This was really above and beyond what she had to do, to do a special summer program for English, just realizing that it would be useful for you and others to, to really improve your English.

NA: Exactly. And so, and I think in some ways my class must've been mixed. I don't remember any of my other fellow second graders, or first graders or second graders, there, but I surely trekked that long trek. I mean, we were at one end of the camp, seeing the mountain view and going all the way to the desert view, or it's the reverse, I forget. One end of the camp to the other end of camp because elementary schools were laid out that way with the high school in the middle somewhere. But part of that also, I remember all kinds of stuff between our barrack and the school. School was in Block 8, we were Block 22 and the, we were on the outlying area facing, I think it must've been desert view because the mountains were way far away, so my dad, whenever, and he would go out and do farm labor, go out and do stuff and he also apparently got permitting to go check out in California at one time towards the end in '44, but anyway, he was doing that, but every time he'd come home and all he would really be the social director of the block. And he'd gather all the kids and we'd go out into the desert and he would do a little kind of like relay races and all, or we'd go do some kind of scavenger hunt or stuff like that, so in, when we had Dad around it was like oh, and all the other kids loved him, too, I guess, so we'd be going out there. My dad was also, I think, I guess I said, he also was very musical and he had, I guess our early, just early, early remembrance was that every night he would play his mandolin and sing. And even when we were in Elk before the war, just remember songs that he would sing both in Japanese and English. And then after the war, of course, he would be asked to sing at weddings and we'd all crawl under the table, but it was, he was very musical that way. Self taught. And later on he has his own little... that's another story.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.