<Begin Segment 14>

TI: So let's... any other memories that you want to share about Topaz?

NA: Oh, I guess all the kids and how, I remember some of the, I remember some things of why people can be so mean to other people. I mean, there seemed to be... and I can't explain it, it's kind of like... I mean, I guess old enough to know, and I know all children are like this. They know what's fair and sometimes you know that there's some kind of bullying or unfairness happening, and you wonder, what can I do without getting beaten up, all that. So I had very good, nurturing parents, because I would go and just say, "Yeah, Baachan, you know, some blah blah blah," and she would listen and give, impart some wisdom and all that, so you could kind of think about it and maybe do plan of action, I guess, in adult terms. But I remember there was this one girl that was getting really picked on a lot and apparently what happened, later on found out that she had some infection, but that emitted enough odor that kids would really shun her and all that, so I made it a point to be as friend, or at least have lunch with her or whatever without, I mean, she wasn't my best friend or anything, but you knew she was out. I think in some ways, too, I also by that time understood, and we were out of the camps, and this is the other thing that I think, in a way, we ended up having, being more advantageous, too, because we were outside of the camp, because my parents had the T.H. Williams overseeing our property and because my parents had bought, well, it was more than a house, a three story flat, one of those Victorian flats with a two story cottage in the back. It was a pretty big, substantial house or property in San Francisco before the war, and then of course with all of the banks and everything closing, my parents had their money in Giannini, they didn't, Giannini, maybe I'm pronouncing it wrong. It eventually becomes Bank of America. Giannini. Well, you'll...

TI: We'll look it up.

NA: Yeah, we'll look it up. Or I'm not pronouncing it right. The idea that it could be frozen and, as I said, Mrs. Williams had enough connections to all this kind of stuff, so she went in and said, "Look, I'm gonna be the trustee of their account," so she took full charge of that and the property and all that. So when we left, she --

TI: But I just want to clarify, so the account, was it under your mother's name? And as a Nisei, that was still frozen? I would think that was only the Isseis.

NA: No, it wasn't frozen, but there was enough kind of noise that all Japanese, I mean, this is the time where anything Japanese, the frozen comes later on, but there's enough kind of, I guess, rustling in the winds that you don't know what's gonna happen even though you are American citizen. And by that time I'm sure the orders were coming of the, being, being put into camps, or all these rules are coming out.

TI: So Mrs. Williams sort of, because of who she was and what she knew --

NA: And her relationship to the, to my grandmother, basically, my mother, looking at them much more like family now, and so she, she went and Mrs. Shields, too, whose husband was a mayor of the city, that's funny little stories, like each time one of us kids was born in one of the hospitals there would be flowers coming from these hakujins, right and the nursing staff, knowing the names were high enough, publically known, would be like, "You're getting flowers from these people?" kind of thing, so it was that kind of situation that my parents were fortunate to be in. And so Mrs. Shields and Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Williams stepped in and became then the trustee for the bank accounts, so she had full ability to pay the taxes and all, because a lot of Japanese, even if they owned property, lost it because they couldn't pay their annual taxes on the land or, or even mortgages or whatever. But Mrs. (Williams), and then she made a point to manage the property, made sure there's a woman that then became the, well, the manager was there already 'cause my parents were living there, but made sure she then oversaw and made, just kind of did that, stepped in, so, and my family was fortunate because a lot of our valuables then we were able to store in trunks in that basement of the building that they owned, property that they owned, and so it was all there when we came back after the war, to that site.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.