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TI: Well, lots of rich memories from, from Topaz. Anything else?

NA: Including... oh well.

TI: This is good. I'm getting this from a child's perspective. This is really...

NA: One thing, and I think it was just fed into me as a kid that I could draw, so there was a contest in our second grade that we were to draw, and there was the teacher, Miss Light, was offering the first prize winner gets a Hershey bar. Oh boy, right? 'Cause we all knew about that canteen and getting Hershey bar, but she was gonna, oh, I was determined. I know I was gonna get it, so we drew our pictures and all the, it went all up and all, and I didn't win, but I remember who, I remember exactly who won because in this program, as an adult and after the strike and we created the San Francisco Center and we had the teachers come, there was this one guy that walked in and I was doing all the hostessing, "Hello, what's your name?" and putting name tags 'cause I figured we, that's just what I felt, and he says, "My name is Shin Mune," and I said, "Shin Mune?" And he goes like, [looks confused]. I said, "You were in my second grade class." He said, "Oh, well, to tell you the truth, I'm here because I don't remember anything about my camp days and began to realize that my brother, who went to kindergarten, first grade, second grade, has really tremendous memories after the war," but he has absolutely no memories, and so he says he heard about this program and the teacher was second grader and he just felt that, well, maybe she could, he was in this self discovery mode, but here I knew his name and I said, "And you beat me out of that Hershey bar." [Laughs] Here I am in my thirties, I think, telling this guy and going like, oh my goodness, and so Emily, Emily, the name, she says, "Oh, Shin." She, she remembered all of us, even when I first ran into her, and so that was kind of amazing. And Shin beat me out and I could even, I described to him what he won on, and he said, I said, "You drew a desert scene with the bluffs going back. With the sun, and you painted, you colored the bluffs purple." And I, even I had to admit, darn, that's right. That's what the bluffs look like. And what did I draw? I drew a house with a garden with flowers, with trees, with apples and birds and butterflies and... I remember that.

TI: Now, when you reminded Shin of the painting, the contest, the teacher, did that help him remember any of that?

NA: [Shakes head] And he's been on that search and so he comes to the museum often. He's, he's, I guess he's a single guy, 'cause he travels the world whenever he accumulates money and then he goes through the world, but he's been coming to the museum often, time he passes through. He also has gone to each one of the conferences that we had. I saw him at the Tule Lake pilgrimage just this summer, so he's, he's working on his own, but it's, that was... so camp has all kinds of memories. Little grandfathers making little, little pins out of seeds, and one man made a little, out of a small pit, I don't know if it's a little cherry pit or not, but it was a little monkey that he then strung and gave that to me, and somehow he got it so that the eyes would pop out. I could never figure out how he did that. My father, in a way, we thought he invented this, but he made a high chair out of scrap steel welded together with a, the tray to flip down, and it was heavy like anything, but that he created. Stuff like that I recall, and I recall my, my first remembrance of mochitsuki. It was done in Block 22. We went and I remember it so well because first time they say, don't forget to dust your hands with the mochiko because it's sticky, so not knowing anything, I thought I dusted it enough. I picked it up and my hand was like, like stuck together, and so embarrassing, and how do I do this? Do I eat it off or, it was just, kind of like that panicked dilemma, like oh my gosh. And some adult coming to the rescue, kind enough to laugh about it instead of being angry. And that was the first time I remember mochitsuki.

And then remembering waiting in line for mess time, especially during dinner time. Everybody, all the kids would go out earlier and people would be lining out, up, and we were too young to be eating on our own, so my mother would line up and, but we got to play with the other kids and we would play things like jintori or, or red rover or some games like that. Falling down, scraping your knees. And then getting my tonsils taken out by Dr. Goto, who apparently went into several camps, but I remember Dr. Goto because there were four of us in our, in the ward, four kids, my brother, myself, a girl named Frances, and I don't remember the other person's name, but when I was wheeled out to be put under, Dr. Goto kept calling me Frances. I kept struggling with this... "No, no, calm down, Frances. Just keep counting down." "I'm not Frances," or trying to get, but by that time I was knocked out, I guess, but I came out okay. [Laughs] I remember that panic.

TI: Hopefully Frances wasn't there for her appendix or anything. [Laughs]

NA: Yeah, I think we were all in together for the tonsils, so that was a good thing, I think, but I just remember that little panic and how hurt, but you got to eat ice cream. Getting, getting an injury that was kind of almost blood poisoning, so I had to have it tended to, and it's only because I was being mischievous. A good, chanto little girl being mischievous, I can confess why I got hurt. But anyway. [Laughs]

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