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TI: Now, did you, during this time, consciously compare and contrast how it was in San Francisco versus Topaz, in terms of schooling or just, like you mentioned this wonderful library, did you kind of appreciate that more because of where you came from?

NA: You know, when you're little like that I don't think you even get there. I mean, you, but who got there was my mom, because later on when I did her history I asked her, how did she, with three little kids, go through this whole thing and what was, what did she really feel like? And she said, "You know, in the beginning," she says, "I bought into the thing that we were cooperating to be good Americans." She says, "The more I think about it, I think I had to, I had to embrace that because otherwise it was insane. But," she says, "what really struck home," what happened to her, is that "when you kids, we came back to San Francisco and here it was in September," and San Francisco doesn't have very great seasonal change and what trees we have aren't really necessarily like beautiful Northwestern or Eastern tree kind of turning, "but here we had these street trees losing their ugly brown leaves and you were all so, like, excited." Falling leaves, autumn leaves and we would be, like, gathering them and we were just kind of, or we were up in the park, and again, it's not, just ugly leaves compared to what people, you think about autumn leaves, right? But it was leaves that were falling, and so we were so excited about that, and she thought, "Oh my God, my kids don't understand, or missed out." The pure joy of, I guess, what she witnessed, it struck her. "My kids were robbed of their childhood." And then that sunk in. My gosh, that's why we went to every parade, every big happening that brought in trains, freedom trains, seeing the Declaration, the Bill of Rights on the train or anything like that, we were, my mom took us there. Every parade. But one parade in particular I remember, it must've been right after we got out of the camps because it was Veterans' Day parade and we were, it's on Market Street in San Francisco, and we get down there by the cable car and all and, and stand there. And this one guy came and yelled at my mom for being a "Jap" and, "You guys shouldn't be..." You know. And my mom stood up and said, "I am an American and I have as much right to be here." And I kind of remember that. Like my mom who isn't anybody that, she's always kind of gentle, very hospitable, gracious woman and fun mom. And she kind of did that, and that, so that kind of stands out.

But yeah, us kids, we were taken, we were exposed to whatever. And my grandmother had, through Mrs. Williams' period of life and all, had friends that still were there, like Mrs. Siga and Mrs. Siga was an immigrant from, I think she must've been Jewish, but the name I know is Siga and it could've been Siegel, but Mrs. Siga had friends who were opera singers and so I got taken to the opera, and that's how I knew that word, opera. Of course, no American English speaker knows opera, but that's the way you spell it, right? Anyway, as well as my grandmother's... and there's also words like hippopotamus, and that's the way it's spelled. But so I was exposed to opera. I was, I went with her and her lady friends. We spoke still Japanese in the household because my grandmother was very adamant about that. She says, "Regardless, you're still Japanese, so you, we speak Japanese in here," which then kept up my language ability and even, so I was, I was a fluent Japanese speaker that time. As strong as I could English, so that's why I pronounce things weirdly sometimes still.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.