<Begin Segment 8>

MN: What was your first impression of Topaz?

TS: Hmm. That's a good question. I guess, I guess it was our, our Block 4, Building 10, Apartment, we got Apartment C and D. It, it went A to F, A and F. The buildings were a hundred and twenty feet long and they were twenty feet wide. Apartment A and F were the smallest slice, so they were twenty by sixteen. Apartment B and Apartment E took that extra four feet, so they were twenty feet by twenty-four feet. Apartment C and D were twenty feet by twenty feet. They gave us two apartments because we were a big family. And originally we were in Block 36, which was the southern eastern, southern western corner, and then they moved us to Block 4 because my two sisters came down with a bad case of asthma. They put us right across from the hospital, in case my sisters had to go. And I don't remember my sisters going to the hospital, but they really suffered from asthma. So to answer your question, I guess I remember the mess hall and the latrine. I remember going to the latrine with my mother and sister until the women got pissed and said, "We don't want these little Japanese boys in the thing lookin' at us." I didn't know what the hell I was lookin' at, anyway. I was just a four year old kid. But then we were relegated to the men's side, so we went to the men's side on our own, 'cause we didn't have a father.

MN: And then you said you started the first grade at Topaz.

TS: Right.

MN: What was it like starting school?

TS: Well, I went to, Topaz had two grammar schools, one, Mountain View, which faced Topaz Mountain, and on the other side of the camp there was Desert View. And I went to Mountain View. I remember drawing, this is interesting, I remember drawing, we all did this, we all drew, with a lot of care and pain, we drew this beautiful Mustang airplane. And I remember with a lot of care we drew this Mustang airplane and then we drew these little triangle airplanes with Japanese soldiers, pilots with the little slant eyes, with the little round circles, and then this Japanese, I mean, this Mustang airplane shooting down these little Japanese airplanes. Where the hell I got that I'll never know. Here I am siding with the United States Air Force against the Japanese. I remember doing that all the time in grammar school, and I, like I said before, I didn't, I didn't know a word of English until I went to school.

And I met my, I met my first grade teacher who, I met at a pilgrimage to Topaz, and she said, "You're Toru Saito? I was your first grade teacher." And I thought she was some, some woman with Alzheimer's that she, she, but she said, "I remember you for two reasons, Toru. Number one reason, you won the first place prize in a fire prevention art contest." And when she said that, I just said, wow, this woman knows what she's talkin' about. I remember distinctly I won first prize in a fire prevention art contest. I drew a picture of our stove with the lid open and the flames licking out, and we had a rope hanging, a clothes line hanging out when the, and the clothes ready to catch fire. And she remembered that picture. I was, I was blown away. Flabbergasted. And then she said, "There's something else I remember you, but I don't want to tell you in front of all these people," so later on she told me she was a seventeen year old high school girl, but she was so bright they made her a teacher, and she said, "Toru, when, the other thing I remember about you, Toru, you never smiled once in first grade, the whole year." And of course I don't remember that. And so she said she went to the administration and said, "This boy's family or his home life should be looked into," but, you know, these Japanese, they don't want to pry into whatever home.

Well, I was living with my stepfather. My stepfather came to live and he was a brutal, sadistic man. He used to beat the shit outta me. No wonder I was unhappy. He did some horrible, horrible, cruel things. In fact, my psychologist, who was a child psychologist in Patton State Hospital, Kaiser, blah blah blah, he told me, he said he had never heard of or read of a case where a stepfather or a father was more brutal and sadistic than my stepfather was. So I hold some kind of record, not that I'm proud of it, but I grew up a very unhappy kid. I mean, I contemplated suicide all my goddamn life. Life was so horrible for me. We got shit when we went outside. We were the dirty Japs, right? Come in the house, my stepfather made life miserable. So maybe that explains some of the anger I have. I was a Christian back then. Used to pray to God every goddamn night. You know, God, there's a passage in the Bible, "Ask and ye shall receive that thy joy might be full." I used to ask God every night, "Can you make it a little bit easier on me, God? Just a little bit of compassion, a little bit of love or some damn thing?" Zero. So I figured, well, I guess God was too goddamn busy for me, huh? And I always used to think, 'cause in the Bible they talk about long suffering. Blessed are those who have long suffering, who are meek and blah blah blah. I think it's funny, you don't see no hakujins suffering like we did. How many hakujins are asked to leave a place because we don't any hakujins in here, you know? Everybody kisses hakujins' ass because they're hakujin, but we're just something lesser than, and I resent the hell out of that, 'cause I know I'm, I know goddamn well in my heart I'm just as, if not better than them because we come from a better culture. We used to, we were living in luxury compared to some of these people living in goddamn caves. So I resent that bullshit.

MN: Well you, you mentioned your stepfather and, you know, getting abused at home, and then after going out of camp you were also harassed by the children. How did you survive all of this? You're, you're getting abuse from all ends.

TS: Well, that's a good question and I think the answer is you internalize it, which is kinda the worst thing you can do. There was no, there was no therapists available, so you just, I guess what I did was I internalized it and felt, well, I guess it's my fault. I must've done something bad to live a life like this. When I see people around me that are, the people that, the Japanese people around me, my classmates were little bit better off than I was, 'cause at least their father gave a damn about them. But I guess I internalized it and I felt maybe, who knows, maybe I did something bad and I need to be punished like this. But I could never understand it. I never did anything... I believe a kid who is naughty, who does something to hurt people should be punished, but to get your head caved in because, "I'm not your father and you're not my son and you're living under my roof," I mean, that's not justification. Well, that's how I had to grow up that way. And you don't think I'm resentful? I am. Why should other people have it so easy and I have it so bad? What the hell did I do? It's painful to think about those old days.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.