<Begin Segment 11>

MN: Now, comparing your lives during the period of preparing to go to camp and then trying to reestablish your lives, which was more difficult?

CO: I don't think of it in terms of difficulty. I think with going into camp, we had no choice, so we just did what we were told, and so we can't consider that difficult. I imagine coming out of camp was probably very difficult for people. I was still in school, so I had that framework of going to school. It wasn't like I had to look for a job or a place to stay or anything like that because my parents had to deal with all that kind of stuff. So I know going from the camp schools, going to Roosevelt High for two months while I was living with Hisaye, and that was a scene, man. And then at the goldfish farm I transferred to Huntington Beach High School. And then when I was sixteen, I told my family, I told my parents, "I don't want to live in the country. I want to live in the city, and so I'm going back to L.A." And I knew of other kids who had hired out as schoolgirls, so I said I was going to get a job and move to L.A. And they let me. When I think back on that, seeing how my mother was one of these very retiring, fearful kinds of persons, she let me go. Well, I guess she knew better than to oppose. [Laughs] So I went to L.A. and got a job as a schoolgirl with a Jewish family in the Fairfax area, and I went to L.A. High. So that, all that, I didn't think of as being difficult. I fit right into the school and so it was not a major transition for me.

MN: So you didn't feel any hostility from the other students?

CO: Uh-uh.

MN: How about yourself, though? Did the camp experience change the way you viewed the Nikkei community and yourself?

CO: Yes.

MN: How did it change you?

CO: It got so I didn't like the Japanese community as a generalization. That their outlook was narrow, it was provincial, it was like the roles that the Japanese women were put into and everything, I was pretty sure I didn't want to be stuck into those categories and roles and ways of being. And I really did not like that gossipy kind of lifestyle where, you know, there was always some critical person about how you looked or how you behaved or what you did and all these things. It really felt like, it really cramps a person's style to have to conform to all those norms and values and customs and behavior and all that stuff. Yeah, I was pretty aware of that. Well, where were we now? Yeah, I didn't really want to identify within that group.

MN: So did you cut yourself off from the community?

CO: Well, I did that over time. Let's see. Where would be a good place to start? I went to UCLA for a couple of years, and there, it was hard to escape the social life that went on that was Nikkei. 'Cause they had a sorority, they had their own clubs and groups, and I kept being drawn into them. And it was very hard to say no because... well, because you would make yourself very, known as a I don't know what, but anyway, it was just kind of hard to do. So I transferred to Berkeley so that I could get away from that. I mean, I was doing well at UCLA scholastically and everything, but I decided, "No, I got to get away, get out of this Southern California Nikkei culture." So I transferred to Berkeley.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.