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MN: Now, your father, what did he do in camp?

CO: He worked on a project which was supposed to eventually supply fresh fish for the camp, freshwater fish, I guess, so they went around digging deep big ponds to grow fish in. Now, I never really went to visit any of these or anything. It was a complete failure as far as I was concerned, I guess because we never did have fish out of those ponds. But it kept them occupied. He had access to this tractor for digging up these ponds and so he had access to gasoline and a tractor, so he would hitch up a little cart and take a whole bunch of us down to the Colorado River. So we used to go periodically to the river for fun and swimming and all that sort of thing. So my father was, my father was a mischievous kind of person, too. A little bit of a rule-breaker, so he would do things like that. We learned that from him, my sister and I. [Laughs]

MN: But it sounds like he was able to break the rules because people liked him. He had a very likable personality.

CO: Yeah, he was easygoing. And he was a smart man, I think, you know. I mean, you don't think about your father in that way very much, but I think he was quite bright.

MN: Now, what about your mother? What did she do in camp?

CO: Well, she had this, Emiko, the baby. And if she had jobs in camp, I was not particularly aware. It may have been part time like working in the mess halls. I think she did work in the mess halls some time, but I was just out of the house and gone, I don't know what she did. I know she took sewing classes. She may have joined other women's organizations and stuff like that, but I didn't know. I wasn't paying attention to what she was doing. I was out with my peers. You know, if you don't eat with your family... I mean, after all, the camp had a perimeter, so you couldn't go very far, so nobody worried about where you were particularly or anything. So we just roamed around a lot. Gee, so I don't know what my mother did. [Laughs] Besides, I was really thinking of her, she's such an old fashioned lady anyway, so I didn't particularly want to be around her that much.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.