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MN: Now I'm gonna move ahead a little, and I want to ask you about redress and when the Japanese American community started to talk about, "Let's get redress from the government," what was your reaction to that?

JD: I thought that was fine. What I was sorry about -- because I didn't feel that I really deserved to have that money 'cause I was still a kid, okay. Who I felt sorry for were the Isseis who were gone, like my mom and dad were already gone at that point. I wish that they had gotten the money 'cause they're the ones who really suffered. And sure, some of the Nisei suffered too, but for myself as a kid, I thought, what did I do? I mean, yes, I was wrongfully imprisoned, as you will, but getting the twenty thousand, yeah, maybe yes and maybe no. At least we got a letter of apology. If it wasn't for that I would've said, "Phooey with you, Uncle Sam," but at least we got that as well. But I felt sorry for my mom and dad because they didn't get it.

MN: After the war, what, when was the first time you returned to Topaz?

JD: The first time was, I think I had gone up to Idaho for a class reunion, high school class reunion, and I can't remember now if it was the fortieth. It was a long time ago. We were at that time living in Walnut Creek, and we had gone up there for a high school reunion, and I said, "On the way back, Jack, I would like to stop and visit Topaz if we can." So we flew in from Oakland to Delta -- I mean, there was a direct flight from Oakland to Boise, but since I wanted to come back into Salt Lake we took a plane that took us from Oakland to Salt Lake and then transferred from Salt Lake to Boise, and the reverse. So we stopped in in Salt Lake, got a car, went down to Delta and started asking around about where this, where Topaz is, and we went into this gas station and there was this young teenage girl, and we said, "Can you tell us how to get to Topaz? It was a camp during the war." This girl didn't know anything about it. She didn't know of its, of its existence or anything. So I said okay, so then we went across the way and we drove around a little bit, and close by to where this gas station was, was a newspaper office, and I thought, oh, they should know, and so, but it was after five o'clock, so we thought, well, maybe it isn't open. But as were parking we saw this, I don't know, she was probably an eight or nine year old girl who went into the office, so I thought, oh, it's got to be, at least the door is open, so we decided, okay, we're gonna park the car and go into the newspaper office. So when we went in we asked about Topaz and where it was, and it turned out to be Jane Beckwith's sister, and so she says, "Well, if you can wait until she comes here she'll be more than glad to take you," and her sister said she, that her sister Jane always went to the nursing home to feed their mother and so, and that'll take maybe a half hour or whatever. So anyway, so I said okay, so she said come back in about, I forget what time it was, but as we walked back to the car and we got into the car and we're getting ready to leave, here came, I forget whether it was Jane or her sister who came running out of the newspaper office and says, "Oh, wait, wait, wait. Jane is here. Jane is here. Why don't you wait and talk to her?" So we got out of the car, talked to Jane, and she said, yeah, she has to go feed her mom, and she says why don't we meet at the corner parking lot, which was the parking lot for the police department, but it was kind of empty, so she said, "Why don't you wait for me there, and I'll be back in a half hour and I'll take you out there." So I said okay, that was fine.

So we did and she took us out there, and when we got there it was, I think I want, because for all the years that we were out after the war ended I never wanted to go back to Topaz. I don't know if it was because it was too painful or what, the memories of it or what. I don't know. I just, or to me, I guess it associated with the fact that we were Japanese and we were not liked before the war, and I didn't want to associate myself with that. And so, but then as I got older I have to put a closure to this chapter of my life, so we went, and she showed us the camp. We went through the gate -- I mean, it was open -- and as we, and I told her about my father's fish pond 'cause she asked me what block did I live in, so I told her and I said there was a fish pond there. She said, "There was?" And I said yeah. She said, -- and at that time she was trying to get a project going where she could stake each block, and I think that actually was just finished not too long ago by the Boy Scouts in that area, but at time that's what she was trying to do. So she knew where Block 20 was, so we walked from the gate to Block 20, and sure enough this, there was this fish pond. She said, well, she never knew that. And, but I remember, too, as we were walking to the block I would look down on the ground and you'd see bits and pieces of broken china, Japanese broken china. People couldn't take it with them, so they just broke it or they maybe threw it out or whatever, so here were all these broken pieces on the, looking straight at you. So I remember that, and then after we finished with that we came back to, to Delta. And she did ask me about Toru Saito at that time, and I didn't know him at all, I didn't know about him until last year when we made this decision to go to Topaz, but she asked me about him. I said no, I don't know him. But anyway, so then we stayed in Topaz that night and had dinner, and then we left the following morning and went to Boise and -- not Boise, but to Salt Lake. And I think we looked around Salt Lake for a little bit and then we caught the plane, took it back to Oakland to go back to Walnut Creek.

MN: So when you visited that time, did you get the closure that you were searching for?

JD: Yeah, I think I did. Yeah, I think I did. Just the fact that I went to see it and to see what was there. There was nothing there, actually, except there were a couple of families, I guess, who bought a couple of the barracks or a couple of the blocks or something, and I think they're still there. They were still there when we went last year. Course, in the meantime, since that time and today, Jane had started a project to try to buy as many blocks as she could, or at least selected blocks anyway. And I remember when she came and sent a flyer out about that, and one of the blocks that she was wanting to purchase was Block Twenty, so did contribute at that time 'cause that was the camp, the block that I was in, so I did that.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.