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MN: Now, the following year in '45, the war was over. And when you heard that the war with Japan was over, what was your reaction?

LW: Well, of course we were, we were glad, and I didn't know what was going to happen immediately since the war had ended, but then we got word that the folks that were in the camps and had relocated to other cities, Midwestern and Eastern cities, were gradually being processed where they could return. And so my, I was glad to hear that, and my brother, oldest brother by that time had, was in Washington, D.C. employed in, as part of the WRA. He was a draftsman, he was an architect, and he worked in a department that dealt with architecture under the WRA, so since we were now permitted to go back, he took his family and started back to Dinuba.

MN: Do you know what changed your brother's mind about returning to the farm?

LW: Returning to Dinuba?

MN: Yes.

LW: Well, the WRA employment was not anything that he could count on in the future, and he had spent a couple of years as an architect for a while before he evacuated, but he felt, "Well, here was an opportunity and somebody's got to take care of the farm since Lloyd, my brother, is not going to return." By that time Lloyd had made up his mind to prepare for the ministry, so he, his mother was still alive and was returning to Dinuba. Other siblings that were able to were going to return, and he felt the responsibility, I'm sure, which he gladly accepted, to go back to Dinuba and take over the home and the farm. So there was, think he had mixed, I don't know how, what his real thoughts were about that, but here I think for one thing he wanted to take the responsibility and the future in his particular field was kind of in doubt, kind of doubtful about whether there would be an opportunity for him in the architectural field.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.