<Begin Segment 11>

TI: And how about you, so your mother is so busy and then she gets injured. Who's watching you? 'Cause you're seven years old, eight?

RO: Right, well, in the camp all of us kids used to play together. There was really no need for babysitters really because there were adults around, especially the Issei mothers and fathers were around. So we used to, I used to just run out and play with my friends and the apartment next door to us was Dr. Nakadate who was a dentist and he had a son and a daughter and I used to play with her, Stella. And then there were lots of other kids around so we would just play.

TI: So this was a little bit different for you because now all of a sudden you had Japanese American playmates because before your school was white and black and you really weren't in a Japanese, or Japanese American community. So now all of sudden you're around lots and lots of Japanese Americans.

RO: Right, we went from nothing to just everything Japanese, Japanese American.

TI: So how was that for you as a, seven, eight year old?

RO: Well, I was having fun. And then when I was seven I pleaded with my father to let me take piano lessons and for the life of me I don't know where that came in my head but I wanted to learn to play the piano. And so I had to plead with my father and there was a minister's wife who was teaching, who knew how to play the piano so my father asked her to teach me how to play the piano. And the only way, the only piano that was available in Camp III was far away at the church, I don't know how many blocks away it was but it was pretty far. I had to walk there to practice my piano and to have my piano lessons. And when I was practicing my piano up there in 1945 in April when Roosevelt died. And I was there practicing and someone, I got word that President Roosevelt had died so I packed my books, started to walk home and I was crying. And I thought years later when I was twenty or so, "Why the heck was I crying?" That's the president who put us here, you know, I mean, it was so strange later as an adult thinking back. But that crying stayed in my memory walking back to my barrack crying because our president died.

TI: Now, because you're so young were you picking up what the adults were feeling or was it just something that you, when you heard you just kind of processed and just felt really sad about that?

RO: Yeah, I think it was... there weren't adults around 'cause I was by myself in this barrack practicing my piano lesson. And I just... I had never experienced death. I didn't, I really didn't probably understand it but someone died. It was like, and he was the president so I walked home in tears. Experiencing death for the first time, and anyway I remember that walking home crying and the church was several blocks away so I had to walk quite a ways back to my barrack. I don't remember anything else, I don't remember if anybody else in the camp was crying or if anyone talked about it or I have no memory of that.

TI: You mentioned the church and I was wondering about your father, did he continue to have services inside camp?

RO: Yes, he did.

TI: And did you attend those services?

RO: I must have but I've blanked all that out.

TI: Because these would be done in Japanese, these services?

RO: Yes, it would have been done in Japanese and there would be no reason for me to be there. There was no piano, I mean I was just barely learning how to play the piano.

TI: But I was just thinking because in San Diego it's probably a fairly small congregation and then at Camp III I was wondering if it was much larger or what the circumstances were.

RO: Probably was much larger. I know that there was a Buddhist church there too but I never attended my father's services. I didn't have to. I had all these friends to play with.

TI: And did the San Diego people kind of stay together at Camp III? Were they all kind of in the same area?

RO: Right because the camp was divided geographically I realized later. Camp I had a lot of the Sacramento, Florin, northern California people. Camp II had Watsonville, Salinas and that whole central part of California. Camp III had San Diego, Riverside, well, there were some Riverside people in camp one, but Camp III had also the central, some people from Reedley, Dinuba, those folks.

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