Densho Digital Archive - Ruth Y. Okimoto Interview

<Begin Segment 1>

TI: So today's April 8, 2011, we're in San Francisco at the Hotel Kabuki. We're interviewing Ruth Okimoto and on camera is Dana Hoshide and interviewing is me, Tom Ikeda. And so, Ruth, I'm just going to start from the beginning. Can you tell me when you were born?

RO: April 15, 1936, in Tokyo, Japan.

TI: And what was the name given to you at birth?

RO: Yoshiko. Yoshiko Okimoto.

TI: So where does Ruth come from?

RO: We arrived in the United States and when I started kindergarten the teacher could not say Yoshiko. So all of us had Japanese names and so my father, my parents had to give us American, quote, "American names" so since my parents were Christian ministers all of us our Paul, Joseph, Daniel. And that's where I got Ruth.

TI: Oh, interesting. So biblical names?

RO: All biblical names, right.

TI: So you mentioned your parents. Let's start with your father. Can you tell me his name and where he was from?

RO: Okay, his name is Tamaichi and he's from Yamaguchi prefecture and I don't know the exact town where he's from, I just know that it was Yamaguchi. And he had a very sad childhood, if you want me to --

TI: Yeah, please.

RO: His mother was kicked out, you know, this back in the days when the mother-in-law had a lot of say and she didn't like my father's mother apparently, she was beautiful maybe that's why she was threatened.

TI: So a conflict between the mother-in-law and the wife.

RO: Yes, and this is... no mother-in-law and yes, my father's mother. And typical, I did some research on that and that happened often apparently during those years. If a mother of the son didn't like the daughter, the married, the daughter-in-law she'd just kick 'em out of the house, send them home.

TI: So your father's mother was just kicked out?

RO: Kicked out, just sent home to her original family I guess. So my poor father was raised by a mean stepmother. She wasn't very nice from what I gathered and they had... so he had three I think half siblings and so at age sixteen he just because his stepmother just did not like him, appreciate him, he left home and struggled on his own from age sixteen. And what he did apparently was he became a cook because he didn't have any education. Of course in those days I guess you had to be pretty wealthy to have your kids go to school. So he was a cook in some I think it was a bakery or something like that. Anyway, he became a very good cook. My mother being a professional woman and the youngest of six children, didn't know how to cook when they got married. So it was fortunate that my father knew how to cook. And he was basically the cook in our family.

TI: How interesting. So sixteen he's a cook and at what age did he meet your mother?

RO: Well it was one of those baishakunin. He was converted to Christianity when he was about in his late twenties or mid-twenties he was drafted into the Army. And he contracted TB so the Army kicked him out and he had no place to go and he ended up in this Christian missionary place and the kindness I suppose... I mean, he was then converted to Christianity. And in both cases it's kind of sad how they became Christians. I mean sad because it was events in their lives that turned them into Christians.

<Begin Segment 2>

TI: Yeah, so let's talk about your mother.

RO: Okay.

TI: And so tell me your mother's name, where she was from and then a little bit of her story.

RO: Okay, her name is Kirie, K-I-R-I-E, Kumagai was her maiden name, and she was from Yukiha in the Fukuoka prefecture and that's where the astronaut who was killed in the Challenger, his grandfather came from Yukiha. So when I went there I saw a plaque, a huge memorial plaque that had the Challenger, his name and the grandfather from Yukiha. Anyway, my mother was born and raised in Yukiha and I consider her a feminist because in those days if you research the women's history of Japan there was a group called the Blue Stocking Organization. These were women who were rebelling against the confinement of being a woman in Japan. And I'd like to think that somehow my mother caught the spirit of that because she was a feminist I believe. I don't know if she would have ever considered herself that but she defied her father and after she was converted to... well, first she defied her father and went to Hawaii for graduate school. First of all she went to a teacher's college in Fukuoka and her father was very much against her furthering her education because he told her, "No man's going to marry you, you're going to be too educated." But she insisted and became a school teacher and taught school in Yukiha and in 1999 I went to visit that school in Yukiha. It was so touching for... I mean it made me cry to see, to realize what she sacrificed to become a school teacher. And I saw her picture with all the other teachers along the hallway.

TI: And so back up... so sacrifice to become a teacher because the conditions were hard?

RO: Her father did not want her to become educated and then when she did go ahead, defied her father's wishes and became a school teacher, yes, life was pretty rough for her because in those days she lived... Yukiha is in a valley. There's two tall mountains and for her to be able to teach she had to walk three miles around the mountain and up the hill to teach every day. And so sometimes she would apparently not walk all the three miles back home but would stop at a halfway point and stay at a student's house, home. And I had a chance to meet him when I visited in 1999 and he was the tallest Japanese fellow that I've seen, he was tall, six feet I think. And anyway, he remembered my mother and the fact that some days she'd stay late and couldn't make it all the way home so she would stop and stay at his parents' place.

TI: Sounds like she was a very independent strong willed woman?

RO: She was, she was I found out. And then after she taught for about six years in Yukiha she decided that she wanted to become a school principal. And again, of course, her father was adamant, again told her, "Who's going to marry you if you become a school principal?" Anyway she defied her father, went to Hawaii to further her education so she could qualify as a principal, and while she was there her father who was already in his eighties died of a heart attack. And she was absolutely devastated and she felt that she caused his death. Of course, he was eighty-five years old but still for her psychologically she thought she caused his death. And she was staying in Hawaii with her older brother who was seventeen years older than her and he was a carpenter in Hawaii so she was staying with him while she was going to school. And after her father died and she blamed herself for it she stayed at home and just locked herself in and her brother got very worried so finally told her, "Get out of the house." And somehow she connected with Mrs. Kuroda, who's the mother of Reverend Kuroda, I think his name was Akira Kuroda who was a minister in the Oriental Missionary Society, the Holiness Church. So she went to that church and Mrs. Kuroda took her under her wing, took my mother under her wing.

TI: And this is now where, what city are we in?

RO: This is in Japan in Tokyo.

TI: Okay, so she was in Hawaii and then she returned after your father had died?

RO: Right, she returned to Yukiha and decided to go... she was converted in Hawaii, then returned to Yukiha to try to convert her family. And they told me, my cousin told me when I visited her, met her for the first time that the family was adamant, you know, they were pretty devout Buddhist. And they would have nothing to do with becoming a Christian and so my poor mother got back on the train and went back to Tokyo and went to the Tokyo Seminary to become a minister. So she finished her training, was ordained as a minister and I think she was one of the first few women, Protestant women in Japan. I will need to do research on that but she... because this was back in the 1920s when she became a minister. And she returned... she went to some town where the church sent her, the conference sent her, and she had a church for six months. And then the bishop of the Oriental Missionary Society called her in and said, "Kirie, you need to get married." So he gave her a choice, either Tamaichi Okimoto or this man who was headed for Brazil. She had a choice either to go to Brazil or go to the United States. Fortunately she chose to go to the United States, married my father, and they had a church there in Tokyo.

TI: So let's me back up a little bit, so the reason he wanted her to get married was because he wanted to send her overseas and felt that she needed to have a husband if that were the case?

RO: Yes, absolutely.

TI: Okay.

RO: A single woman, a Japanese woman in those days cannot go off traveling like that. So right, she chose my father fortunately.

TI: And how did this gentleman know about your father at this point?

RO: That's a good question. I think because these two men were also part of the conference that my mother was involved in and she was one of the few ministers, woman female ministers.

<Begin Segment 3>

TI: So your mother was a little bit, I mean when, I hear the stories of women who... Issei women who come to the United States, oftentimes they're younger, not as educated, and in the case of your mother she was older, well-educated, a professional.

RO: That's right, that's right.

TI: So a little bit different circumstances.

RO: That's right. So she chose my father fortunately, otherwise I'd be speaking to you in Spanish.

TI: Or Portuguese maybe.

RO: Or Portuguese, right, Portuguese. So let's see. They married in 1933 and my brother, my older brother was born in 1935 and then fifteen months later I was born in 1936. And in 1937 my father was given the... was told to go to the United States to help out with development of the Oriental Missionary Society or the Holiness Church.

TI: And at this point your father was also ordained as a minister?

RO: Yes, and that surprises me because he wasn't really educated like my mother and I need to do some research, I've done a lot of research on my mother, I know her background. But my father's background, where he went to school, I just have tidbits from the concentration camp records.

TI: Interesting, but it sounds like he was also pretty independent in terms of needing to be, you know, I like your story where on his own he learned to be a really good cook. And so it was sort of like he wasn't willing just to be like a dishwasher or something. He really wanted to learn.

RO: Absolutely. While he... when my parents arrived in the United States in 1937 I discovered records where he went to the same elementary school where we were sent, where we went, he was studying English. I never did understand until that point when I saw those records why his handwriting was so beautiful, he had beautiful handwriting. And it turned out he went to the same grammar school we were going to for three years, night school. 'Cause obviously he had to work but he learned English that way. And it was fortunate that he did that because after the war the only way he was able to support us -- 'cause the minister's salary was so low -- he became a gardener and he had to speak English to work with the rich families in Coronado because we were down in San Diego.

TI: But that's interesting that he attended the same school that you did. But backing up, it's interesting because you hear about Christian missionaries and I always have this image of people from the United States going to different countries to be Christian missionaries. In this case, Christian missionaries came from Japan to the United States so I have to ask the question why? I mean it's kind of like it seems different.

RO: To minister to the Isseis here because they needed Japanese-speaking ministers here in the United States and that's why my father and mother came because they were both ministers for the Japanese congregation.

TI: Okay, so that makes sense. So to get a Christian minister fluent in Japanese you really had to have them trained in Japan and then you would send them to the United States, okay.

RO: So we left Tokyo. They were ministers for six months, I mean, I know they did some ministry in Japan. My father in fact was sent to Korea for a year I discovered, he never told us about that. I often wondered where he learned how to make kimchee so well. Now after I read the records, oh, that's where. He was an excellent cook and his kimchee was better than what you could buy in the store. But anyway he served as a, quote, "missionary" to Korea for a year then returned to Tokyo and that's when the bishop then told my mother she had a choice.

TI: Now did your parents ever talk about being a Christian missionary in Asia, primarily Japan but in this case Korea because in the United States there's a stronger tradition of Christianity and so I could see where it would be perhaps easier in the United States than in a place like Japan where Buddhism is so entrenched. Did they ever talk about how, you talk about your mother and how her family wouldn't do it but I was just wondering how difficult it was to be a missionary in Japan?

RO: I'm sure it was difficult. I never did discuss that with my parents, what it was like for them as ministers in Japan. I guess I just wasn't curious enough. I was more interested in their personal lives not as ministers but just their whole background so I never really discussed that with either of my parents. In fact, I'm so sorry that I didn't really talk to them about their early lives in Japan. I mean, I only learned about it through research and going back to Japan, meeting my cousin, digging up as much information as I could.

<Begin Segment 4>

TI: Share with me a little bit about their personalities, you know, first your father, what was he like, how would people describe him or how would you describe him as a person?

RO: My father first of all was a handsome man. All the women, I mean, he had problems 'cause the women would chase him and it was a real problem for my poor mother who was not a beauty but... she wasn't ugly or anything but my father was handsome. And their marriage was troubled because of his good looks and he was an excellent speaker, he had a beautiful voice. And I used to... well, first my father gave me piano lessons, I mean he insisted... when I insisted I wanted to take piano lessons I started in Poston. I used to walk the many blocks to the church and take piano lessons and I was so excited when I got back from... when we got back from Poston and I begged my father to let me continue my piano lessons 'cause I wanted to learn how to play the "12th Street Rag" is it called? Anyway, I wanted to play all the popular music. Of course my father said, "Absolutely not, if you play the piano you're playing for the church." So I had to every Sunday at two o'clock be in the chapel to start the prelude and then go out for thirty minutes while my father preached and then I had to be back exactly at this certain time to play for the offering and then play the final, you know, the last hymn. So my parents, they made sure that... well, they wanted me to become a minister's wife. They had already ordained that since I was in high school, even grammar school probably. And so when I started to go out with my friends and go out on dates, my parents were really upset that if it wasn't a man who was going into the ministry, they made sure that I couldn't... I didn't go out with him. In fact one day this was a church event and it was a dinner and the fellows had to invite a girl to this dinner so this fellow came to the door, knocked on the door, my mother answered and he wanted to ask for permission to take me to the dinner. The poor guy had the door closed on him and my parents wouldn't let me go. So when the dinner was going on I went outside and sat on this huge concrete thing. In those days they built this big concrete had a hole in it and you'd throw your cans down there. So while the dinner was going on I went out there, sat on that concrete thing and shivered all night long and I refused to go in the house. And so my parents got so worried they called this friend of theirs, a church member. She came and picked me up and I went and slept at her house that night. I was so angry at my parents for not letting me go out with this one fellow and they didn't want me to go out with him because he was not studying to be a minister.

TI: It's so interesting that your... I mean maybe it's not, maybe it makes sense, but both your parents rebelled against their parents and yet they were so strict with you. It's almost like you would think well, I wonder if they would be different because of their personal experiences. But they were also very strict.

RO: They were and the reason why was they wanted someone in their family, the four children, someone had to become a minister. My three brothers rebelled. They were not going to become ministers. So the only thing left was okay, there's one daughter left, maybe she could become a -- well, she's to be the minister's wife then. And that was --

TI: And that's interesting too that your mother didn't... if she wanted the minister in the family, why not have you as a minister rather than a minister's wife? I mean, she was an ordained minister.

RO: That was one thing I would have never... I would have fought her tooth and nail if it were that. My mother did one thing that puzzled me and to this day I can still visualize the scene. I was in high school, I think I was a sophomore. And she was a very dedicated Christian and so every morning she would be on her knees in my father's study where there was a bed and she would be praying. And she called me in one time and she was praying that God would take her life so that I could be a good Christian. And I was kneeling with her and I got up and I shook her and said, "No, Mom, don't say that." I was so shaken that she was going to die so that I could become a Christian and hopefully a minister's wife I guess.

TI: Let me ask about that so I'm curious. Was it because she wanted you to go through some hardship and through that hardship you would become a more devout Christian? Or what was the thinking? I'm trying to understand why she would say that.

RO: Well, she was getting desperate because none of us were becoming devoted Christians, you know. We were all sort of rebelling and it was hopeless. Well, first of all my two younger brothers, my parents had bigger dreams for them. My brother who is two years younger than me he was going to be a doctor. And the youngest, Dan, who was born in the Santa Anita racetrack, the stadium, they had hopes for him to becoming a professor of some kind, go and become a... not an MD but a professor. So my two poor, two younger brothers had their destiny already my parents were hoping that they would one be a doctor, one be a professor. And my older brother, they didn't really push him for anything so the only one left to become, you know, related to a church was me. And obviously I wasn't going to be a minister so they pushed me to be a minister's wife.

TI: That's interesting. So going back, we're just talking about your parents and what they were like and you started off talking about your father, very good looking, really good speaker, lots of women were attracted to him. What about personality? I mean when he was with you was he more strict or was he kind of happy or how would you describe him?

RO: That's an interesting question, Tom, because he was very athletic. He played for some Japanese team. He was a baseball player and an excellent swimmer. He took us out to the Hayward swimming pool and I was astounded when I saw him swim across the swimming pool. I was in high school at the time I think and I didn't realize what an excellent athlete he was. And then I found out of course years later he actually played for a professional team in Japan. My mother on the other hand was also very athletic. She was a tennis player and quite accomplished I found out. Anyway, so we were, all of us, my two, well, we were all interested in sports which my father was very upset that I would go out there and play basketball with the boys, the teenage, my friends. I'd be the only girl out there playing basketball with them and then we'd have church picnics, I'd be the only girl out there playing baseball and football. So my parents got very concerned about this tomboy kid that they had, this girl that they wanted to become a minister's wife and here I was out there playing with all... only girls always playing with all the boys. 'Cause I just loved sports. I just loved playing, even football and I get teased to this day about playing football one time and I being the only girl on the team I grabbed his guy and lifted him off the ground apparently spun him around and dropped him. And I still to this day get teased I see this fellow once in a while, the fellow who was playing also, not the actual person I spun around and dropped but --

TI: But they won't let you forget that.

RO: They won't let me forget that.

TI: Oh, that's funny.

RO: So anyway my father was... he wasn't as physical or expressive as my mother was but when I turned sixteen he knocked on my door one evening, gave me a birthday card. And I was so touched that my father would remember. And years later when just before my dad was killed in an automobile accident, we talked on the phone because I was trying to reconnect with him. Because it's a long story but anyway, he told me over the phone, he said, "Yoshiko, I love you." And it was like... I'd never heard my father say those words to me and I told him, "And I love you too, Dad, thanks for everything." And a few weeks later he was gone, he was killed in an auto accident.

TI: But it was so fortunate that you at least had that conversation.

RO: Absolutely, yeah. I admired my father for what he... I knew a little bit about his background, I had seen him swim and do all those things, I knew he was very athletic and I'd heard him preach.

<Begin Segment 5>

TI: So we were talking about your mother and you were talking about how she's a loving person.

RO: And she was very physical, she'd hug us and just --

TI: Oh, that was very unusual for Issei to hug?

RO: Yes, I mean especially my youngest brother, Dan, he was like an appendage, I mean, he was always around her and she... he was a child that she wasn't expecting 'cause she was already forty-two when she gave birth to my youngest brother at the Santa Anita race -- at the stadium. It was really, really tough on her. And then of course, two weeks after the birth, we were put on a train to Poston. So she had a rough, rough time in her early forties. But my mother and father, their relationship was not... it was probably a typical Issei couple but my mother was very, as I said, affectionate and she would wake up in the morning to get us going she... we were living in this old Victorian house and it was two stories, the second floor was living quarters, downstairs was the church. It used to be a brothel during the turn of the century. So as a brothel they had this round circle where I could just envision the horses bringing the customers, right, on the carriage, dropping them off at this brothel. [Laughs] It was a beautiful house, it must have been a beautiful place back at the turn of the century. So upstairs where we lived, downstairs for a while the chapel was where probably the dancing girls did their business, I mean, did their dance and that was converted into a chapel, a small little chapel there. And then there was a living room, dining room and then a kitchen. My mother would wake up in the morning and in order to get us going she's start singing, she'd clap her hands and she would sing that song, "Makoto no kamisama tatta hitori." Anyway she would wake us up with this song, that was the alarm for us to get up and get going for school.

She was just a very happy woman, I mean, she was, as I mentioned a very loving mother and she was my best friend because after the war when we returned to San Diego and then from San Diego after a year we moved up to San Lorenzo where we lived in that former brothel place, she and I became very close because in 1950 or '51 they discovered she had colon cancer. And we found out that she only had about three months to live. I was sophomore year, end of my sophomore year going into my junior year in high school and the one memory of hearing, this my father tried to keep this from us, keep that news from us. But I can't recall how we heard it that she was dying and so my brother whose the psychiatrist today he and I when we heard the news... we used to have to go these prayer meetings on Wednesday night and I remember we heard the news and I heard the door open and I heard my brother running up the stairs to his bedroom. So I left the meeting too and ran upstairs and the two of us hugged and cried 'cause we didn't know until then that our mother was dying. And from there because the cancer had spread and it was, I found out years later, the tumor in her colon had grown to a baseball size, a hardball size so my father heard about the City of Hope down in San Diego, and of course a lot of this I found out later, so he worked with the conference to have his status changed from San Lorenzo church down to southern California. Of course there were other things going on I found out years later but anyway we moved down to San Diego, I mean, to Pasadena where we could be closer to the City of Hope and my father then was a minister at San Fernando Holiness Church and then he started a church down in Monrovia. But anyway I used to take my, drive my mother for her exams and she had surgery at the City of Hope, I was in school, I was in college and I was working part time to pay for my college and when I took her, I used to drop out, you know, get a day off, take her to the City of Hope for her appointment and one day I took her and she came out, the doctor said, "I'd like to talk to you, Ruth."

TI: Let's just establish you're only like about sixteen years old about here?

RO: No, I was nineteen. By that time I had graduated high school and we were down in Pasadena. But I was, when I found out about it, I was sixteen, seventeen.

TI: Alright.

RO: But when we moved down to Pasadena and I drove her to the City of Hope and the doctor called me in after he had examined my mother. And I sat down and he said, "Well, you know, Ruth, your mother is dying and she only has five months left to live." And I was like, "What? Nobody told me that she was dying." Five months, was like I just sat there stunned and I went out and my mother and I drove back to Pasadena and I did the usual route with her. I'd take her out for a walk around the block and for a week while I was caring for her, taking care of her, I couldn't sleep thinking that she was dying. It was like my best friend is dying. And so one day apparently because I wasn't sleeping my eyes got puffed up. So I was cooking lunch for my mother, she was sitting at the table and so she said, "Okay, Yoshiko, what's going on?" and so she said, "Come here, sit down." So I sat at the table and she said tell me what's happening. And I told her, "You're dying, Mom, you only have, the doctor said five months to live." And this scene is so vivid, she sat there at the table and sort of drummed the table with her fingers for a minute or so and then she looked at me and said, "Okay, then there's some things I want you to do. I want to have some things done before I die." Anyway, one, she wanted to see me married, she wanted to make sure that my two younger brothers were cared for... well, at that time actually Joe, my brother who's two years younger than me had gone off to college. He had gotten a scholarship and knew that he was going to off to college. So she went into a coma in May of 1956, about the first week of May she went into a coma. And so my brother, Joe, the one who did become a doctor, he would sit silently by the side of the bed, he was so shaken. And he was going off to school and off to college and he wanted, he wished -- I talked to him about this later -- he wanted to tell my mother, "I got a scholarship, I'm going to Dartmouth," but my mother was unconscious by that time so she never knew what happened with her two younger boys that she was very concerned about. Well, she had nothing to be worried about, they did quite well and accomplished successful careers in their professional life. Both went off to Ivy League schools and did well so my mother would have been very, very proud.

TI: I'm curious, you know, one of the other things she requested was that you got married. In that time period, did you get married or did something happen?

RO: She wanted me to marry a minister and there was one person that she said, "If you don't ask him to go out, I am going to ask him." And I said, "Mom, please don't do that." Yes, I did... so my parents, I didn't realize it then but my parents got involved and did that whole, you know, parent stuff that the Isseis do? I had no idea that my father had been contacting my future husband. Anyway, yes, we planned our wedding for May and he flew back from his school, from his seminary and by the time he got back though my mother was in a coma. No, wait a minute that's right, he flew back, he sat down next to the bed with her and she said, "Onegai shimasu." He was going to be the eldest in the family now 'cause he was older than my older brother. So it was like, "I'm turning my children over to you as you'll be the eldest in the family." And then she wanted to see us married so we planned the wedding in May but nine days before the wedding she died. So I cancelled everything. I cancelled it until August -- this was May -- and I was brokenhearted that she... that was the one thing she wanted to do was to see her only daughter get married and she missed it by nine days.

TI: My sense is she knew that was going to happen so she found some comfort in that.

RO: That's true, that's true.

TI: We're out of sequence, we're not doing it kind of chronologically but I'm just so fascinated by this story. You know, I'm just thinking so you're late teens going through all this. I mean, it's all these major life changes in terms of your mother, your best friend dying and you're caring, getting married and it must have been a very stressful time for you.

RO: It was but the one thing I have is that my relationship with my mother was just really tight and because I was the only girl in the family my father didn't think he had the resources financially to see his sons go through college. So he called, he said, "Yoshiko, you are responsible to help me finance your brothers' education." And I was like, "But I want to go to college, Pop." And he said, "No, you are to help me finance your brothers' education." But I talked to my mother and quietly I took a college prep course in my freshman year anyway and then in those days we had to bring our report cards home and our parents had to sign it. My father looked at my report card and saw that it was college prep and he said, "Yoshiko," I got a scolding from him. "I told you that you need to take typing, all the business courses so you could go out to work to help me send your brothers to school." So in tears I went back to my college counselor and said I need to take typing, blah, blah, blah, so I switched. And at the same time I had been involved in student body affairs in grammar school, too. But in high school I decided to run for treasurer and I ran and became, anyway, I ended up being the treasurer which was a good thing because I had to learn how to balance books and collect money and all of that stuff which was good training for me. And anyway after two years of typing, bookkeeping, working in the treasurer's office and doing all that stuff in my senior year, after my junior year I went back to my mother. I said, "Please, please, please ask Pop if I can switch back to my college preparatory." And my father of course was adamant, "No, no, no, Yoshiko needs to help me." But she spent two weeks talking to my father. Finally he gave in and he said, "Okay, okay." So I went to my high school counselor, Mr. Dixon and I said, "Mr. Dixon I would like to switch back to my college prep." He was so upset at me, he said, "What are you talking about? You can't do that. No college is going to take you in. You have these two business years and you have just one college prep. No, you can't do that." And I said, "Please," but I had to plead with him, "Please switch me back to college prep. I'll find... I'll do whatever I have to to get into college." Anyway so he reluctantly switched me back to taking English and all the prep stuff I had to do.

TI: But the great story is how much your mother was an advocate for you.

RO: Absolutely, all along in my life she always stood up for me, fought the battles that I had with my dad and I owe her everything you know. This whole ambition of going to school, 'cause she was a really good example for me. I mean, she not only was a loving mother but she encouraged us in our education.

TI: Okay, good. So that was great about your mother.

<Begin Segment 6>

TI: So now I'm going way back.

RO: Okay.

TI: Back to your childhood. So let me sort of recap a little bit. So you're born in 1936 in Tokyo, as a baby you came over with your older brother and your parents to San Diego. Let's talk a little bit about San Diego and where you lived, the house and the neighborhood and so tell me a little bit about that.

RO: Well when we arrived in San Diego apparently we docked in San Pedro and initially we were in this city called Newell or Newark, I wasn't aware of that. I was so little I don't have any memories of that house. But that was the church apparently, at first, and then the parents, our family moved to San Diego to Webster Street. 3042 Webster and my father built, helped with the building of a new church and we were there from '37, '38 to 1942 until we were sent to Santa Anita. But my dad apparently was good at organizing things because after that, after we returned to San Diego after the war, he was sent up to San Lorenzo where again he was responsible for constructing a chapel, a church. So I guess my dad was very good at organizing and being responsible to the building construction.

TI: Now when he would build a church, especially like San Lorenzo when you're a little bit older and you saw this, did he have to also do the fundraising to raise the money to help buy the supplies and build the church?

RO: Well, the San Lorenzo church was the property was donated from the Shinoda family, Dan Shinoda who had the nursery, there was a... they had a huge, well, at that time I thought it was huge but they raised roses, gardenias and primarily roses. They contributed, I worked at the nursery during school breaks and Christmas breaks and all. And they contributed, they sent down a lot of their roses for the Rose Parade. 'Cause I had pricks in my fingers, I was at the end of the assembly where I would have to take the roses and put them twenty-five and put the string on and all that. So they... Dan Shinoda, the Shinoda family apparently donated the grounds to San Lorenzo for the church and so my father though, because of his experience in San Diego in helping that church build, the construction, overseeing the construction of it he was then sent up to San Lorenzo and he did the same thing, he worked with the... Dan Shinoda was not only a businessman but he was also a minister.

TI: Oh, that's interesting. That's kind of an interesting combination. You don't hear about that very often.

RO: Yes, that's right.

TI: It's almost like a conflict in some ways it feels like.

RO: You would think so right. But he was the English speaking minister and my dad was the Issei minister and so after we lived in that Victorian house for a while, then they started the construction.

TI: So let's go back to San Diego and for you what childhood memories do you have of San Diego?

RO: A few, a couple. I remember going to kindergarten, my first day in kindergarten and of course we just spoke Japanese at home. So I still have that visual memory of standing in the middle of the kindergarten school classroom crying my heart out 'cause I couldn't speak English, I spoke Japanese. And that's my memory of kindergarten is that I obviously learned how to speak English but it was terrifying 'cause I didn't know, I mean, I spoke Japanese at home. I must have learned some English because there were other children at the church, but my primary language was Japanese.

TI: Now were there other Japanese at this kindergarten or this school?

RO: No, that was the whole trauma of this thing was that we were the only Japanese family, Japanese American family at this school that was fifty percent African American and fifty percent white. And we were the only Japanese American family there. It was terrifying and then after, I don't have any recollection of what happened in kindergarten other than that one memory of standing in the middle of the classroom crying my eyes out. I do have memories after we returned from Poston.

TI: We'll get to those later because actually I want, yeah, you to talk about the differences that you saw.

<Begin Segment 7>

TI: So let's move on then to the war in terms of, yeah, December 7, 1941. So what are some memories about that time? You're very young still, you're what like six?

RO: I was six, six years old.

TI: Yeah, six years old. So but tell me what you can remember about when the war started.

RO: When the war started we had to go to the city hall to get vaccinated for measles and we got vaccinated and we returned back to the parsonage and we all came down with the measles. Within a few days we were covered with measles and so the rest of the San Diego community had moved on to Santa Anita except we were the only one left because of, we were quarantined. So after we got through our measles they had to ship us to Santa Anita and I remember the army truck coming, one of those with the canvas on it. And our neighbor was German, she was a German woman, and she decided to cook a meal for us and we went over there. It was soup, it was... I now recall, remember what it is but at that time I didn't know what it was 'cause I was just used to miso soup. But it was split pea soup and the texture was so strange none of us kids ate it, I felt, years later thinking about it, I was thinking I wished I could have gone back to apologize to the lady for first all for being so kind to make a meal for us and we couldn't eat it because we just weren't familiar with split pea soup. After the meal that we couldn't eat we went down to... walked down the street and the soldiers were standing there. There must have been three of them but they had this rifle, they were standing there with the rifle with this long bayonet at the end and I remember as a child, a six year old walking over there and seeing these soldiers with the bayonets and I thought, oh my god, are they going to kill us? What are they doing? And at that moment it was so terrifying and my mother was six months pregnant and she had to sit on that bench in this truck and for two hours, it must have taken us more than two hours 'cause there was no freeway at the time.

TI: And in the truck it was just your family?

RO: It was just our family.

TI: So your father, your pregnant mother, your older brother, you and younger brother?

RO: Right. And it was just a bench and those trucks have that canvas and it's just tied at the end so you look down and you can see the road and the flapping of the canvas. And I remember to this day looking down there, scared, hanging on for dear life onto the bench. And I don't know how many hours it took us to get to Santa Anita because in those days there weren't freeways.

TI: Do you remember any interaction between the family and the soldiers? Like I imagine six years old, you're probably pretty cute. I mean, I would think. I was wondering did the soldiers just kind of... were they friendly with you?

RO: That I don't remember. I don't remember anything other than just being terrified at seeing this bayonet and I don't know if my father conversed with them at all, I doubt it. I just remember being marched to the truck and then climbing aboard and ending up in Santa Anita racetrack.

TI: Before we go to Santa Anita I want to back up a little bit because your father was a minister so probably perceived as a community leader and the FBI right after December 7th picked up a lot of the Japanese community leaders. Did that happen in San Diego and was your father ever a potential target for that?

RO: Yes. I found out this much later but I remembered my father had a suitcase by the door and it occurred to me years later why he had that suitcase there. And through the records I found out that they took the Buddhist priest in San Diego to the labor camp, I guess it was called the labor camp. And they were ready to take my father but they found out he was a minister, a Protestant, Christian minister so I saw the memo saying because he's a Christian minister they weren't going to pick him up. So he came with us, he stayed with the family.

TI: So that's interesting just in terms of when you think about, I guess, a bias in terms of religion. If you were a Christian minister you were okay but if you're a Buddhist minister then you were suspect.

RO: Absolutely. But they were curious about the fact that I think the issue of my father having been drafted into the Japanese army but then kicked out, I think that also was why they were looking into his background.

<Begin Segment 8>

TI: Now the house and the church in San Diego. Who took care of it? What happened to that?

RO: The church was leased out or rented out to an African American community church. And so the minister and his family lived in the parish, in the parsonage and then they used the church during the three years.

TI: Okay, that was fortunate to have someone actually watching over the place?

RO: Yes, and there was this one woman, named Mary Griffith who was a Caucasian woman who apparently made sure that all the Japanese Americans were, their possessions were cared for. She took care of my father's church and the possessions.

TI: And so was the church used as a storage facility?

RO: There was a building in the back, it was really a shack but we lived in it after we came back but anyway in that building I think they moved all of our things there or I don't know how, what Mary Griffith did but she made sure that the church member's possessions or especially our family, things were taken care of.

TI: Now I'm curious about the location of the church because you mentioned that the school you went to was half African American and half white. So it sounds like your location wasn't necessarily close to a Japanese community?

RO: No, you're right because at that time most of the Japanese Americans, Japanese Isseis, they were all farmers. So they would come in from the rural countryside to come to church. There were a few families, Japanese American families who either had a store or something like that. There were a few of them in San Diego city but most of the members were out in the countryside. So I remember going with my father on what they call homon, go visit the church members. And long drive out the country.

TI: Now was that similar the Buddhist church in San Diego or was there a kind of a Nihonmachi kind of area in San Diego?

RO: That's a good question. A Nihonmachi I don't... the Buddhist church probably if there was a Nihonmachi it would probably have been started and more cared for by the Buddhist families. And that would interesting to find out if the Buddhist members were more professional than the Japanese who were farmers. There was another Christian church though in San Diego, the congregational church. Reverend Kikuchi I think was his name, I may have the name wrong but there was another Christian church in San Diego. And of course everybody had to leave but for... probably for a lot of the church members who were out, who were farmers, they probably stored their things out there on their farms.

TI: Well, and back to San Diego, I mean, you were probably too young yet but Japanese language school? Was there a Japanese language school for like your older brother later on?

RO: My mother being a teacher tried, really tried to have a Japanese class. We all refused, we said, "No, we're not going to learn Japanese." it was just... oh, my poor mother being a professional teacher couldn't get her own kids to learn to read and write Japanese. It was very frustrating for her.

TI: Good so I can tell people the reason San Diego didn't have a Japanese language school is because Ruth and her siblings refused.

RO: Refused to let her professional mother conduct those classes. [Laughs]

TI: Okay, we'll ask why wasn't there one in San Diego? [Laughs]

RO: I'm sure there was one but we certainly refused to go if there was. My mother tried so hard to teach us.

TI: Okay, I'm just kidding. That just seemed funny.

<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Okay, so let's go to Santa Anita. So your pregnant mother and you and your brothers and your father finally make it to Santa Anita in a truck because the measles you had to wait, you're quarantined and finally you get there. So tell me your impressions of Santa Anita.

RO: Oh, fences, searchlights, when we arrived by the time because we were delayed for two weeks, by the time we arrived there the barrack which is originally set up for I think four quarters, I mean, you know, by the time we arrived, the fourth, one of the apartments as they were called was split again, yet again so we just had enough room for the bed, for four beds like this and enough of an aisle for me to walk all the way to the end. Because I was the girl and I had to go way to the end right by a window with no curtains and the searchlight was right over there and every night the searchlight would come all night long, hit my face and of course 'cause we had no curtains it was like, it was hard to go to sleep. And later on I wrote a poem about "searchlights robbed blackness from my night." I wrote a poem about that years later. Anyway we were there from May 1st to August 28th. And my brother was born in August two weeks before they put us on a train. So let's see, May, June, July, so my mother was five months pregnant then when we left San Diego and she gave birth to Dan at the Santa Anita... I call it he was born in a horse stable. And he says, "All great men are born in horse stables." In stables, he didn't use the word horse.

TI: That's funny.

RO: So two weeks after he was born, they put us on a train to Poston. It was very hard on my mother, I mean, she was forty-two years old, she had just given birth and it was a hard delivery. And the one thing I remember when word came back that I had another brother, I was waiting for a sister not a brother so I was so upset I ran away from home. Of course running away from home is running along the fence and just circling around Santa Anita and I was crying 'cause I didn't have a sister. Anyway, of course my dear brother I love him dearly. He was supposed to be Danielle, not Daniel.

TI: That's funny.

<Begin Segment 10>

TI: Okay, Ruth, we're going start the second section and we had just finished talking about Santa Anita and you were just about to talk about going to Poston. So your mother had just delivered your baby brother and like two weeks later you're now going to Poston. So why don't you pick up the story here.

RO: Okay, well on the train my mother and little baby brother were put in the train where they put all the sickly people. I can't remember what they call that train or that car.

TI: So was it like a Pullman car?

RO: Yeah, it's very dark, all the windows are drawn and there's beds in there and that's where my mother was with my little brother, two week old brother. And apparently it had gotten very stuffy in there and Dan was having a hard time breathing. So I get a tap on the shoulder and my father says, "Yoshiko, you go there and let your mom and Daniel come out." So they took my seat and got fresh air, I was sent into this dungeon for the rest of the trip to Poston. But I was glad that my mother, I knew that she needed to get out, it was awful in there, very dark and anyway we arrived in Poston in Parker. And then they put us on a truck and sent us down to Camp III. I know that it was a truck because I've seen pictures of it, not that I remember it myself 'cause once we arrived in Camp III, the memories I have of Camp III is our room, our twenty by twenty-four foot "apartment." And my father was handy with his hands so he built a little kitchenette for my mother because Dan was just two weeks old and my mother's milk was drying up and so she needed to heat up milk. And what we did as a family, the three of us kids, we would go eat at the mess hall and at each meal one of us would bring our milk back to the apartment or place so my mother could heat it up and feed Dan. So I teased Dan about, "You know, we sacrificed our milk for you," so every the three meals one of us would bring our milk back.

TI: So it's interesting, they didn't really have any like special provisions for babies or things like that where they would have formula or something?

RO: To make the formula put it... right, no they didn't.

TI: So everyone just had to fend for themselves.

RO: Right, at least that's how I remember it 'cause I sacrificed my milk once a day.

TI: And so a little kitchenette so a little like hot plate?

RO: Right, there was a hot plate that on one of my father's trips out to Chicago, he would get permission to go out and do some church business, conference business because he was the conference secretary apparently. So he came back with a hot plate one time and that caused a terrible accident. My mother was heating up something on the hot plate and unfortunately the only kind of pot she had was a Corning glass pot. And she put it on the burner and she lifted it up and the bottom fell out and just scorched her leg just totally, her skin just all peeled off. So she was sent to the hospital of course and I remember that because it was awful for my poor mother. Then Dan, I forgot how old... he was two years old, came down with pneumonia so he was sent to the hospital and my poor mother, every time if she went to visit him he would cry and scream when she'd leave. So the nurses there asked her not come but she wanted to have Dan checked on so she had our neighbors go up there and check to make sure, you know, see Dan every day. So it was pretty tough on my mother, I mean, she's in her forties, early forties, I mean to first of all lose all the skin on one leg and then having a baby that she couldn't go to see at the hospital when he got pneumonia, it was tough. I think that her early death, the cancer, must have been started during those turbulent years, 'cause she died ten years after we came home or eleven years almost.

TI: So you think maybe the stress or just the --

RO: I think so 'cause she's young, she was only fifty-five, fifty-six.

<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.

<Begin Segment 12>

TI: You may have been too young to remember or have memories of this, but after about... well, early 1943 they had the leave clearance form, the "loyalty questionnaire." Do you recall any of that happening or any discussions or any tensions or anything about that?

RO: I don't as a child but as a researcher I ran across a lot. I ran across my father's but no, as a child I had no idea that that was going on.

TI: Yeah, see unless you were probably involved with it --

RO: Right, I was too young.

TI: Okay.

RO: But I did do a lot of research on it.

TI: Yeah, and I am too. But it's just such a fascinating topic in terms of how divisive that became for the community.

RO: It was terrible to do that.

TI: And just how for many of the people when I ask about it, was just how confusing and ambiguous and how they answered it and it made such a big difference later on.

RO: Absolutely. I think I heard this later when I was an adult, that my mother was thinking of going back to Japan. this was not the America that she thought it was so, yeah, she wanted to go back.

TI: But your parents, it sounds like they both, in your research answered "yes-yes" and stayed in Camp III in Poston.

<Begin Segment 13>

TI: I looked and did some research on you and you had these vivid descriptions of the animals in Poston, in particular things like scorpions, coyotes, so tell me about some of that.

RO: Rattlesnakes. Rattlesnakes were all over the place. In fact I went out one day to get some water at the end of our barrack and as I was leaning over to turn the faucet on there was a rattlesnake there and that just... so in my later drawings, all rattlesnakes, scorpions. Saw a lot of scorpions, you could see the scorpion's trail in the sand. And in fact I was so fascinated with it that I asked my father for a jar and I scooped up a scorpion and my father helped me put some alcohol in it so I put the lid on it and I put that scorpion bottle right next to my cot. That was my pet, we weren't allowed pets in camp.

TI: But what did the alcohol do?

RO: Killed the scorpion.

TI: Okay, so it really wasn't a pet, it was more or a specimen I guess.

RO: Right, I mean it would've eventually died anyway but my father helped. Maybe I kept it alive until it died and my father put... I can't recall the sequence but that scorpion became my pet. That's why it shows up a lot in my drawings.

TI: And you also talk about the howling of coyotes at night.

RO: Oh, at night, yes. And the coyotes used to come, you'd hear clang, clang 'cause they would turn over the garbage cans and salvage what they could. But they were a nuisance. But later in my research, the tribes have this mountain, I mean, they value they respect the coyotes. And there's a myth about the coyotes jumping over this certain hill, I probably have all the facts confused here but they have a story in Poston on the Colorado Indian reservation about coyotes.

TI: But when you were a kid you were either frightened or just thought it was a nuisance.

RO: Yeah, it was scary to hear the howling of the coyotes. And one time, this is one thing I do remember, one day a cattle got loose, the tribe's cattle, one of them roamed into the camp and a Native American, Indian on a horseback without a saddle came riding into the camp. And I thought years later, "Is that my wild imagination that that happened? I mean did I really see a cow and an Indian on a horse?" And that stuck with me and years later I talked to one of the chiefs, a Chemehuevi chief, and I said, I asked him, "Did the tribes ever lose cows? Did a cow ever come into our camp? And he said, "Yes." And I said, "Did the Native Americans, did they come riding into our camp if there was a stray cow?" And he said, "Yes," and I thought, oh thank god, that wasn't just my imagination that I was thinking of but that actually happened.

<Begin Segment 14>

TI: So this brings up an interesting question for me. It's a little bit out of sequence in terms of when you found this out but what did the Indians think of the camps or the people in the camps? And so obviously if something went in there they went after 'em but was there... what did they think of the Japanese?

RO: They were really, really upset that they were putting a prison camp on their reservation. In fact, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs or Office of Indian Affairs commissioner John Collier wrote a letter to the tribal council, it wasn't asking for permission. It was like, "We are going to build these camps on the reservation and if you, basically if you object to this we're going to take the land from you." So the poor tribes at that time it was the Mohaves and Chemehuevis, only two tribes were there at that time. They had no choice. They had to allow the government to build.

TI: Even though by treaty they were a sovereign state and this was their land.

RO: Absolutely, that's right, it was a sovereign nation but they... if the government threatens them and says, "If you don't let us build it here we're going to take the land from you." And it was a huge reservation it had 200,000 acres or something like that, it was big, it is big, it's one of the larger reservations.

TI: So I guess here's the question then, why did the government do that? I mean, wasn't there other land that they could've gone to? Why did they use tribal land?

RO: Good question. Commissioner Collier, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or the OIA it was called, Office of Indian Affairs at that time and I found this out years later in researching it, they had been trying since the 1800s to bring water from the Colorado river to the reservation so that their plan was to corral all of the Native Americans to this reservation 'cause they had water. So the Arizona government wanted all the Indians, wanted to take their land and push them all to the Colorado River Indian reservation. So they had been trying for decades to bring water and I had to laugh when I was reading some of the memos because they would try, they would dig the ditches, try to bring the water, you know, make a canal from the Colorado River to the reservation and it would collapse. Because they didn't have concrete or they didn't know how to use concrete at the time, I don't know what the reason was but every time they would try it, it would fail. So finally, Collier thinking ahead thought, oh, these Japanese Americans need to go somewhere, we need farmers, we need laborers, we need... so he petitioned and asked for a prison camp on the reservation so he could have farmers test the soil, so he could have canals built to bring water onto the reservation. Because at that time in 1942 the Native Americans or the Chemehuevis and Mohaves were way up towards Parker. The rest of the reservation was desolate, it wasn't cultivated, it was just a desert. So Collier wanted, had big plans and finally he saw a way to develop his plans so he petitioned the Congress to ask for the Japanese Americans to be brought onto the reservation.

TI: How interesting. So it was really this one person, this one man's sort of the dream in terms of... but the tribes did not want this?

RO: Oh, of course not, they didn't, because they were afraid they were going to lose the land after the government, once the government intruded onto their reservation, the government could say, "We've used it, it's ours now." So the tribe would not sign but the government overrode anyway and built the camps. But today if you go on the reservation, thanks to the Japanese farmers who tested the soil and bringing water onto the reservation, it's one of the wealthiest reservations.

TI: Because that whole area is now developed.

RO: It's all developed, it's beautiful. There's only ten acres that they've kept undeveloped with the mesquite and all of the native things that the tribes value. That was the one thing that horrified them was that the tractors were coming in and they were just pushing aside all the mesquite, that bush is a value, it's like their heritage. Because in the early days they would use the seeds, I mean, that bush fed them, fed the early tribes. So it was horrifying to the tribe to see the tractors come in and just, I mean, they just tore up all the mesquite and trees and everything. And then they burned them. If you go onto the WRA online you'll see pictures of these big bonfires.

TI: Bonfires, I've seen that.

RO: And that was just, for the tribes it was horrifying.

TI: But then something you said, but if you go today, it's developed and helped by having the Japanese Americans there, so would you say in some ways Collier's dream came true? I mean, this was kind of what he was hoping would happen isn't it?

RO: It is but I hate to give him credit for it. [Laughs]

TI: Okay. [Laughs]

RO: No, but it's true. His dream did come true in that the Japanese farmers tested, developed, they grew things and they realized that it was possible. In addition to that, though, I don't know -- and this is all part of the Poston history that I recovered, I discovered later was that there were POWs who were sent to Poston and they helped the Japanese who would go out to the cotton fields to pick cotton. German POWs, Italian POWs were sent to Poston to help with the cotton crop and to help paint the school. I mean, they did odds and ends jobs there on the reservation.

TI: And where were they housed? Where did they live?

RO: They lived below the Poston camps and there were buildings there and I went too late, they had torn them down, but they lived south of the Poston camps. And they apparently, I discovered his very late in my research, but they were valuable to the tribe in terms of having additional laborers with the cotton fields and the alfalfa and all the other things and they actually painted the school buildings there, the Indian schools, they did quite a bit.

<Begin Segment 15>

TI: And so going back to the tribes, so, one, they were against having the government place these prison camps on their land, but what did they think about the people inside the camps. you just mentioned whether they're German POWs or Italian POWs or Japanese and Japanese Americans, did they have thoughts about that, feelings towards these people?

RO: I found out this years later but there was this one family who had chickens. So you could get permission to get out of the camp to go drive up to Parker and buy other dry goods and things. But this one woman who I interviewed, her family had the chickens and the Japanese had all kinds of variety of vegetables that their family didn't grow. So there was couple of Japanese older Niseis probably who met her, the family, and so they'd do a swap. They would bring the vegetables to them and they would give this group some chicken which I thought was really interesting. Nobody talked much about that until years later when I was doing some research and we actually had a Poston restoration project meeting on the reservation in 2003. We had thirty Japanese Americans and thirty Native American's, CRIT folks and that's when a lot of these stories came out. And so it was great because then the tribe approved of us trying to restore some of the remains in Camp I.

TI: That's a good story. At some other places, other WRA camps, sometimes the locals thought that the people in camps were actually almost Japanese POWs, not American citizens or anything. Was there any of that confusion with the tribes in terms of who was inside the camps? Did they initially think why are they putting Japanese prisoners here or did they understand that two-thirds of them were U.S. citizens?

RO: I don't think I can answer that. I only know later they knew but they knew I think that we were from California and they knew that they were farmers, I mean, that they were going to use the farmers and use the different laborers. Yeah, I wished the people who were alive then, I did interview one fellow who was a high school student at the time and he said, he's the one who told me and then I later did some research on it, that the Parker High School, the Native Americans there had a team. So they would go down to the Poston camps and have these basketball tournaments with the Japanese players. And when I did research on that I found mention of the fact that these Native Americans or this team from Parker High School was coming into play basketball against the Japanese players and I actually found names. So I went back years later to the Parker High School and showed them, the students there, and a lot of them are Native Americans at the school. I showed them the names of who played and I was showing them, I have a Power Point on that and this one kid said, "That's my grandfather." So it was really, that part of the research was fun to actually have these young people come to life.

TI: That's a good story. It's almost like you should talk to some of the Japanese basketball leagues in California and they should do a reunion.

RO: They should, shouldn't they? The high school, with the Parker High School.

TI: Yeah, and just bring a team over there and do it. That would be an interesting kind of connection. How about attitudes of the Japanese and the Japanese Americans of Indians, they were on a reservation and so there were Indians all around. Did they have attitudes? Did you ever hear about that?

RO: Of course as a child I don't remember but as an adult and talking to those who were in high school at the time, they had feelings about the Native Americans and being on their reservation. Ted Kobata who is the architect, he's not the architect but he constructed the Poston memorial, have you seen the memorial? He was responsible for that, the architect has unfortunately passed away. But I was talking to him one time about my research and he mentioned that because the tribe, I had talked to one of the tribal councilmen and in one of our videos he thanks the Japanese Americans for what they did to improve the reservation. And when I told Ted that he said, "Well, it was worth it then. I'm glad, I'm glad that the tribes have benefited from our presence there." Those weren't the words he used but he said, "I'm glad, I'm glad to hear that."

<Begin Segment 16>

TI: So I'm going to now go back in time, and during the break you mentioned that your father is a minister. You mentioned that nearby, I can't remember how close, but there were three bachelors who later on became well-known ministers. But did your father, what's the right word, ever try to cultivate young men to become ministers? Or I'm just curious if he had any connections with these three bachelors or do you recall any of that?

RO: Other than being just friendly, I don't think my dad did much, at least I don't recall or hear of him ever cultivating someone else to be a minister. He, you know, he had... I found out through my stepmother after my dad was killed in the auto accident that my father at the age of sixty-five was still having nightmares about being sent to camp because he and my mother arrived here with high hopes. This is America, this is the land of the free, my dad really believed that. And when we were sent to camp the way we were with the soldiers marching us and doing all of that, I didn't realize until years later that it affected him to the core. 'Cause he was killed in an automobile accident when he was sixty-five, and at that age my stepmother told me that he would wake up and be screaming in his dream. "Those of you who could speak English, why don't you speak up? They can't do this to us." He had been going to those English classes before the war broke out and was studying also American history. He was devastated that this ideal country that he had come to had done this to the Japanese community. He was... I mean, it affected him to the end of his life.

TI: Well, it seemed like the other thing that tormented him was 'cause he spoke some English and it was almost like the other Isseis were looking to him like, "If only we could explain or talk to them, this wouldn't happen," and it felt like he almost felt this burden that because he could speak English they were looking to him to lead them out of this in some way he felt perhaps.

RO: Perhaps I don't know, I wish that I were old enough at that time to have discussed all of this with him. And even as an adult we didn't talk about camp. And as I interviewed other people, the families didn't talk about the camps. For twenty years or so until Carter's commission when they had all those... what did they call those?

TI: The commission hearings.

RO: The hearings. So until then nobody talked about it.

TI: Yeah, and even to this day many times the parents haven't talked to their children.

RO: That's right.

TI: They may have talked a little bit more but even, yeah, it's still not.

RO: It's sad because we don't have the voice of the Isseis and what they went through and what it did to them emotionally and just physically for many of them losing everything they had in terms of financial gains that they had made up to that point.

<Begin Segment 17>

TI: So let's talk a little bit about this because so when the war ended your family went back to San Diego. Your father is a community leader, a minister, I'm guessing he was, you mentioned he would travel. But when goes back to San Diego, what does he do? What kind of work does he do? You mentioned earlier he had to be a gardener.

RO: Being a minister was not going to sustain us so he became a gardener and he bought old big huge Oldsmobile that made so much noise when he'd start it up in the morning. And he put all his gardening tools in the back and he would go to the ferry in San Diego and go to Coronado and garden at those wealthy homes. And that brought in a little bit of money but on weekends we would go to the beach -- and this was before all the pollution came along -- but we would go there and dig for clams believe it or not, there were clams there. And we would, all of us would get our buckets and fill it up with clam and we would take it home and my mother would boil it and that would be our meals for a while. And that plus, my father raised chickens, rabbits, so he would kill the... as a kid watching, as a youngster watching him take the chicken and just conk it and then you know... that was our meal, the protein that we had and rabbits, he raised rabbits. That's how we were able to manage that year after the war.

TI: So was that a difficult time for your father or did he enjoy that kind of work? I mean, I'm thinking here he was trained to be a minister and now he had to do more kind of menial type of work. How was that for him?

RO: I never did ask him but he enjoyed working in the garden and he was a good gardener, very good. And I'm sure it was... he was a very accepting, I mean, he didn't fight things other than in his nightmares. I mean, he would do what he had to do. And from the age of sixteen he was independent, had to make his own living, and he was very creative that way he found ways to feed us and would involve the family when we'd go and dig for clams and help with the chicken and the rabbits. When we moved after that one year in 1947 in San Diego, then we moved up to San Lorenzo and there again my father planted fruit trees, we had chickens, we had again relying, being very self-reliant. And I remember going to the chicken coop and getting the fresh eggs that would come rolling down this thing that my father built. And that's again, that's how my father fed us as well as we had church members who would, once in a while we'd hear the doorbell ring and I'd go running out there, there would be nobody there but there would be either a hot meal or some groceries. People were very generous. My dad was only making something like 168 dollars a month to feed a family of six. Although back in the '40s, late '40s that's probably good money but wasn't quite enough to feed us. So my brother Joe who's two years younger than me, he and I went out to work. I did housework and he did gardening. Maybe my older brother went... I just remember my... Joe and I did things together. And then we both worked at the nurseries. I worked at this, one of the church members had a nursery, carnations. So every break during high school in order to buy clothes for myself for school, my father couldn't afford it so all of us went out to work. I worked at this one church member's carnation nursery and would make enough money so I could buy something for school. And anyway, you know, it was tough after the war. A lot of the... I found out years later a lot of the sisters of families went out to work, house cleaning, typing if they could find that kind of work in order for the sons to be able to go to college. At first I was furious that I had to do this and for years later I thought, "Why did I get this gender bias here?" Then I found out in the readings that all the women, the Nisei, I mean, the older Nisei women a lot of them had to do that in order for their brothers to be able to go to school.

TI: Yeah, so that gender bias was always there.

RO: It was always there. It was just imported from Japan. But then at that time gender bias was all over the world, it wasn't just the Japanese community, it was America too.

TI: How did your parents change if at all from before and after the war? I mean you talked a little bit about your father's nightmares but it sounds like sort of day to day you didn't see that much difference.

RO: Day to day he just did his work, you know, he had to feed the family he had to make sure we were all okay. But it was only in his nightmares and it came years later after he's retired, I mean, in his sixties.

TI: So how about your mother? I mean, you mother went through a very difficult time raising your younger brother Dan, but how was she changed by the war years?

RO: She was an amazing woman in that she never expressed her anger or if she was angry or if she was depressed or she was upset or anything. She just carried on being a mother and a teacher. And it maybe it was her Buddhist background that... and the Japanese philosophy of shigata ga nai is something that started here. Japanese people in Japan don't know the word, so it wasn't shigata ga nai that was what was keeping my mother afloat. She just was a very strong woman and did her best to try to stay positive. But it was eating away at her inside. I mean, that experience of going to camp and delivering a child in a horse stable was, must have been horrific for her.

<Begin Segment 18>

TI: So now you. So now you were in Poston, went to school, lots of Japanese Americans, now initially returned back to San Diego. How was it for you in terms of being accepted back into your community in San Diego?

RO: We weren't accepted, our family. We went back to the church and I had a very close dear friend who lived at the corner of our block, the Davis'. And he was a tall six foot something policemen and it was terrible coming back because this one time... I don't know if I've mentioned this before.

TI: No, you should tell me. You've mentioned it before, but tell me now.

RO: Okay, my father and I were returning from some place, we were in this old 1930s car. And we were in the alleyway because my father had to park in the garage and that was the only way to get there. And as he was driving a little puppy ran out into the alley. My father slammed on the brakes, fortunately didn't hit the dog, but the owner came out with a rifle and aimed it at my dad and you know, it's just like, I was so terrified. I went running home and my mother in her typical... she was having her devotions or something. Anyway, I ran and asked Mr. Davis to come and fortunately he was off duty. So he came over and calmed the guy down, the dog was still alive, my father hadn't hit it but that was very frightening for me. I was nine, ten years old. And that was one incident where Mr. Davis came to our rescue. Another time at school in the fourth grade at the Stockton grammar school, we were the only Japanese American family at that school and one recess, some kids started to spit at me and throw rocks at me and it was like I was scared and I went running between the two... there were these barrack-like bungalows and there was a fence, I got trapped between the two barracks and the fence. And these kids were throwing rocks and spitting and I was horrified, terrified. And Carolyn saw me, Mr. Davis' daughter, she was a year younger than me but a head taller than me. And she came running over and did an eagle spread to protect me and she ordered the other kids to get away and maybe they knew she was a policemen's daughter, I don't know, but I remember he coming to my rescue. So memories of Mr. Davis helping us and Carolyn personally helping me was something that I have to this day been so grateful. In fact, a few years ago I tracked Carolyn down, found her, called her up and had a conversation with her and thanked her. Of course, that was so long ago.

TI: Did she remember those incidences?

RO: I can't recall now whether she remembered the eagle spread and helping but if I recall she does remember how her dad had to help us. I am eternally grateful for her help and it was because of what the Davis' did for me, for our family and for me personally with Carolyn, when the civil rights act was being debated in Congress, '63. '64, I did whatever I could. I've marched, I've done everything I could to support, just to thank the Davis'. I don't know what we would've done if they hadn't been there to protect us. And I was a little upset that the Japanese American community didn't seem... I mean, there were pockets of support for the civil rights and for the African Americans' circumstances. But you have to experience that personally to understand, although I'm sure people abstractly can understand it, but for me it was like Japanese Americans can't sit on their hands about this, you know. It's too important. We had people who supported us, supported the community even. So I was really upset when Hayakawa did what he did, Senator Hayakawa was like, "Go back to your country." Anyway....

TI: No, I agree, I mean, I think of, especially when you think about what happened to our community, the Japanese community, and in some ways if more people had been there to support us it wouldn't have happened. And when I hear Japanese Americans say, "Well, this should never happen again," the way it never happens again is that we need to speak out when these things happen.

RO: That's right, absolutely.

TI: That we can't just intellectually say, "Oh, that's bad." I mean, we need to be out there more.

RO: We need to physically be out there marching, we need to go to hearings we need to do whatever it takes to support the minorities who are being threatened.

TI: No, I agree. As an interviewer I'm not supposed to say those things. [Laughs]

RO: That's okay. [Laughs]

TI: It came out, you brought that out of me.

<Begin Segment 19>

TI: Let me, I want to ask, so when you came back... well, I guess your dad was involved with the Japanese community so let's... I'm going to really... no, let's continue with your story so from San Diego then you went to San Lorenzo, then you came back to southern California, so where did you graduate from high school?

RO: San Lorenzo.

TI: San Lorenzo, so in San Lorenzo.

RO: We were there in San Lorenzo for eight years. So I graduated from San Lorenzo grammar school and then went to San Lorenzo High.

TI: And so it was after you graduated then you came back to Pasadena, remember that area?

RO: Right.

TI: That was after high school?

RO: After high school and I went down there to go to college, that was my dream of going to college down in southern California. And I moved down there with a friend of mine and we were living in this attic apartment behind the Pasadena... at that time it was called the Pasadena Nazarene College but today it's called the Pasadena College, I think. Anyway, I went down there to go to college and during the summer I moved down there with my friend. And a month or so after I had moved down there I had a visit from my father and mother, they had driven down. And at first I thought, hmm, something is up here. Anyway, my father asked me to drop out of college, to not go to school, that he needed my help. And he needed me to help pay for the second mortgage of a house that he wanted to buy. It was like, this is so unfair. But when your parents ask you, I said, okay.

TI: And when your father asked, was your mother also asking you to do it, too, they came down together.

RO: They came down together. She didn't do much of the talking, he did. And so we went house hunting and I dropped my idea of going to school, going at least to day school. And we started to look for housing. And behind the Nazarene College, or the college there, there was a house for sales. So with our agent we went over there and asked how much and, "Are you interested in selling it to us?" And she said, "I won't sell to a Jap family." And I was like, okay, well, that was the first time I think after the war that I actually had someone just come right out front and say, "No, I'm not going to sell you anything." So the minister of the Pasadena Nazarene Church, which was a big church there on Washington Boulevard, heard about it and so there was another house for sale near Washington Boulevard, it was owned by a missionary who was out of town a lot. So the house was pretty dilapidated, the lawn was unkempt and the yard was pretty, in bad shape compared to all the other homes in that area with neatly trimmed lawns and everything. So that house, the missionary's house was for sale and the minister of the Nazarene Church, Reverend Taylor, heard that we were looking at that house. So he went door to door to every single house on that block and said, "There's a Japanese American family who is interested in buying that house and you are going to say, 'Yes.'" I mean, he went to every house to make sure that they would not kick us out or refuse to have us there. And thanks to Reverend Taylor we were able to buy that house.

TI: And when did you find that out? Probably you didn't know initially that he --

RO: I didn't know that initially until, you know, I wish I could remember when it was I found out. I can't remember but we got married, my first husband and I got married in his church. So maybe somewhere along the line somebody told me that that was what Reverend Taylor did. And for years later I was thinking, "That took a lot of courage," especially not too long after the war. And I'm forever grateful to him for doing what he did 'cause it allowed my father to come down and my mother to have access to the City of Hope. And the house was tiny, it was... the bedrooms were even smaller than this room, my bedroom anyway. But we moved in, my father fixed up the yard, planted nice lawn and we all helped take care of it. And we painted the house and fixed everything up so it that it looked like the rest of the house on the block. And so I went down to Pasadena to go to college and I had registered at the Pasadena City College to make up a few courses and I found a job at a bookstore, at a book depository and had started working to help my father with his second mortgage. And anyway, I worked for a while and then it turned out, the whole story I told you about my mother. So that house has a lot of memories, mainly because my mother actually died in that house. And I value all the memories, of course, someone else has the house now but that house held a lot of memories for me, good memories. Even if was sad to lose my mother, the time I was able to spend with her was great. She's my hero, heroine.

<Begin Segment 20>

TI: So I'm going to jump now a little bit.

RO: Okay.

TI: I going jump to 1999, that's about the time when you connected with the Colorado River Indian Tribe and so can you explain the circumstances and how this all happened?

RO: Well, I was down in Phoenix with my husband at the time and I wanted to go see Poston. I hadn't been back there at all so we hopped in a car, rented car, drove to Parker and had to go to Parker and ask for directions. Because I couldn't remember how the layout was until we got onto Mohave Road and then I remembered, 'cause I remembered the mountains. And I went back there mainly because I wanted to check out the mountains and take some photographs because I was working on this huge oil painting and I was doing it by memory and I just wanted to make sure that I had the shape of the mountains correct. So we went flying out there... went driving out there and took photographs. That was my first visit but that was before 1999. In 1999 I went back to visit with Amelia, who was the librarian at the time, and asked if I could do some research at the library and she said, "You know, I can't say yes, and of course you're welcome to, but you need to pass that through the tribal council and get their approval before I can show you the material." So I wrote a letter to the council, tribal council, gave them a background of why I was interested and looking at their archives.

And in 1999 I went to Japan and when I returned from Japan there was a letter from Amelia and the tribe saying that I could come. I was so excited. And I used my own money to go there but I decided... Amelia was the one who said, "Why don't you try to get grant or something to come back?" Because it was costly, I had to stay at a motel and I could only stay for a week at a time. So anyway, that was my first visit and while I was there doing the research, someone came to me and said, you know, you should... oh, it was the director of the Parker Historical Society, she said, "There's a African American or a black man, I think he might be actually from Africa, but he's been walking around asking questions and why don't you contact him? He might be an interesting person to connect with." It turned out that it was Raul, Dr. Raul Rocco, who was hired by the tribe to help, tribes, to help them do come cultivation of the reservation because his expertise was in agriculture. He was from Benin, Africa. And so I hunted him down and said, "Can I talk to you?" And we developed a wonderful relationship and friendship. And he actually came to Berkeley to help me and he spent a week, four days, four solid days. I would pick him up at the French Hotel there on Shattuck and we would come to... at that time I was in my warehouse studio and from eight o'clock in the morning until five with a break for lunch, I put huge, what do you call those? Flip chart like paper all across my wall and he and I discussed and we jotted everything down about how to approach this research. I couldn't have done my proposal or my research without Dr. Rocco. Unfortunately he died, I found out he died a year or so ago of a stroke and if I had known he was ill I would have flown down to Arizona. I am so indebted to him and cherish our friendship that we had created. He was a wonderful man. Anyway, we had fun spending that week together. I mean, for him to sacrifice his time like that and come to help me, I am so indebted to him.

TI: He really believed in your work though and what you were trying to do.

RO: Well, he was very interested in having the Poston story remembered and recorded. And he found out that nobody was doing it so he was doing what he could do to preserve and record. So when we were connected and... I mean he flew in to the Oakland airport, I'd pick him up, we'd go grab some light coffee or something and dash back to my studio and spend the rest of the day. I still have those papers, rolled up charts. He was wonderful. Well, that was the beginning, from then, after we charted out all the things that we needed to look at, I then applied for a grant and got the grant to do the Sharing a desert home. And Malcolm, the publisher, even took time when he was in Nevada, he hopped in his car and went down to Poston to check things, look at things and he has been incredible. His support, emotional, just everything and his encouragement, and he helped write a letter so that I, you know, for my grant and I owe him a lot, too. Dr. Rocco, Malcolm --

TI: And which publisher was Malcolm?

RO: Heyday Books. I am just indebted to both of those men.

<Begin Segment 21>

TI: When you think of your research, your knowledge of Poston, what's the Poston story? What makes the Poston story unique vis-a-vis like the Manzanar story, Tule Lake, I mean when you want to capture or when people ask you about Poston, what is it that's special?

RO: It's the relationship with the Colorado River Indian Tribes and the fact that after the war or even before everybody was off the reservation... the Japanese Americans left, John Collier had all along planned to bring more Native Americans to the reservation because the reservation was huge and there were only 1,100, 400 Chemehuevis and 800 Mohaves on that gigantic reservation. And if they were going to develop that reservation they needed more Native Americans there. So Collier all along had been planning to bring the Hopis and Navajos down from their reservation 'cause things were hard up there for them. And he had planned to recruit families from there to come down and live in Camp II. And they moved in, the Hopis and the Navajos into Camp II and lived in those barracks in Camp II. There were a few Japanese American families still there so there was some meeting them. I don't know if any real connection happened but there was some overlap. And then the Hopis and Navajos lived there in Camp II for quite a while. Until finally they started to sell each of the barracks for fifty dollar apiece and so the Native Americans there, they started buying and so you'll find barracks scattered all over the reservation to this day. People don't live in them necessarily but they're there, storage, and I've found one barrack, the librarian -- I don't know if she's still there, the librarian in Parker -- I went there to do some research and I met her and she said, "You know, I live in one of those barracks." And I said, "You'll have to show me your place." And so we drove down just a few blocks down to her place and what they had done was they took the barrack and of course reinforced it but you could see the shape of the barrack. It's in my Sharing a desert home. I asked her permission to take a photograph of it. So there's barracks all over the place and converted in different ways like the librarian's home. But a lot of them, I think time has taken its toll because they were just slapped together unless you really took the time to build on it. There's one barrack there that we've been trying raise money to haul it to our restoration... to Camp I where with the tribe's approval and their money they fenced in Camp I where the barrack, where the school, Camp I school still stands, and actually the tribes used Camp I after the war. And they had a lot of community meetings in that auditorium so they were... this one council was very generous and put aside 50,000 dollars to put a fence around it so it's fenced in now because we had some vandalism happen. Actually, when I was working on something related to Poston, somebody lit a match to the beautiful auditorium and so it's just a shell now that we're hoping that we can do something. Either, well anyway, the project with the CRIT and the Poston folks, we're trying to work together to do something to preserve that.

TI: So what do you think the future is going to be of the Poston story?

RO: Well, the dream is to have an educational information center where the tribes could tell their story and the Japanese American story could be told. So we've been thinking of building some kind of educational workshop like place where teachers can bring their students, you know, that's one of the dreams that we have. And one of the buildings that was built for Parker, I mean, for the Poston camp is this huge warehouse where they were building all of the chairs and tables that were used in the schools in Poston. That building is still standing and so that's where we would like to see it reinforced but still have that look and use that as the visitor's center and educational information place where teachers could come, workshops could be held. So there's dreams, we're hoping that it can come true someday.

TI: And besides just funding, are there other barriers to making this dream happen?

RO: It's mainly funding because the tribe has approved and that building itself, we've been in conversation with the Bureau of Indian Affairs 'cause that's their structure, to be able to use that as an information center.

TI: Okay, and so 1999, so that was over ten years ago, or twelve, almost twelve years ago.

RO: Let's see. Today is 2010 and so twenty, isn't it? Oh, yes, you're right, eleven, twelve years ago. Oh, it takes so long to get things rolling.

<Begin Segment 22>

TI: So, Ruth, I came to the end of my questions. Anything else I'm missing? Anything else that you want to add or talk about?

RO: Well, related to Poston or just --

TI: Your life, your family, your mother, your anything.

RO: I've been very, very lucky to have three kids that I am so proud of and at first when I was doing a lot of my art work related to my experience in camp, it was like, "Why are dealing with this, Mom?" So my one son said, "Why don't you... if you're going to paint, why don't you get beyond this?" And I said, "Alright, I'll try." So I stretched out a canvas, a pretty large one, put it on my easel, and I started to paint. And it's in oil and so I had a photograph of one of my sons in the swimming pool when he was a little kid so I thought well, that's a good non related Poston stuff so I started to paint the plastic, you know, they still probably have them, those plastic pools for toddlers to play in. I started to put that in and then I was painting my son and I painted the pool red. Before I knew it everything was red, white, and blue again. And I thought, "Okay, this is crazy I just have to get this out of my system, everything is going to be red, white, and blue, barbed wires and everything else and until I can get this out of my system I'd better go, just do it." So from there I started to do some drawings and a couple of them are in that book, Sharing a desert home, I did a... it took me a hundred hours and I had to use my magnifying glass but I did a drawing, a fairly large drawing of my third grade class and drew every single classmate.

TI: So third grade, this was in Poston?

RO: In Poston, yeah, it's a picture from Poston. And it's a fairly large drawing, it's in, as I said, it's in that research. But that was very therapeutic for me. I think that was the last really camp-related drawing that I did after a hundred hours and my eyes practically gone. I then moved on to more of a... I still dealt with red, white, and blue but it was different. I had this one drawing, I think it's in the research book of I'm in a Japanese kimono but it's red, white, and blue and I have barbed wire, I have... what do they call that thing?

TI: Oh, yeah.

DH: Obi.

RO: Obi, right, in the obi which is had blue and white, my kimono was red and then as I was drawing the obi I thought, ah ha, I'd put barbed wire. I wasn't going to put any barbed wires anywhere but I ended up putting the barbed wire around the obi. And then as I was drawing, working on that drawing, I decided to put my parents, I wanted to honor my parents so there's a drawing of my mother and father and their alien registration number and in the middle is my Uncle George who served in the 442nd and I then I felt, "Okay, maybe this will help me get beyond the red, white, and blue."

TI: And the use of red, white, and blue, is it for irony, I mean, so you have barbed wire, red, white, and blue in terms of the flag, so you keep going back to that theme. Is it just to show that irony?

RO: Right, it's my way of expressing what the experience was like for not only the Isseis but for us young people. But in that drawing, instead of using my face which I started to do, I asked my daughter to come over and she sat for me and I put her face on that drawing.

TI: Now, all this artwork, have you ever done a show, like a big exhibit?

RO: I did. I did an exhibit at the cultural center here in San Francisco. And I had about twenty something pieces. Put it up all on the wall and the day of... the night before the opening, some man chased a young woman into the center there, so the police came in and yellow tagged everything and put the yellow tape all over everything. Nobody could get into my exhibit. And the next day was the opening and it was just like, "Oh, well, that's kind of ironic isn't it?" Could've put a soldier's uniform on that guy and that little girl maybe was a Japanese American girl running for her life. [Laughs] Anyway, we had to postpone the opening. That was so strange and I thought, "Man, I hope that little girl survives and gets over what had happened to her." It was scary. I wish that I could've gone and talked to that girl but I'm sure she wouldn't want anybody knowing what had happened to her. But we had to postpone the opening which I thought, I was thinking about it... at first I was like, ah, we had worked so hard.

TI: Yeah, but you're right, the symbolism of that.

RO: Yeah, then I started feeling sorry for that little, that girl, I don't know how little she was but then I thought, "Why am I upset?" I mean, think about what happened to that girl, that little girl, that young girl. And so we just postponed the opening.

TI: And how long ago was that? When was this?

RO: When was the opening? That's a good question. Let's see... it was about the time maybe ten years... '98.

TI: Okay, so it was quite a while ago?

RO: Yeah, because I had been away to do the filming, I was with the crew doing the Children of the Camps and I had to... I had been working to put the exhibit up. Yeah, it was some time ago. I hope that never happens again to some --

TI: And what was the reaction of people of your exhibit?

RO: Interesting. I still have all the collected comments. It was fairly, you know, it was, "Thanks for doing this," and, "It's been educational," that kind of comment. But I'd have to go back and look at my book to see because I wasn't there all the time. It was open to the public at certain hours. But when I was working on one of my paintings, I had one of my colleagues, or a woman just a few years older than me, she had been at breakfast at our local cafe and I bumped into her and she wanted to visit my studio. So I invited her over and I had my big canvas out, I mean the drawing I was working on. And she came in and with tears starting to come to her eyes she said, "Ruth, why are you doing this? Why do you want to bring all of this up?" And it was like I didn't have the heart to turn to her with her eyes welling up and say it's because of that. Because we haven't really worked through it all and maybe we never will, maybe we'll take all of this to our grave. But if anything, I'm doing this because I want the public to know what happened to us. And at that time Hayakawa was doing that thing about the Iranians and I thought, "It can't happen again. I mean you don't do this to your fellow citizens." I tried to do it as kindly as I could while she was welling up in tears but I got a lot of comments like that: "Why do you want to dig up something from the past?" And I guess I was thinking, "And why do you not want to educate the public?" It could happen any time to some other minority group or whether it's racial or like the gays or any other minority.

TI: Religion.

RO: Religion absolutely, I mean, it could happen any time again. I don't think that what happened during World War II to the Japanese American community is isolated and will never happen again. I think this country is ripe for that kind of thing 'cause this is a democracy. I felt sorry for her I didn't know what to say to her. Obviously she was overcome by her own memories maybe.

TI: But I think I view this as a process, I mean, I think of when your show came out, that was about the time Densho started and we in a similar way had comments like, "Why are you doing this?" But I think now it's what, about you know, twelve, fifteen years after that. I think that more people are accepting of this type of work so I think it is kind of this healing or process that people are going through.

RO: The history needs to be recorded and I just think it's critical that the story be told. The schoolchildren, schoolkids learn of it.

TI: Well, I think that's a perfect place to end. So, Ruth, fabulous job, thank you so much.

RO: Oh, you're welcome.

TI: I'm glad we finally did this yeah and that I got a chance to actually do the interview, I'm glad that I got to do this.

RO: Well, thank you for your interest in Poston and thanks for all your work that you're doing at Densho. I think it's important.

TI: As you know, I love this, I get to meet such great people.