<Begin Segment 16>

TI: So like Manzanar you talked about able to just go underneath the barbed wire and go to the Sierras.

RY: Well, you could go up to the barbed wire at Manzanar because there wasn't any barrier in between, but Tule Lake they had this barrier.

TI: So you wouldn't be able to go out?

RY: No, 'cause if they caught you in between the no man's land, they could shoot you. They tell you they could shoot you there.

TI: So security was much higher at Tule Lake?

RY: Yeah, and when we got to Tule Lake, they had just finished their riot. They had some kind of riot and so they had these armored cars patrolling the camp streets. I go, oh, my goodness.

TI: And so how did that make you feel when you saw the extra security?

RY: Made me feel really bad because I go boy, this must be a bad place you know. These armored cars with the machine gun mounted on there patrolling the streets, it's just kind of scary.

TI: And so tell me, what else about Tule Lake did you notice?

RY: Well, let me think. The school was just as bad. I guess I wasn't really interested in going to school but they had a bigger school and the people, I stuck around Manzanar people because we were from Manzanar. And it just sort of, I don't know how to describe it. It's just like you became part of people from Manzanar, the fishermen and all that, they just sort of came together as a group like we're the Manzanar people. Manzanar had a bad rap in Tule Lake. I said, "How come?" They said well, they had a basketball game in the gym and I don't know if Manzanar people were winning or Tule Lake people, but they had a big fight, a big brawl and they picked up the tables and they're throwing the tables and the typewriters and everything. And so that's probably why they didn't like people from Manzanar, but I had just got there. I didn't know anything about that, so it was really weird.

TI: How about things like, I heard when Tule Lake became a segregation camp, they had like a Japanese language school and things like that --

RY: That was in preparation to... once you decided that you were going to go back to Japan they had Japanese schools set up so that we could refresh our memory, I guess, and learn more Japanese. And there's a funny thing about that too 'cause one of my Japanese school teacher was a bonsan from Hawaii and I got to talking to him and I said, I have an uncle living there, the uncle that got off the boat, he was in Hawaii, and it turned out that this bonsan was the bonsan for my uncle's town so he knew my uncle and the family there. I thought that was a coincidence, too.

TI: Small world, huh.

RY: Yeah, but I used to go to school too, Japanese school. There's a lot of, in Tule Lake there was a lot of peer pressure I thought and my dad put a lot of pressure on me I know. And the parents wanted me to go to Japanese school. And I guess you heard about the groups that were pro-Japan, they would get out and put hachimakis on.

TI: Being a Hoshidan.

RY: Hoshidan and I didn't want to join that. My dad kept pushing me and pushing me so my friends all joined it so it became a peer pressure thing and I think I joined it, shaved my head and put the hachimaki on and I was running around the camp like the rest of the fools, you know. Five o'clock in the morning we'd get up and go out there and it was really a pro-Japan organization because we got up and we faced the east and bowed and all that. I still don't know what I was doing in there.

TI: And how about the other boys that were with you? I mean was there you say you didn't know what you were doing but how did it feel? Were you kind of proud of being Japanese by doing this?

RY: Yeah, I guess once you get in that group and you're running around, I think you feel like a lot comradeship with the other people there and I guess maybe you do feel a little proud. But then I think a lot of it was showing off to the other people, too, you know.

TI: Because you guys were pretty loud too, you would make noises.

RY: Yeah, we'd go, "Wasshoi, wasshoi," and oh, that was stupid when I think about it now.

TI: And this was five o'clock in the morning.

RY: Yeah, and then we used to do exercises and all that, but I know I was more or less pressured into doing that from my parents, my dad mostly.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.