<Begin Segment 18>

TI: You mentioned earlier the, oh, the city boys, the zoot suits. Were there zoot suiters also at Tule Lake?

RY: No, not too many.

TI: 'Cause that was like another culture. So that would be...

RY: Yeah, as a matter of fact that friend of mine that had the zoot suit the day of the riot he was in jail, he was in the jail where they were... the rioters were down there. And he was in there because they caught him smoking pot.

TI: Now where would someone get pot?

RY: I have no idea.

TI: So somehow he found a way of smuggling that in?

RY: Yeah, and at that time, pot was the worst thing you could ever do as far as narcotics went. You never heard of the hard stuff, but marijuana was a bad word then. He was in there and yeah, I remember that.

TI: Now I'm curious, how did the fishermen from Terminal Island think about the zoot suiters? Again the culture --

RY: Oh, they didn't like 'em.

TI: Just the cultures are so different.

RY: Even before camp they used to always be at each others' throat, you know. 'Cause the guys from downtown L.A., they thought they were bad too you know.

TI: Yeah, because some of them were pretty tough too.

RY: Oh, yeah, but the fishermen, they grow up tough, you know.

TI: So you associated more with the fishermen than anyone else it seems like?

RY: Well, in Tule, yeah.

TI: Any other kind of memories of Tule that kind of stand out, any stories or anything?

RY: There wasn't too much that I remember in Tule except the time when we left to go to Japan. That was horrible.

TI: So before we go there, what about your sister? How was she kind of handling all this?

RY: Well, she always did what my parents wanted her to do, you know.

TI: Because she was like born and raised in the United States. I mean, she's a couple years older so she's a older teenager. I would think that it would be hard for her to do this also.

RY: Oh, she was pretty easygoing and she usually followed what my mom said, you know. Like I guess I was pretty much a rebel myself, but she went along with everything my mom said.

TI: Now did you ever show any displeasure about going to Japan? Did you ever tell your mother?

RY: Yes, I did, I told my dad before, I said, "I don't want to go to Japan." This is before they shipped him out, I said, "I don't want to go to Japan because that's not my country. I was born and raised here and I don't know anything about Japan, I don't want to go." And my dad, I remember he told me, he said he didn't care what I said because he's going to go back to his own country where this will never happen to him again, the relocation. So what could I do? I was a minor so I didn't have a choice. But then we got into it in Japan.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.