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TI: So let's start talking, so the war ends and the Japanese start returning.

BS: Yeah.

TI: So talk about that. What, what did you see when the Japanese started coming?

BS: Well, we were always anticipating the return. The war was over, the war was just over and we knew the kids were gonna come back. And I just remember being on Sixteenth Avenue when the Matsudaira family came back, and Mrs. Beltran baked a cake, a chocolate cake, and we all followed Mrs. Beltran up to the Matsudaira family to present the welcoming home cake. It was a chocolate cake. And so it was, after a week it was like they never left, except there was more kids then.

TI: Yeah, go back to that, that welcoming back. So how many people were following...

BS: There must've been three families, so maybe ten, a dozen people, but it seemed to be happening in a lot of other areas next to our neighborhood, a lot of welcoming -- there was a lot of animosity, too. There was some frightening moments, too, where cars would come to the... it was, it didn't seem to be the animosity coming from the neighbors so much as other kids or other people from other neighborhoods coming to the neighborhoods where the Japanese were coming back, coming home to. Seemed like there was always these out of neighborhood cars that would come by.

TI: And when one of these cars came by, what would they do? What would happen?

BS: Mostly yelling, screaming, and throwing stuff. I don't remember any, no shots or no firebombs, any of that, so mostly crude remarks. And off course, we knew what those words, and we'd yell 'em back to them. We were better than them.

TI: Going back to the welcoming, the chocolate cake welcome, what was the reaction of the Matsudaira family when you guys came up and welcomed them?

BS: Well, Mrs. Matsudaira was a saint. You know that. A couple years later she was the national Catholic mother of the year, had to be 1951, 1952. I mean, she was a saintly woman, and when she came back a lot of the, lot of the Japanese families would congregate at the house, the Catholic women would come back, congregate at the house, and then the non Japanese neighbors, it always seemed like there was a houseful. 'Course they had thirteen kids, so it was always a houseful anyway, but I just remembered when -- and of course Pauline was back home, right, and we're in, what, fifth, sixth grade, so I tried to spend a lot of time there myself. And my buddy was Jimmy Matsudaira. That was an excuse to be there. So I saw, saw a lot of non Japanese families, parents would come just to say hello, welcome back. Not necessarily go in the house for tea or anything, but just come by to welcome, seemed like sort of a welcome gesture, knock on the door, "Nice to have you back in the neighborhood," and then leave. That was, it was never a, never a group that would come in and impose, and they wouldn't be coming into the house much.

TI: And so, that's interesting, so as people would do this, what would the reaction of the family be? So they come, they greet, and so they thank them, they close the door, and then what, were there any comments or did they talk about people coming to their door or anything like that?

BS: Well, the kids were, they caught up with the environment in the neighborhood right away it seemed like, it's like they never left, you know? Went next door to the Maryknoll playground, start playing basketball, so I don't know what the families talked about, but when the kids came out to play it was, they didn't talk about, so much about their time in the internment camp. Mitch Matsudaira was the only one that ever talked about being in camp, and his big deal was it was neat to have this gang that you were with every day, in Minidoka. He's a little kid, right? And he grew up with the same kids from his, what, his section of Minidoka, so he thought that was, growing up was, wasn't as much of a hardship to him as it was to the older brothers and sisters and the parents. To him it was fun. They had these baseball games, basketball games. We had my, our buddies. Talk to Mitch about that. It was a different mindset than in his older brothers and sisters who had, who were tormented by being there.

TI: And yet earlier you said they came back and after a week it was like they had never left, but did you notice any differences in your, in your friends that were there?

BS: Just probably, you know, resentment. They had to be, they were regimented into this life of going to the mess hall for your... and there'd be talk, sometimes talk about the bad food. Never, my, the kids in my age group growing up never talked about treatment. It didn't seem like they were talking about the treatment. They were talking about the bad conditions, the bad food. I think they were a little bit young, we were a little bit younger, so they, their brothers, Mike Matsudaira and John Matsudaira, went into the 442nd. Mike never came back, so we'd talk about losing Mike. When I -- and I was baptized a Catholic at Maryknoll -- when I was confirmed I chose the name of Michael after Michael Matsudaira. He was my hero when I was a little kid. So we talked a little bit about some of the neighbor kids that weren't coming back, and they weren't, our kids weren't really telling us, the Filipino kids, just were talking among themselves and we were part of that group. It was just sharing stories among themselves about some of the things that, that came to their minds. A lot of was conditions, food, and their brothers and sisters that didn't come back.

TI: Did you ever notice any, like changes in mood or things that seemed out of character, like maybe in school that some might be quieter than they were before, or maybe, or more loud or more outbreaks, or anything like that? Anything that just, like, you noticed, oh, that's different?

BS: No, I never... no. I wouldn't have been able to tell then. So when they left I was so young and when they come back I'm in the fifth or sixth grade, so I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.