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PS: My father grew up in that same area but he didn't know my mother until we were sent to Santa Anita and so they became acquainted in Santa Anita.

SY: This was after you were born, this is your stepfather?

PS: Yes, right, and then we were sent... after about six months we went October of '42 to Amache, Colorado, and that's where my stepfather's family wound up also.

SY: And he was a Nisei?

PS: Yeah, he was Nisei, right.

SY: He was Nisei.

PS: His family had a wholesale nursery in that area, his dad was a gardener and fortunately my dad's hobby was racing hot rods and he was very good at it. He tested equipment for Vic Edelbrock who was a well-known racing guy, even until very recently he and I think his son were in the field of hopping up cars and racing equipment and all. So I remember when my... so my father was able to get a job as a mechanic in Milwaukee. As you probably know, even during the war we were able to leave the camps provided we didn't of course come back to the West Coast. So since he was able to get a job as a mechanic, that's where he established himself, he sent for us and then we took the train. He met us in Chicago and then we went to Milwaukee.

SY: So now this was your mother's second husband?

PS: Yeah, right, second marriage.

SY: So she eventually married another time after? She was married three times?

PS: No, no.

SY: No, it was your grandmother.

PS: Grandmother was married three times so my mother... this is just my second, my mother's second marriage.

SY: So do you know much about your real father?

PS: Well, my real father... it's kind of interesting because my mother was very angry at him and she never talked about him. Pictures that she had of him had his face blocked out so I never even got a chance to see what he looked like.

SY: He was Japanese American?

PS: Yes, right, he was living... he settled in Pennsylvania, he was working at a factory or something in Pennsylvania so when he retired at age sixty-five he got in his car and drove out to see us. He tried to contact us through our minister but I never heard anything about it, but anyways he shows up one day at this home, right over here in our family room and he doesn't turn out to be a very likeable person. He was a very, well, very talkative kind of fellow and he kind of went on and on and it's just not a very comfortable person. He turned to our daughters who were nine and ten or eight and nine or something about that and said, "I want you to call me Grandpa." And that gives you an idea as to kind of I guess you might call it insensitive kind of behavior. I mean, people just don't do those kinds of things, trying to establish a relationship, an instant relationship with somebody you haven't seen all these years. So he tried to maintain a relationship with me and I was cordial to him but I wasn't interested.

SY: Did he explain why it took him so long to get in touch with you? Or had he established his own family in Pennsylvania?

PS: Yeah, he had gotten remarried and, well, his story was he didn't know what happened to us during the war but he didn't try very hard to find us.

SY: And he had no problem with being sent to camp because he was on the East Coast?

PS: Yeah, right, and he didn't go to camp, of course. So that part of it I could understand and actually it was good that he was able to make the contact because I was able to meet the guy and realize here this is a guy my mother got a divorce from and I have to say I didn't blame her. [Laughs]

SY: And you had a fairly good relationship with your stepfather, the one that was in Milwaukee, the one that your mother met in camp.

PS: Yeah, he was a great guy, wonderful man, and I had a lot of respect for him and we got along well. He took us fishing a lot. He loved to fish.

SY: And they never had any more children so it was just you and your sister?

PS: Yeah, just me and my older sister and I think because my mother had such a bad experience with her mother and having half brothers and sisters, and her mother was not the most nurturing kind of person. She didn't want to have children, any more children, so that was part of the agreement I think once they got married.

SY: And your relationship with your grandmother, did you end up, when you came back from living in San Diego you ended up living with her?

PS: Grudgingly we got back together and my mother wasn't happy with the way... so my mother took a job at a fruit stand or something but she wasn't happy with the way my grandmother was raising us. So she moved us out in the middle of the night but then my grandmother was able to go to the elementary school which was right up the street and find out where we were living and so they patched things up I guess and so we moved. And so when the war broke out we were living with her.

SY: So you all ended up going to camp together?

PS: Yeah, we all wound up in Santa Anita together.

SY: So do you remember the... what are your memories of that particular time when you were being sent to camp? You were quite young so I imagine you don't remember too much.

PS: Well, I wasn't that young. I was eight. I remember pretty much what went on. I think because of not wanting to alarm and upset the children, most parents tried to stay calm. They knew that if they showed that they were frightened or upset then that wouldn't be good for the kids. Although my grandmother that we were living with, she became more active in the Christian church and I remember one thing she did when we were getting packed up to leave. She put on each of our suitcases a little label that she had typed out: "Heaven is my destination." So that was alarming because I knew that you went to heaven after you died so I immediately thought, "Well, are we going to die?" and so that's the one thing I remember. Aside from seeing the massive garage sales that were going on in the neighborhood looking up and down the street and seeing where all the Japanese lived because they had stuff in front of their houses for sale. They had their coffee tables full of all their knickknacks and the refrigerators and the whole thing in front of their house for people to come down.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.