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MN: Now you had this incident in camp where you almost drowned?

YK: Oh, yeah. Actually, I had a couple incidents in Trabuco Canyon where they had these big watering holes, and I didn't realize it was so deep, and I was on the edge and just sticking my toe in. Jackie said, "Don't," but it just went straight down. I had a couple incidences of going underwater. But, so I always stayed away from the water. They were pumping water from the Colorado River, and so there were these big canals, and then there were some places where it was enlarged and a big swimming pool like areas were created and so people were going there to swim. And so my friends always went and I never did, but they coaxed me to go, and so I went, and I said, "But I don't know how to swim. So there was a little board whereby I could just grab the end of the board and kick around. But then some of my friends started teasing me and pulling me out in the deeper area, and I kept telling 'em, "No, I don't know how to swim," and they took me out to the deep area and then they swam away. So as I was going to paddle towards land, then this big kid from the adjacent block came by and just took it away from me. And I went, going down, and so it's quite an experience actually drowning, where the water was very brown and all I could see is my hands and the bubbles and so forth. And so I kept going down, down, even hitting the bottom. But, and yeah, you're sort of, your life goes through, but actually in this case, I had an out-of-body experience whereby I imagined myself flying high in the air with this person from yesteryear who was in a robe, and we were looking down on the edge of the swimming area and people were saying, "What happened?" They said, "Oh, Yukio drowned." So I said, "Oh, I guess I drowned." And my mother was there crying over me, and so I thought, well, since I drowned, I stopped struggling. At that time, one of the older boys from my block said he saw bubbles, so he came down and rescued me. And I hadn't passed out. I had a lot water in me, but... so after that I never went swimming again, or close to the water.

MN: Let's talk about something more pleasant like softball.

YK: Oh, yeah, we had a little softball team where Skip was the coach and I was the catcher, and I had to order from Sears & Roebuck a mask and catcher's mitt. So we had our own little peewee team. I guess we were eleven year olds, primarily. And I liked being catcher 'cause you're in on every pitch.

MN: So was this a Block 43 team?

YK: Yeah, right.

MN: Did you play against the other blocks?

YK: Well, not until the following year, then it became more serious, that we had to practice more since we were competing against other blocks.

MN: Did you compete against other, like Poston Camp II, Camp III teams?

YK: No, we did once go down to Camp II which was about, it was only about two miles away, and it was a smaller camp. I never did get to Camp III in Poston.

MN: I know also Saburo Kido, who was the national president of JACL, got beaten up in Poston I. Do you recall that at all?

YK: No. There were always rumors that there were people who were collaborating with the government and all the administration of the camp, and they were called inu, or dogs. So some of them, they'd get beat up by people.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.