<Begin Segment 23>

MN: Before we get into that, let me go back a little bit. Your father and two brothers who went to Japan, were they on the ship the SS Gordon that left on Christmas?

YK: I don't know. That's about the time they left, though.

MN: Do you think the message that your mother sent to your father ever got to him.

YK: I don't know. She had my sister write it in English so it would go through. I guess he was so embittered that he said, "We're better off in Japan." I guess he assumed the family was going to follow him.

MN: Do you have any idea why your one brother ended up at Crystal City and then your father and your other brother ended up at Fort Lincoln?

YK: No, they were just ending up in different, there were various camps.

MN: Now right before you left Tule Lake, your sister sent you to the camp dentist.

YK: Oh, yeah, that was a traumatic experience. I'd never been to a dentist in my life, and she said, "Well, we should go." So we went very early in the morning to be first in line, and I of course had a whole bunch of cavities, so they did 'em all at once. So that was really a painful experience even though they had Novocain. But it was finally over, and my mouth was kind of raw and so forth, because he kept saying, "Open wider, open wider." And then, but then a few weeks or months later, my fillings started falling out, so they didn't do a very good job, but I didn't mention it. And then I started getting pus in my upper lip, and I just squeezed it out like pimples.

MN: You know this camp dentist, was it a Nisei?

YK: Yeah, they were Nisei.

MN: They were Niseis?

YK: So they probably didn't have the best equipment either. And they were closing down, 'cause this was towards the end.

MN: These cavities, were these cavities you got in camp?

YK: Well, they were probably my whole childhood. I'd never been to a dentist before.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.