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SY: So you managed. And then when did you find out you were leaving? And how did that...

YN: Well, I think it was around September 5th of 1942 when we were told to pack up and get on the train. We didn't know where we were going at the time, but we ended up in Gila River, which is near Sacaton, not too far up from Scottsdale, but at the time it was just the desert. It was part of the Indian-owned land.

SY: And you remember your first impression?

YN: It was dusty, hot. It was a miserable place. When we were at this reunion, our daughter-in-law and my son-in-law at the time mentioned how dusty it was, and it was even made more dramatic because these buses had the exhaust pipes down low. When they started to go, you can imagine the horsepower generated by these buses and all the fumes going out and making this shadow, this dust. Well, when the wind blew it was pretty dusty, so yeah, that was a terrible thing. It was very, very hot, and it was September, but September's still warm. So some of the people started to dig under their barracks.

[Interruption]

SY: This Times reporter, you were saying...

YN: Yes, the Times, I'm not sure whether the Times or the Examiner -- it was more like the Examiner, the Hearst paper -- but that we were digging air raid shelters because they're expecting Japanese bombers to come bomb parts of the United States. Kind of silly to think that they're going to bomb us. We're not a military installation. But anyway, when we got there, there was absolutely nothing but these bare barracks. And one of the things that kind of kept me going in the fairly positive direction is that it was not only an unfortunate thing that we were there, but it was also an opportunity. Here is a high school that's just going to be formed, that never has existed before, so we had to create a constitution and structure for the high school. The creation of that structure was really a good learning experience for many of us. So we looked at various constitutions, and we created a constitution for the student body at Butte High School. We had a very good principal who was our advisor, so we learned a lot doing this. And then, after creating this constitution, many of us, "Well, we should run for office," so many of us did run for office. Someone suggested I run for president, so I ran for president, and the three of us were good friends but we were running against each other. Fortunately I was able to get into the runner offs, and as I mentioned to you earlier, that Michi Weglyn was my campaign manager. So in spite of her very, very good works, she didn't have quite the same caliber of candidate as the other guy, so I came in second out of two people. [Laughs] But it was a very good experience.

SY: How did that come about? Did you ask her to become your campaign manager?

YN: I think she volunteered. I don't recall just how this happened. (I later was her campaign manager for next year's presidency.)

SY: So you were obviously good friends in camp.

YN: Yes, we were very good friends. There were several people who, for one reason or another, thought very highly of me. She was one of them, so she volunteered to be (my) campaign manager. She did a good job. But the other fellow was a more popular guy. He was (an athlete) and a pretty handsome guy, and he was a good friend, so it was okay that he won. But I ended up being a vice president of the senior class. Then I became involved in a number of clubs. One of my instructors was Mr. Nikaido, and he was a math instructor. He was teaching geometry. He took me aside one day and he said, "Yoshio, you and I could get along much better and I think you'll learn more geometry if you stayed in class a little longer." [Laughs] Because activities meant that we periodically had to go out and meet people and this sort of thing. I probably didn't learn as much geometry as I should have. But he was a very good instructor, so a lot of what he taught me has stuck on.

SY: So student government was kind of your calling, then.

YN: Yes. And it turned out that all of that experience helped me in whatever else I've done since then, because going into various clubs, getting different interests like debating and Spanish, there were just a number of things that (got my attention).

SY: And how did that compare with your high school education --

YN: In El Monte?

SY: Yeah.

YN: Well, very different experience in that in El Monte you were a commuting student. At Gila you're a dorm student, on-campus student. [Laughs] You couldn't go anywhere else, so there would be the classroom time and then there would be off class time, so it was an opportunity also to study with the various students, fellow students who seemed to know more than I did about certain things. So I liked that part of it. I can think of several teachers who had a very good impact on me, and one was Miss Mabel Sheldon. She was an English and Public Speaking teacher. She was a missionary to India, and she was home on a leave. She was going to go back to India, but because of the war she was prohibited from traveling, so she volunteered to teach in our camp. She was demanding and compassionate at the same time, and she believed that everyone in her class was going to go to college. So if you were somewhat deficient in reading she made you go into some special reading class, which she offered in the summers. Or, if you need public speaking, she'd encourage you to go into debating and different things like that. And besides that, she taught English, and she taught us very, very well. But we maintained friendship for a long time because from the time I left camp I was in the service, and afterwards we communicated almost every year, maybe more often, and then she was able to return to India after the war and we communicated. And then she retired and lived in Boulder, Colorado, and she came to visit us one time, and by that time she had married a fellow by the name of Williams who lived in the same Methodist retirement community in Boulder. It turned out her husband's niece was living in Whittier. Her name was Rachel Ulrgy, and she happened to be the curator of the Whittier Art Gallery and was a friend of ours. We found that connection, so they came to visit her and then visit me, and we had a mini reunion with the president who beat me in camp, I don't know if you know Mary Karasawa. She and her family were in Gila, the Nakahiro family. Anyway, we rounded up people we knew from camp to come and meet with her, so we had a very fine little reunion luncheon with her. She (also) went to our church, and we made her feel very welcome there.

SY: So what was your strength as a student? What were your, were you at the time interested in art? Was it...

YN: No. I was a young man, so I think I had social interests and a lot of academic interests because I had to write papers and I did illustrate some of my papers and, well, maybe that helped me with my grades. I don't know.

SY: You didn't, were there art classes there?

YN: Well, I'm sure there were. I took a craft, I don't know whether it was a class or a workshop, but I developed some things in three dimensional form, making things out of plastic letter opener, different things like that. But that was the extent of my art at that particular time.

SY: You weren't involved --

YN: I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do in my life. I would say that I wish I were back in El Monte, but having this situation where you had to be there and then in a class where it seemed to me the majority of the students were in the California Scholarship Society. I mean, they were brainy people, so it made it very difficult, so we all had to work hard to keep up. In that sense it was motivating, and I made a lot of good friends, so a bad experience isn't all bad. You accept the bad thing and you do the best you can.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.