<Begin Segment 17>
TI: Okay. So John, let's get started again.
JH: Okay.
TI: We left off when you talked about getting married and you had your own apartment, and then later on you and your wife had a child.
JH: Yeah.
TI: So can you talk about that? I'm curious, what did you have and how hard was it to have a child in camp?
JH: How what?
TI: How hard was it to have a child in camp?
JH: Fortunately, my wife was healthy, naturally, and this, I think he was an older Nisei doctor, Dr. Suski, and I think our son was two months old and when my wife went to a physical, he said, "I'm gonna be leaving the camp on the last train out of camp." In other words, after he leaves, then the camp's gonna be closed, so don't worry about medical care. So that, that was a godsend.
TI: So your son was born right before the camps closed, then? Right near...
JH: August and the camp closed in October, I think.
TI: Okay.
JH: So we, shall we say, got everything ready to leave. But there's a strange Japanese custom, before you depart any home or dwelling you're supposed to mop it, so I hold my baby in my arms and my wife mopped it. I said, "You don't have to do that." "No, I'm gonna do it." So she did. Got on the train, we got to Salt Lake City. By the same token, while she was mopping she missed supper, so when we got to Salt Lake City her breasts wouldn't produce anymore. So I went to the Pullman porter and I said, "I don't know how you're gonna do it, but can you get me some kind of milk?" "Here?" I says, "Yeah, there's a depot." By golly, he found two quarts, which is fine. My wife drank it and the milk, she says, "It's warm in here, so can you hide it out in between the cars where it's cold.? I says fine. Somebody stole it. But that's alright; next morning, breakfast, so her energy was restored. So that was one of the close shaves. [Laughs]
TI: I'm curious about your son, was he ever surprised that he was born in Wyoming? 'Cause probably he thought he was born in California?
JH: No.
TI: So did you tell him where he was born?
JH: Ever since he was old enough to go to, understand English, he's Wyoming-born. And all his classmates, "Wow." Not like being born in Japan. The other thing, the question came up, how shall we name them? So they got pieces of paper, they put a name in -- this is both parents, I mean grandpas -- put name on, rolled it up, put it on a table. You know what a ojuzu is, the Buddhist (prayer bracelet), okay, has a little tassel on it, and Mr. Omori goes here, here. Nothing happened. Then my dad picked it up and he, the third one, it stuck, so he opened it and that was it, Howard Hisao.
TI: Interesting, so the tassels would pick it up.
JH: Yeah.
TI: And so how many names were out there when they would --
JH: There was a whole bunch, I would say, easy a dozen.
TI: So your father-in-law was released from the camp?
JH: Yeah, he had come back in 1944. Here again, he comes unannounced, no letter, no nothing, and at the guardhouse, naturally, they call the administration and the administration picks him up with a car and takes him to the address. That's it, he walks in the house. No hooray or nothing. Well, the same way they took him, the same way they bring him back. [Laughs]
TI: But that's a nice story that the grandfathers got to choose the name.
JH: Well, it saved a lot of argument. Course, we were the third party. We had nothing to say.
TI: [Laughs] Well, it was your son.
<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.