Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Takeko Yokoyama Todo Interview
Narrator: Takeko Yokoyama Todo
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: June 9, 2015
Densho ID: denshovh-ttakeko-01-0012

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TI: I'm curious, after the war, did they ever get together and play again?

TT: I don't think so. Well, they had the reunion, remember? Did you go to the first one at Seattle Center?

TI: Not the Seattle Center...

TT: It was the fortieth year after the camps had closed.

TI: Where at Seattle Center did they have it?

TT: I don't know, they had a place...

TI: Because I remember the Vegas one, but I can't remember the...

TT: This was the very first one, it was in one of the buildings, the little flat buildings. And there were so many people, they were here from all over the country, and I remember going to that, and the man that was at the door, he says, "I have never seen a reunion like this." He says, "Everybody's so happy, they're jumping up and down, they're hugging each other." I said, "Well, we were all in the internment camp together, and we haven't seen these people since then, and so we're all so happy." And by then we were in our... how old were we then?

TI: Fortieth, so you were probably fifty-seven, fifty-eight?

TT: Yah. So we'd all been doing other things, but then to see all these people that we knew before the war, because they were coming from all over the United States, and people that were already moved out of the States, too. In fact, Frank had taken a video because he was actually there then, too. And you'd see the people and you could recognize them. Says, "Hey, there's so and so," "there's so and so." So I really enjoyed looking at those --

TI: Now, was this the reunion that later on you guys did games at Lincoln Park?

TT: Yah, that was the very first one.

TI: Yeah, so I remember helping my dad with the games.

TT: Yah, that was the biggest one, because it was the first one.

TI: Yeah, so I don't think I did anything at the Seattle Center, but I remember helping with the games.

TT: Uh-huh. And volleyball...

TI: Yeah, they had all sorts. My dad has all these photographs of it.

TT: Yah, I could imagine.

TI: So I remember seeing that.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2015 Densho. All Rights Reserved.