<Begin Segment 4>

BN: Okay, so at Minidoka, there were five people in your family.

BS: Right.

BN: Were you all in one room?

BS: Yes, we were in one room.

BN: Do you remember your address there?

BS: I think it was 36-6-C, that's the number I remember.

BN: And do you remember which of the elementary schools you went to?

BS: Sure don't.

BN: But you definitely did go there, first through third grade there? Were you involved in other things, Boy Scouts or other kinds of activities?

BS: Well, there was a couple other kids about my age that hung out together, kind of like a mini gang. And we played together a lot, that's all I remember.

BN: Were these kids you knew from before the war?

BS: No, met at the camp.

BN: Did your parents work?

BS: Yeah, in fact, my mother worked in the cafeteria, and my dad went out of the camps to work in the sugar beets. There were a lot of them that were sent out to harvest the sugar beets, because they had a shortage of labor because most of the men were recruited into the army. But one thing I remember is that my mother apparently was harassed by the other people working in the cafeteria because my dad had gone out of the camps to work in the sugar beet fields. They thought that was traitorous, and so they ended up having her fired. And I remember her coming back to our room in the barracks and crying. I'd never seen her cry in all my young life, because she was a very strong woman. But I remember her crying, and that remains fixed in my mind.

BN: And to be clear, they were perceiving your father's working the sugar beet field as helping the U.S. side.

BS: Right. I think there was a real divide between those who went out of the camps to work on the sugar beet field and those who didn't. They were thought to be disloyal.

BN: We haven't, we didn't really talk much about your mom. What was her name?

BS: My mom's name? Noriko.

BN: And then you said she was born in Portland, but was Kibei, raised in Japan.

BS: Right.

BN: Do you know how many years she was in Japan?

BS: I think up until she was about eighteen years old, came back to the U.S. with her father. Her maiden name was Okawa. She had two brothers here, too, they were my uncles.

BN: Did you have a sense of your parents' kind of attitude toward the situation? The fact that your dad's going out and working in the sugar beet field is kind of one indication. But in terms of where they saw their future and how they viewed...

BS: I know that a group of men, including my father, they smuggled a shortwave radio into the camps. They would be listening to see where the war was going. That's about all I remember.

BN: Did your dad speak English?

BS: He spoke broken English at the time.

BN: Did you have relatives in Japan that you knew of?

BS: Oh, yeah. We had, on both sides of the family, in Fukushima and Kumamoto. One is in the south and the other is in the north. In fact, I was able to meet both of them during my first trip to Japan in 1958, I think it was.

BN: Was there any knowledge of the infamous "loyalty questionnaire" that they first passed out?

BS: I only learned about that later when I studied Asian American history.

BN: But the fact that they stayed in camp until '45, I guess, is an indication they would have answered "yes."

[Interruption]

BN: Any other memories about Minidoka before we move on?

BS: Well, I remember... did I tell the story about the IQ test?

BN: Yes.

BS: Let me see if there's anything else I can remember from that period. I guess that's about it.

BN: Do you remember anything about your teachers? Where they all white or did you have Nisei?

BS: I think there were some Japanese teachers, but most of them were white.

BN: What was your impression, that they were pretty good? Did you feel like you got a decent education or did you feel like you were falling behind?

BS: I think I must have gotten a decent education because when we came out of the camps, I had gone through the third grade in camp and entered the fourth grade in the small rural community school. And I was certainly up to par, in fact, I was one of the better students at the time. So they must have done something right.

BN: You picked up English fine.

BS: Right.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.