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NW: So what kind of things do you remember as a child growing up in Chico? Would you help your parents in their store?

MW: Yes. Well, yes. I would help in the, it was not a very big store, but Dad was very proud about having good quality products. And I could just see the produce that he would check out, and be sure that everything was in the best condition. I, on weekends or in the summer vacation time, I would help. He also got to the point where he hired someone to come to help, too. My brother was three years younger, so a little different situation. We had a big fig tree behind the house where we eventually lived in, and he would climb up there and pick those wonderful figs and sell them to my father. He was quite an outgoing kid. And one of the stories I remember is that he came home one day, he'd been out fishing in the Chico creek, and he brought home a salmon that was half as big as he was. [Laughs] He was a Boy Scout, and he would lead the group to go camping and go and pick up the produce in Dad's market and go to the meat market where he knew his mom would buy meat, and buy the meat and be the leader of this little group. He'd go to the Bidwell Park and they would go camping with some kids.

NW: Very active.

MW: Very active.

NW: And what was his name?

MW: Paul. Kenji Paul. And there was always a story about one time my mother and I were out shopping, when we came home, you could smell this, like fried chicken. He had gotten frog legs and he was frying frog legs. [Laughs] So he was kind of an adventurer. But those were the few childhood things. [Cries] After I went off to college, we weren't together very much, and then there was camp. I always think I never really got to know him. Our lives kind of were separate, one of the things about camp. One of the regrets that one has. Sorry.

NW: Take your time, we can always take a break if you need to. Well, it does sound like you had the rich childhood or experience, a lot of good family experiences, good community experiences. So I do want to kind of shift a little bit more towards the war years, getting a little bit later. So you graduated from high school before the war, is that right?

MW: Yes, I was in college.

NW: And where were you going to college?

MW: I was going to Mills College in Oakland, a girls' school.

NW: And what were you studying at the time?

MW: Well, undergraduate, I hadn't decided. It was just at the time when I should be thinking about what my major is going to be, but I was in second year. And so as a child, I think I was kind of in a protected community, and once again in a girls' school. I got a scholarship. And the reason I went there was because one of my teachers, who was in high school, music teacher, she had gone to Mills. And she said, "Why don't you apply?" and encouraged me to go there, and that's how it happened. So at the end of my... I was actually, one morning, December...

NW: December 7, 1941.

MW: I went to chapel, on campus we had the chapel. When I came back that morning, that Sunday morning, to the dormitory, the radio was blaring. And I said, "What?" The "Japs" had bombed Pearl Harbor. It was unbelievable, lots of excitement and noise. And what I remember is that my head resident said, "Why don't you go up to your room?" Whether she was protecting me from comments that might be made or what, I don't know. I think there were, the girls' school was not that big, but I lived in a dormitory, Mills Hall. And I believe there might have been twelve Japanese or Japanese Americans. There were a couple of Japanese, too, in Mills. But the thing that I remember is that because of the curfew, I was not allowed to go from my dormitory, practically just across the street where there was a library, after seven o'clock. And my advisor, who happened to be the chaplain, was just furious at that sign on the telephone pole.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.