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TI: Going back, thinking about your father, who went "no-no" on that "loyalty questionnaire," went to Tule Lake, after the war, was that ever held against him? I mean, was there ever any kind of things that, whether from veteran groups or others that made it difficult for him?

RI: You know, if it did, I didn't know about it. There may have been, and I know that... my father was very active in the community, not a real loud voice, but he just worked hard. And whether it was different community events, certainly with the Gardena Valley Gardeners Association, and if you go through different projects, especially the church, I think there was a lot of mutual respect. And I don't recall, especially with Nisei post-1961, and you had a lot of great leaders, like Ken Nakaoka or George Kobayashi, and others like that, and they were all my father's friends. So I don't recall that being an issue. It's interesting, too, and I think a lot of people will tell this to you that are Sanseis, that when they were growing up, their parents would talk about camp. And I was a Boy Scout, so I figured, oh, they're talking about Boy Scout camp or Girl Scout camp, which is not true. This camp experience that the Japanese Americans endured was a little bit different from our current view of what camp is.

TI: Yeah, I was thinking, because in Seattle, as I talked to some of the families that went to Tule Lake, there was this stigma of being at Tule Lake, and oftentimes in the community, people say, "Oh, what camp did you go to?" And if Tule Lake came up...

RI: Silence. [Laughs]

TI: There was silence, yeah. And I was just wondering if that was similar in Gardena, because people wouldn't have been at Tule unless they had said "no-no."

RI: Well, that's, I think Barbara Takei does a really good job of trying to explain that at Tule Lake, there was just the regular camp, so to speak, and then there was really the segregated prison camp aspect of it. And I think when you're trying to regain your sense of stability and your sense of who you are in America, you don't want to have even the inkling of some kind of a negative stigma. And so I could see where a lot of people just try to avoid it, which is understandable. But I'm really proud to see and hear and watch people like George Takei or Barbara Takei and others. I went to my first pilgrimage two years ago to Tule Lake, I only wish my mother and father could have taken it. We climbed this one rock that they could only see from inside the barbed wire, whereas we're looking down into the camp from there.

TI: So that Castle Rock?

RI: Castle Rock. Anyway, I really thought it was funny, and you've seen this, is that if you look across the landscape, and it's called Abalone Mountain or Awabi Mountain, it really does look like an awabi. I remember climbing Castle Rock one morning, and about 25 yards below me was George Takei, and I'm up near the top already. So I yelled at George, "What's wrong with you, George? I thought you were in Star Trek and you'd just beam yourself up here." He goes, "Boy, if I could, I would," because it was a little bit of a struggle getting up to the top.

TI: [Laughs] That's a good story.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.