<Begin Segment 4>

BN: At Tanforan and then at Topaz, did... well, first of all, your family was all, did your family all live in one unit together?

HT: Yeah, one room.

BN: And then there were how many kids now? There would have been...

HT: My sister (Keiko) and then my brother James and me, and then Nancy was there.

BN: She was a baby at that time.

HT: And then my sister Jane was born in camp. And I remember a big stove in the middle, and my father was a cook at the camp. And then one of the things was he used to, my father was, I don't know why, but he was a good cook, he used to make natto, I mean, natto, when we lived in Japantown, people will come from all over, "Is the natto ready?" Because you couldn't, no one sold it, because it was my father made it. I remember people coming just to...

BN: Did he make it --

HT: He made the natto.

BN: Did he make it in camp?

HT: He made it in camp, too.

BN: Also? Wow.

HT: But even when we came out, he made it. It was in this closet, he would make it, and people would come. There was this old, old man that would always come and says, "Akashi-san, is there natto yet?" Those are things you remember.

BN: Did you like natto?

HT: I like natto.

BN: Many, many people don't, including me.

HT: Yeah, but they didn't sell it -- oh, really? But in camp, he made it in camp, so it was popular.

BN: Did he sell it in camp?

HT: No, no, I think they serve it in the...

BN: In the mess hall?

HT: Mess hall, yeah.

BN: Do you remember which block you were in?

HT: I sort of remember Block 10 or something.

BN: We could look that up, actually, too. Now, when you went to Tanforan and Topaz, did your friends and people you knew in San Francisco all kind of go with you?

HT: No, I don't know.

BN: Or were you surrounded by kind of completely different people?

HT: Yeah, different people. Because at Topaz, because eventually we went to Tule. Because Tule, because my father said he was going to go back to Japan, but then we didn't. And I know that what happened was we wanted to come back to San Francisco but we couldn't because there wasn't any housing. So we had to go to Oregon, and there was a group of us all went there, and the people from camp was put there, and they had housing there for us and they all worked there. And my father worked for a railroad, and we stayed there until we were able to come back to San Francisco. And then my father had a friend, Matsuno-san, and then that's when we went to Hunters Point. And then they found a big, what is it, it wasn't a regular apartment or anything, big thing, but we stayed there, and then until later on, they allowed us to go into those regular houses up in the mountains.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.