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TI: So let's talk about Crystal City. Because when we talked about, before you got to Crystal City, we talked about, in Peru, how you pretty much had to stay in the house all day. And you talked about, oh, looking out the window and seeing other people, a merry-go-round. Tell me what life was like in Crystal City. You were about (six) years old, and I think now you have a little more freedom to go around. So tell me what it was like. You talked about your little wagon, but what did you do during the day?

JN: So we settled down, I've had more time for myself. And so there was time for me go to swimming, enjoy the area that we stayed. It was open, lot of space was open. This is how it felt to me, it was something new. I would run all over the place, everywhere I went, going to the swimming pool with bare feet, I would run to go swimming. I never knew how to swim, but I learned how to swim there. Even though it was hot, the pavement was hot, I would run. I had to run because it was hot, Texas summertime is very hot. I enjoyed doing that. There were other activities like sumo, taking sumo wrestling or even doing calligraphy, playing baseball. That was the first time for me to enjoy that. It was very enjoyable at the time, best time of my life. Of course, I attended Japanese school, English school. Japanese school was a lot of fun because I already knew how to speak. English was hard, English was very hard. They would show me a picture of a dog, said, "This is a dog." Flip it over, and you see D-O-G. To me, D-O-G was, I couldn't read it, so it didn't mean anything. But slowly we learned just words, but never enough to speak. That was about it. I remember at night there was curfew, they want all the lights out. Shower, restroom would be outside for everybody. You hear around eight o'clock, or maybe earlier, seven o'clock maybe, you could hear someone blowing that bugle, and that's the signal for you to go inside your house. So before, as soon as we hear the bugle, we would run to the shower and run back out.

TI: Explain that to me. So you hear the bugle, you would run to the shower?

JN: Pardon?

TI: So you heard the bugle, you said you would run to the shower?

JN: Yeah, to take a shower.

TI: Oh, so it's like you had to take a shower really fast.

JN: Yeah, we had to go there.

TI: Because the bugle said you had to be in your house, so that was your last chance to take a shower. Okay, I understand.

JN: So that was almost every night.

TI: And Jimmy, when you say "we" had to take a shower, who were you with during this time?

JN: Oh, the family.

TI: So your brothers?

JN: Oh, yeah, family, everybody. When we took a shower, we just, my younger brothers. At times it would be with my older brother, sometimes it would be just by myself, all depends where you were at. Maybe it's someplace, at a friend's house. When you hear that, you better run and go home and get the towel and go take a shower.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.