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BN: Why don't we go to the war now. And, of course, you mentioned earlier about the neighbor. Do you have any particular recollection of December 7th and the reaction of the family and community to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the beginning of World War II?

RO: I really don't. In my own defense, I'd say I was only five.

BN: Yeah, you were young, sure, grade school.

RO: Actually, I wasn't in school yet.

BN: Okay. Any memories of, kind of, the period between Pearl Harbor and when you started to go to camp in terms of... and again, you're very young, but just things that you could sense that you learned about later about what your parents were thinking with regard to, "What are we going to do with the business?" "What are we going to do with the house?" and so forth?

RO: Well, I know what happened. And I don't know what the thinking was behind that, but we didn't own the house and that was pretty straightforward. I mentioned earlier that he had a business with three workers, and he lost that. So after World War II, he couldn't get back into that business, so he wound up selling fruits and vegetables off his truck, so he would go to JA areas and he would sell there. So he did not make a lot of money. So people his age really got it. It was really tough for them. We went from a pretty nice area to the east side of L.A. which was not a very nice, it's a very low income area, which is what we were, low income.

BN: Now, do you know the circumstances of how your family ended up going to Manzanar? Because typically people from the South Bay didn't go to Manzanar.

RO: I have no idea.

BN: Okay, I was just wondering.

RO: But fortunately we didn't have to stop at a horse... we didn't have to stay in the horse areas because my father volunteered to go early to set it up, and so we were one of the earliest people to go.

BN: Yeah, that answers my question, actually, so that's why he ended up at Manzanar because he was one of the so-called volunteers. Did he drive his truck up?

RO: Yeah, he drove. He had one truck left, so he just drove up.

BN: And was he able to hold onto it throughout?

RO: Yeah, we drove out of there in that truck when we left. And he had a job... I don't know how many of the people who were in the camps had jobs, but my mother had a job and my father had a job. He worked with the people who were moving things around. My mother started out as a teacher, because this is before teachers were available. Then when we got white teachers, and then she worked in a comparable or slightly different job. But they both worked throughout the time we were there.

BN: I've never heard that story about... I know some people drove their cars to Manzanar, but the stories I've heard, they always were sold, subsequently. So it's interesting your dad was able. So did he use his own truck in the course of the work he did at Manzanar?

RO: I have no idea. I would guess he did.

BN: Yeah, that may be why he was able to onto it. That's an unusual story. So the other part of it is, does that mean that you were able to bring, kind of, more stuff with you? You hear the stories about only what you can carry. If you're driving your own truck up there, you must have been able to then...

RO: He could have, yeah. He went ahead of us and he had the truck, so he could have put things in there, I guess.

BN: Do you remember, in terms of your barracks, did you have your own furniture or things in there or was it pretty sparse?

RO: I think it was pretty spartan.

BN: So maybe not.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.