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BN: What do you remember about your living quarters? I always ask people about the bathrooms, the latrines, the mess hall, any memories of those, just basic day-to-day life?

RO: Yeah, well, first of all, being five or six years old, going to the bathroom, we just had one area where everyone went. And so I didn't have any problem with how it was set up. Of course, the women didn't like it because they didn't have individual areas to use. What I didn't like about it was, at night, if I wanted to go to the bathroom, it was cold and dark out, and I hated to leave to go to the bathroom. But outside of that, it was fine. When you're a young child, all of the stuff, at least my experience is that it's not that bad of a deal. In fact, I really enjoyed my time at Manzanar. Do you get that from other people as well? Young kids?

BN: Absolutely. Yeah, my father-in-law, he was fourteen, he considered it some of the funnest times of his life, when you're a kid.

RO: When you were a kid.

BN: Yeah, you hear that a lot.

RO: And all of these JA kids, and I really didn't have that many friends outside of relatives before the war. So to wind up all of a sudden with all these kids, all these JA kids, and we played together. We had a good time. [Laughs]

BN: Now, what about the schools? What do you remember about going to school there? Because you were there, which grades would you have been?

RO: I think... let's see, first or second maybe, starting.

BN: You were there three full years.

RO: Yeah. And I thought the... well, I don't know that I can give you a real clear idea there, but I certainly enjoyed school. I was fortunate enough to... I didn't know it at the time, because what do I know about how they organized this thing? But for each grade, they had like, say, four or five different classrooms. And they put the smartest kids in one classroom, and turned out I was one of the smarter kids, so I was in that classroom. And I didn't know it because I really wasn't thinking about that. But one of my friends, after the war, was really upset. He said, "I didn't get into that classroom." He got his PhD, so he was no dummy. So I guess there were too many smart kids, I don't know, but he never forgot that, that he didn't get in. We were good friends.

BN: With regard to... were you involved in other activities, sports, art projects or anything like that? Scouting?

RO: No, but my dad made me do (kendo) and... what's the other one?

BN: Judo?

RO: Yes, judo, which I didn't like at all. Because in judo, the guy that was running it was, he was not a nice person and he forced us to do things we didn't want to do. What I didn't like about the other thing is I would get hit on the head, and we didn't have anything on top of our head, we just had it here. Anyway, those were not the best things in my experience.

BN: This is at Manzanar?

RO: In Manzanar, yeah.

BN: Interesting.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.