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TI: Yeah, I'll share a piece. When I was doing the research, I came across your dad's name, Kenzo Yoshida, in the Salinas records, and he headed up or he oversaw the recreation area at Salinas, so he was in charge of that. So he was put in charge and he had a whole crew working with them to do recreational activities for the kids at Salinas.

HY: I didn't know that.

TI: It was in the... it wasn't in the paper, it was actually, I think, in a document. So going to Poston, you talked about how your grandparents, the Yoshida family, and your uncle Heek and auntie Emi were all together. But you mentioned earlier that you also had another family there that you became friends with, the Kido family?

HY: Yes, I believe it's Saburo Kido, and I believe he was head of the JACL or he was the main JACL...

TI: He was actually the president of national JACL in 1940.

HY: I believe he was there. I don't remember if this was told to me or if this was actually true or not, but I do remember the story about the night he was beat up. Apparently we were in the same barracks, from what I understand, and there was commotion happening. I remember some of this, and my father and uncle tried to get out the door and the doors were jammed and they couldn't get out. We could hear this going on, my father went to the window and he saw people running out. My father said he threw a flowerpot at some of the people there. But they couldn't get out for a while, and they found out that Saburo Kido had been beat up. And that was because of the, I think the "no-no boys."

TI: And you mentioned that you couldn't get out of your apartment. How did they prevent you from getting out?

HY: Oh, you know, not like our front doors where we open the door in, those doors were built like prison doors where they opened out. That way the hinges were on the outside, they couldn't take the hinges off and get out the doors. So they just jammed pieces of wood into the sides of the door, so we could hear them pounding those things. So that's how they jammed the door so we could not get out, or my father and uncle couldn't get out. Yeah, because I guess those were built to be prisons, so the doors were designed so you couldn't undo the hinges on the inside.

TI: So simply by putting these wood wedges there, you could actually, I guess, lock people in.

HY: Yeah.

TI: That's an interesting story.

HY: Yeah, I guess they eventually got out, but I mean, those buildings were flimsy.

TI: Yeah, according to the records, and if this was, he actually was attacked, according to the records, twice. Once kind of in the fall of '42, but a more serious one in January of '43, which actually ended him up in the hospital. He was beat up pretty bad.

HY: Yeah. Probably would have been '42 because we only stayed in camp less than a year.

TI: Well, you, yeah, I looked at the records, you were there early '43.

HY: Oh, was I?

TI: Because people started... yeah, we'll get to that, and I'll run through some of these dates.

HY: When was he attacked in '43?

TI: So January of '43, so right at the very beginning. And then your...

HY: Do you know if we were in the same barracks?

TI: I couldn't find that. But your uncle Kenji was the first one to leave Poston, looked like almost by himself where he went to Longmont, and then the rest of the family looked like they followed in terms of your grandparents and then the Yoshida family left in September.

HY: Oh. What I recall is Kenji went to Chicago and my grandpa and my dad went to Longmont, and then Uncle Mac came later.

TI: Okay, so maybe that's...

HY: Kenji, because he had a college degree and all that, I think he was offered a job in Chicago, so I think that's where he went. Didn't stay there very long, though, I think.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.