<Begin Segment 21>

TI: And Dotti, where did you first learn about the Japanese American incarceration and what had happened to the whole community on the West Coast?

DR: When did I hear about it?

TI: Yeah, when did you first hear about or learn about it?

DR: You know, I grew up with that, so I don't know.

TI: You grew up with it, but did you, you probably maybe didn't understand fully what had happened in your personal experience, but then when you were maybe first confronted with the magnitude of what had happened.

DR: Gee, I don't know.

TI: Like when you read it in a book, said, "Oh, I was there," when you read something like 110,000 Japanese Americans who were removed from their homes?

DR: I think I was a young adult. I think I was probably in my early twenties.

BY: Did your family talk much about it?

DR: No.

BY: And then you'd left home. I mean, you left when you were just out of high school.

DR: I was twenty. So here I am, sixty years later. [Laughs] I don't know where anything is around here. I didn't drive when I was a teenager, so I have no idea where I'm going. Turn on that GPS and it's like magic.

TI: We all do that.

BY: We sure do, yeah. But it must be nice then, now, being back in Seattle with your siblings and all your relatives.

TI: It is, it is, it's very nice. And then I still have a lot of friends that I went to high school with, and we'd go out to lunch.

BY: Did everybody say, "Hey what happened to you all these years?"

DR: Yeah. But you know, I envy your dad and your dad for being the ages they were during the incarceration. Your dad was telling me how much fun he used to have with the baseball team and getting in "fights" with the other guys. So much fun talking to them.

BY: Well, I mean, that's one of the reasons we're trying to do these interviews now is because we realize that the Nisei who are still alive, were for the most part pretty young. They were high school age or younger.

DR: Yeah, exactly.

BY: So the ones who really lived it and maybe felt the impact of that are gone now. So the ones who are left are like you, and my dad also says, "Oh, it was fun. We had a good time."

DR: Yeah, I know. I always wish that I had been a teenager at that time. It would have been great.

BY: Well, thank you. Do you have anything else that you want to add before we close?

DR: Actually, not. But I am proud to be Japanese, I'm very proud.

BY: Good, okay. All right, that's great.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.