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PW: So I know that your family actually stayed for a long time. People didn't just leave, you had young children, so your parents stayed together, and you guys left towards the, almost towards the end of the war.

RO: Yes.

PW: Right? Where did you guys go, and do you know anything about that, like about the leaving part or packing?

RO: Again, it's again like you get the message and so on, that we realized that because, I think that the security in the camp became progressively less. It wasn't as strict as when we first got there. I can't even remember even seeing American soldiers in the guard towers anymore, I think they were still there. But again, when we got the notice, again, only because of them, the word that got out, my mother and father, and then your schoolmates and whatever that were going to be going and were going to be let out. So then my mother told me that we were going to go back then to Selma. I thought, "Well, okay, I know Selma. I remember Selma." So then, yeah, we came back, and I'm just thinking about that, how did we get from the camp back to Selma? I guess it must have been by train and I guess I don't remember. So, yeah, at that point, so then as we... and I think what had happened was that then the people that ran the Kajitani Grocery Store were very helpful in a sense. Because they had this building that they owned and lived in, so that was basically closed up. Whereas within the restaurant, it had been leased or rented out, it was no longer part of our lives. So I remember that my mother and father were renting a, basically a tin shack that was on the other side of the tracks, and that's where we were living after we came back, and then going with them to go and pick grapes and peaches and things of that nature, I never did that. But then that's what you did to earn a living because, again, they had no income. Again, I don't know how long they did that, and until then, they realized that they could go ahead and become involved in the restaurant business again.

PW: Did you feel tension coming back to California?

RO: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I remember my older brother and I, after we came back, because they said, "Oh, yeah, this is the town we grew up." So we walked downtown, which we knew, and then people would drive by, give us the middle finger and so on, we would walk into a little place that we used to, like a drugstore, nobody would wait on us. And so we thought, "Oh, my goodness, what is this about?" Because we came back to Selma in August, so school was out. And my mother said, "Well, it rolls around, you're going to have to go to school." And I thought, oh, I don't want to go to school. I mean, look at the tension we felt from coming back, that it was not the same community. Same town, but it seemed very, very different. So I told my mom, "I don't want to go to school," and she said, "You don't have a choice. You don't have a choice." So then as a result, I remember then one of my best friends, the guy that I gave the BB-gun to, we never talked to each other. It was just, that was it. And again, he didn't make any overtures to me and I didn't to him. You just kind of feel the tension between them, people, so then you go to class and everybody in the class is white except for one or two... you know, later on, as we went to junior high school, then I noticed that some of their kids that were coming from some of the surrounding areas.

PW: Was this true before you left for camp in terms of --

RO: No.

PW: -- after the war had been declared, and you were still in school, correct?

RO: No. After the war was declared, right, but then we left that summer. So then there was that period of time in which then we realized that there were all these posters that were set up in the telephone poles about the evacuation orders and so on. But I just... it seemed that there wasn't as much tension the few months there from the war. It seemed that things were fairly... I think it was after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and then what had happened, that period of time between that and the time in which we got the notices that we would be evacuated. So there was that period that slowly progressed, then realized that then we were going to have to move, because you felt that you were, the people that you knew in town, there were a few kids, no matter what, they were in the same position as I was, Caucasian kids. They didn't think anything about the war other than that we were at war with Japan and whatever. We saw each other just as classmates, as friends, and so you maintained that.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.