<Begin Segment 14>

LH: Now, let me ask you, even though the Crystal City camp I've heard was considered maybe a model camp for, amongst concentration camps, how did your parents explain the guards and the fact that you were imprisoned to you? How did they make you understand?

MN: I don't think you can. I don't think they understood why they were in camp, that they understood it was wrong, that they shouldn't have been there and I think the bitterness of being imprisoned, but I don't think there was any attempt to explain to us because it was unexplainable. It's kind of a Japanese thing. It just is. How are you going to cope with it?

LH: So as a child you understand that there are guards that are guarding you or there are guards around the perimeter, and is it something you sort the take for granted?

MN: Yeah. If you're a prisoner in a concentration camp at seven years old, you think everybody is. I mean, you don't know your circumstances are so unusual. You have no idea to compare with anyone else's life so you just assume that this is life. No one tells you any different. You get an undertone of something is wrong. I know right out of camp, a librarian asked me how was it to be in camp, and I know that my answer I thought was a correct answer. "It was fine, ma'am." That was what I was supposed to say when an adult asks me, I was supposed to put the best foot forward. And then she turned around and told her assistant, "You see, some people in camp enjoyed it," and I felt betrayed. That was not the response that she was supposed to give her assistant. She was supposed to compliment me on what a nice young lady I was to make the proper positive remark was what I was expecting her to compliment me, but not to say -- 'cause I knew that camp was not a place where all of us were happy, where it was pleasant to be. That was not a good thing and I think that the lady was sincere. So I started getting a little cautious about how do I respond to this. I wasn't sure. It was confusing to me. Why? I don't think my mom or dad ever explained to me why I was in camp. I don't think anybody ever did. I think it came kind of slowly, started to talk to people, started to listen to people, and to wonder to what point -- like a victim of rape. Is it okay to talk about? Do you bring more harm? Do you bring more denigration to yourself by admitting that something bad happened to you? You really don't know so you kind of let it go.

LH: So by the time that you were in camp as a child, you perhaps had some sense that there was something wrong about the situation, but couldn't quite understand it?

MN: Yes. Definitely something's wrong, but you don't know why it's wrong. You don't know if your parents did something wrong. You don't know what's wrong, and it's very vague. I don't think you could articulate it.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.