<Begin Segment 18>

AI: Did you have much discussion among your friends about your situation or do you recall the nature of that kind of talk?

CN: Sure, about, we didn't call it our civil rights, but, you know, what is this? We're supposed to be free, and we're American citizens, and we had lots and lots of discussions about that.

AI: So that was a very conscious topic for many of you at high school age.

CN: Uh-huh, very much so because by that time we were in high school and ready to graduate from high school.

AI: And your lessons in civics must have been fairly fresh in your minds for some of you.

CN: Yeah, uh-huh. And so it was, that's... we did a lot of talking of that. And, we talked about boys, too, but it was -- and I'm certainly not one to have attracted any of the boys -- but some of my friends attracted them like bees to honey. [Laughs] And so they would tell us about cute, how this cute boy came up to them and we're going to go to the dance and that kind of thing.

AI: So it sounds like, it sounds like a mixture of very normal everyday kind of teenage life combined with this very bizarre abnormal...

CN: Yeah. It was very abnormal and it was, you know, was having to go to the bathroom in these, in this latrine with many holes, and you were doing your business while someone else was -- of course, they were just as embarrassed and uncomfortable. But I remember the Issei women saying we've got to go to the bathroom. You're going to get sick. And so to be begin with we tried to go very early in the morning and we're a little afraid to go late at night, but it was...

AI: It sounds horrendous.

CN: Yes, and I understand... we shared a room about this size -- maybe it was a little larger -- with another family who, a family of three and we were four, so there was seven of us, with an army blanket between the two families, to separate the two families. And how, one night, I dreamt and I spent the whole night crying and laughing. I don't know where the laughing came (from), but anyway, and I said to my parents, "Why didn't you wake me up?" And they said, "Well, we felt sorry for you." But I'm, and the, our neighbors didn't complain. So they were very sweet about it, but I don't know where the laughing came in. But anyway, obviously, I was having nightmares.

AI: So it was really a time of no privacy, a time of where people could hear everything that went on with each other.

CN: And how, how we, how I handled that, I can't even tell you.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.