<Begin Segment 33>

DG: How did camp change your life as far as, as you look around now and you see the people around you, how is your life different because of these things that happened to you?

SS: Well... it's different in the fact that I learned that you really don't need a lot of friends. You just need couple of good friends who stick with you, who help you even if they might be ostracized and that's my friend, Marion. I guess for that reason I don't join lots of organizations, in fact I hardly do. Ken does all the joining and volunteering. To me, it's more important to nurture my family, my grandkids because when we get old and can't do anything, it's my kids and my grandkids who's going to take care, so --

DG: Because that's the thread that runs through your life, I can tell.

SS: Because my grandmother took care of us.

DG: Uh-huh, and you took care of your family.

SS: Yeah and I take care of all my kids. And in fact, so my kids don't forget the evacuation, the internment, when we got our twenty thousand. Before I donated to JACL or anybody, I gave my kids a thousand each and I told them (that) I wanted them to remember that as...money that we got back. Plus I bought Otsuka's painting because that depicts Japanese, right? And I want them all to have it in their house, so every time they look at it they know their mother was in camp. And my two girls said they bought the Hawaiian bracelet because I was evacuated from Hawaii, and they have the name of the camp I was in and the dates. And hopefully, nothing like this would happen in their lifetime but you can't trust the government, because every two to four years they change, right?

DG: But you're choosing to live here in America? What is it, you can't trust the government but you...?

SS: Because I love this country. It's up to us, I think if we elect the people that we think are going to represent us, I would trust them. But we never know them personally, do we?

DG: But you've done things personally that insure...

SS: Yeah, and I think the number one thing is to educate your family. And like my kids say, "Mom, we heard it so many times," but I'm going to keep on saying it 'til I die. And now my eight year old grandson says, "What are you talking about?" So, I go through and I don't think he can picture that, but hopefully, I'll be living long enough so that when he gets to junior high and high school he will understand that this happened.

[Interruption]

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.