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DG: Can you tell me more about the time you worked in the clinic in Manzanar?

KN: Well, the clinic, it's one big room, you know, Public Health Department, and they had long tables and then all these secretaries, stenographers, everybody sitting all in a row with a typewriter. And I was a typist clerk along with all the rest of them. And then we had more advanced stenographers that were for doctors, they were on the other, at the other table. But we were all in this one big room. And all these Issei food handlers. they work in the kitchen or wherever else, handling food, they had to come for their physical. And so this Nisei doctor is trying to communicate with an Issei lady or a man, and they are not communicating. And I'm sitting there, I'm working, but I hear them and they're struggling. So what do I do? Not minding my own business, I get up and go over there, because you know, they had a little cubbyhole-like place over there. And so I started asking this lady questions, and then I think the doctor really felt relieved that some questions will be answered properly. And so from then on, every time they had the food handlers' exam, or whatever you call it, then I just went to help them out.

DG: Translating.

KN: Yeah. And my Japanese wasn't that good, but at least I guess it was sort of understandable. It was better than the Nisei one.

DG: And where did you learn Japanese?

KN: Well, I went to Japanese school and I went through eighth grade. I wished I studied harder, but I played harder than I studied. But I could speak enough that I could get by, so that was fortunate. Being the oldest in the family, you always speak Japanese to your parents, right? So when I went to American school, it was Greek to me, I couldn't speak English. So it was good and bad.

DG: And you mentioned before about one of the nurses talking to you about, it sounds like a psychiatric ward?

KN: Well, I think this evacuation probably affected a lot of people. So yeah, you could call it that, but they were in this one barrack, and I think different nurses stayed there to do their duty. But I didn't question too much when she said, "They were just climbing the walls this morning," or something, then I knew how bad it was.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.