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HM: Could you tell me a little bit about your life on Bainbridge before the war and Pearl Harbor?

IW: Well, I went to school, and I was the last one so I went to a school, Bainbridge High School, we had to walk which was close to two miles. And so we thought nothing of it because everybody else walked in. But if we try it now, we know how hard it must have been. Let's see, I remember my father having us get on the car, then it didn't make the hill and we had to jump up and push the car. [Laughs] So that was way down, and I was a senior when we left the island and I was the senior class treasurer, so I thought, oh boy, I get to go to senior ball and everything because even if I didn't get a date, I would be there to collect the money. But, unfortunately, the war came about and that was about the time, we couldn't go. But Mr. Dennis was such a nice person, he tried to get the government, army, that pick all the Japanese kids, there were thirteen of us, and so it was one of the largest Japanese groups, and he wanted us to go to the senior prom. And he asked the army and the army said absolutely not, so we couldn't go. And we had the senior sneak, and lots of things coming in the springtime, and we got to go to camp. And we didn't know where the camp was going to be. We could carry just two suitcases, and nowadays, the suitcases are large but the suitcases we carried were small. And so that's when we went to Manzanar, we didn't know where we were going, but we went there. Do you want more of my background?

HM: Yes.

IW: Okay. We went to school, and we went to Japanese school after our regular school. And Monday and Wednesday and Friday after school, so once in a while we'd go and pick some of the grapes, grew grapes. And he brought those to the Japanese students so we wouldn't go stealing it or anything. And we ate grapes, and they were very good. And we also went to another place, I don't know who they were but they had lots of trees, apple trees, pomegranates and pears and everything, and so we went to first ask them if we could take some apples, and she said, "Oh, you can go ahead and take it." And we tried, another time, shall we go? And she said it's okay, but she probably thought one time but we thought for all the time, because when we climbed the tree and when we hear the door open, then we all fly out of there, so I had many dresses, we didn't wear pants in those days, so dresses were, my mother found that had holes in it. So that's how we were. We felt guilty if we didn't ask every time but we thought we don't have to ask every time because she'll be bored. So we go, but when the door opened we fled, so that meant something. And we would pick flowers on the way to school and sometimes we'd get kind of late and we'd rush down and we'd give the flowers to the teachers you know, so we did a lot of pranks and things.

Well, my mother used to make, when I come home, she had omusubi with nori, you know, because they had Japanese food for lunchtime but breakfast we always had mush or potatoes, and evening was American dishes. My dad liked that, so I didn't get the chance to eat so much Japanese food, because they had it during lunch, but she made me onigiri. And I had dogs all my life and they were wonderful. We had miniature fox terriers I think from Kitamoto family. And Teddy was my favorite. During, before evacuation Teddy was my dog, we had Teddy and Minnie, and Michi and I shared a bedroom, so we... cold mornings we'd send the dogs in first. And when you get warmed up, and our feet, and they used to sleep like people, you know, in the middle, and put their chin up and put the sheets up. And so when we had evacuation, we just didn't want to, we could have hidden her, him, he was so small. Minnie passed away with a birth and Teddy was the only child. And so the soldiers, we had one soldier to a family, and they came and, oh, Teddy was at the window and looked at us and cried and we cried too, because we couldn't take him. And later on, people from California brought their dogs, but poor Teddy, I think it was two and a half weeks later, our Filipino that stayed in our home wrote and said that Teddy died of a broken heart, loneliness. He wouldn't eat anything, so... what else?

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.