<Begin Segment 8>

HM: Why did your family leave? Did they have a special reason for leaving Manzanar and going to Minidoka? There were some families who stayed in Manzanar.

IW: Oh, yeah. Well, naturally we didn't have any, like lot of families had relatives. And we were surprised that the government okayed that. We didn't think it would happen. And we didn't have any relatives, so it didn't matter, but where the group goes, then we would go. Because we liked Manzanar as it was, and if they told us not to, we can go, we would have stayed, too, but we had nothing to stay for or nothing to go up to Minidoka, but I think Manzanar must have, maybe... well, I don't know. Better place, or it was still the same. Now we had the mud and snow and things that we had to contend with.

Well, I'll tell you one thing funny. When we got to Minidoka, our boys, California, there's one certain area that they wear zoot suits and hair slick and so forth, our boys decided to. And I happened to be at the office that same day they came in as zoot suiters, and everybody got scared and they hid under their desk and everything else. And I'm saying, "Oh, these boys are not what you think they are. They're just playing, put out to scare you." And so then it was okay, but I think the girls were frightened when they came with zoot suits, and here I am, whole bunch of boys. And that was really a funny thing for us to see. [Laughs]

HM: What other memories do you have about Minidoka? What did you do to pass your time and what did your mother do to pass her time?

IW: Well, I didn't have much time, but I worked in the hospital with the little children. And so I just, there were still my girlfriends, and we all, I have many friends in Seattle then, too, I looked them up. But two months is not much time to do... because I left early.

HM: And your mother?

IW: Oh, my mother? Well, she found things to do, maybe writing or knitting and things like that. And it was really a vacation for a lot of the Isseis. They never took time out to go far or someplace, but I think it was good for the Isseis at that time, that they made what was their time to count. So many of them did handwork and they got to take singing and writing and everything else that they missed. But I wasn't too long in Minidoka. I don't know too much about that.

HM: Did the "loyalty questionnaire" affect you or anyone in your family?

IW: Did the which...

HM: The "loyalty questionnaire."

IW: Yeah. If you don't... yeah, you have to say you're loyal. We weren't so much affected as the boys, because to them, they had to go to war then. I think some people said you shouldn't sign that, because... but I don't... out of loyalty to this country, they did sign affirmatively.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.