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FK: You said that your class is very close, your high school class is very close and you still have reunions and things. Tell me about your class of, it's class of '41, right, 1941?

GN: '41, right.

FK: Yeah, tell me more about the class.

GN: 1951 was our tenth reunion, and then we had our twentieth, so about every ten years we had a reunion. And this year would be our sixty-fifth reunion. At our, I think at our fiftieth reunion, we had a very informal... at one of our classmate's home, here on the island. And we never talked about the evacuation with our classmates, 'cause I didn't know how they felt. But I remember Sadao gettin' up and saying a few words...

FK: Sadao Omoto?

GN: Yeah, he was our class president. And he said a few words about his feelings and the Caucasians' feelings when we left and when we came back. But what he said brought our class closer together. I can remember Bryant, I think his name is Bryant, he came up to me. Like I said, I never, I never knew how the kids felt toward us, he came up and he says, he had tears in his eyes, he says, "What you guys went through," he says, "I don't know how you did it." This is kind of how close we were. 'Til this day, every Thursday at 10:30 we get together, about six of us, at the Central Market to have coffee and hash over, hash over the good times. So that's... it's important, our age, to get, to have friends so close. I would say our '41 class is probably the closest class, mainly because of the war.

And I think there was a few anti-feelings, I can remember an underclassman telling me -- she was very close to the Japanese, and she had a real close friend that was, was anti. And she says she would get Christmas cards from her, but she would never reply. In fact, she was one of the ones who was happy to see us leave, 'cause I didn't know this until a few years ago, but she told me. She says one day GIs came over to Bainbridge, oh, a couple, three days before they pick us up, they rounded us up to get the ferry, they came to their house to borrow some water. And she says, "No, what you guys are doing is wrong." But her mother stepped in and says, "No, they're doing their duty because they were ordered to by the government," a New Jersey girl. And that's, her name is Rhea Williams, she's still around. You know, those, those things are special to me, the personal friends I grew up with.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.