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EO: Did you stay there until the end of the war?

SS: No. I left in 1944, December. December 15, 1944. And I left partly because this fellow I got to know, that worked for the WRA, his name was Dan Chapman. That was one of his assignments when he was in -- he was not in camp very long, but one of his assignments was to try to persuade the people who were there to go east. See, we weren't allowed to go back to the West Coast at that time. And I had a number of conversations with Dan in camp and he told me that I would find that the attitude toward Japanese in New York, on the East Coast as a whole would be far better than anything I'd experienced in the West Coast. And I knew the camp was, would be closed eventually. The, I didn't think Japan could last much longer because she had nothing left to fight on. Her navy was practically all destroyed and she had almost no source of fuel, oil or anything of that sort. So I, I couldn't see how Japan could continue. And I felt that if I stayed there until the war officially ended and with all the GIs being released from army duty, that I might find it difficult finding any kind of employment. So, in December of '45, I talked it over -- well, before that, of course, I talked it over with my sister and my brother-in-law who were still in camp, and with my mother, of course, and we decided that I should get out looking for work. So that's what I did. I went from there to Philadelphia, and looked for work there for about a couple of weeks. And that's where I ran into this friend, Dan Chapman. He had been let go from the camp and told to go out to the Philadelphia office to help with the, process the people who were being relocated out there. And later, after two weeks, when I found nothing in Philadelphia, I decided to go to New York. That was around January 1st, I think. December 31st or January 1, 1945. And after two weeks of searching in New York, I landed a job as a statistician at Standard and Poor's Corporation. I found getting that job was rather simple. Of course, it was, it was done through the help of people who were trying to find work for us. Also the WRA had set up, set up an employment office in New York in the Empire State Building.

EO: So, did you have to go through a second questionnaire to get out? Did you have a leave clearance questionnaire?

SS: Probably did. I don't remember. Whatever it was, it was nothing I had any hesitation in signing. I think there again, they had this question, "If released, do you promise not to do anything to impede the war effort?" And I was willing to promise that. Let's see... what was, a few other things.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.