<Begin Segment 14>

MN: Let me ask you about some of the clubs that you joined in Manzanar. You mentioned a club called the Wing Nuts? What is that?

SO: The Wing Nuts were a group of fellows that made model airplanes. In fact, there's a group picture -- I think Toyo Miyatake took it -- and I'm in there. [Laughs] But it was just a group of model airplane enthusiasts, but we, they met every once in a while in the firebreak to fly their planes, and if you had a successful flight you lost your plane because it flew out of the camp and you couldn't go retrieve it. But it was just a group of guys.

MN: What were you making the model airplanes from?

SO: Balsa wood. I think we used to get the wood from either Sears or Montgomery Ward's, some of those catalog companies.

MN: Do you know how the club got its name?

[Interruption]

SO: My brother made a box, maybe that was about eight inches by three by two, that he had put the Wing Nut logo on, and it said Ono Brothers on it, that I donated to the National Park Service up in Manzanar.

MN: What's the Wing Nut logo look like?

SO: It's a nut with wings coming out from it.

MN: Makes sense. Let's see, you also shared that in Manzanar you and your friends got involved with gymnastics?

SO: Yeah. We used to go around, there were three of us that hung around together and we used to go around and watch these kids that were very proficient at, on high bar, which is the horizontal bar. And we came back and we put up a horizontal bar made out of two-bys and a one inch pipe, and we, we became pretty proficient at it.

MN: Where did you make the horizontal bars? By your barrack?

SO: Well, it was, our particular one in our block was between the laundry room and the women's bathroom. But we were more daring than wise. I know that one of the friends in another block, he broke his leg falling off the high bar. But we were more daring than wise. [Laughs]

MN: What was on the bottom of the bar to cushion the falls?

SO: Dirt. [Laughs] Like regular gymnasts have these mats, foam mats, but ours were outdoors, so when we fell we fell on dirt.

MN: Now, was this common for other barracks to have horizontal bars?

SO: Oh yeah, I think every, every block had some sort of equipment. In fact, San Pedro had the rings as well, in Block 9 or 10.

MN: You're talking about the Terminal Islanders?

SO: Yeah.

MN: Why did the Terminal Islanders have such a bad reputation?

SO: Well, because they're, I think they were, occupied maybe two or three blocks, so they were there in force and the younger group, I think, tried to be the top dogs, so they terrorized a lot of people. In fact, I think the Bainbridge group had to move because of them, because they were always being picked on.

MN: Did you get along with the Terminal Islanders?

SO: Oh yeah. In fact, one of my good buddies was from Terminal Island.

MN: I guess he wasn't part of that group that was terrorizing the camp.

SO: No, no.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.