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SY: So do you remember your younger brothers being born in camp?

NG: I remember, I'm always, I've always felt like I was the special child, and then one day my mom's telling this story -- I do remember it too -- that my dad, riding on his bicycle, coming 'cause my mom had my brother, but this is years later so my mom said that he was just so excited that, that he got this boy because my dad never was like that. In fact, my mom, when the doctor told her she was gonna have another girl she said to my dad, "We're gonna have another girl." So he goes, "Eh, what's wrong with that?" So I never, so that story when he was excited about my brother burst my bubble 'cause he's never, never seemed to care about boys or girls. [Laughs]

SY: Really? So that was, you were pretty young, though, when -- well, but you don't remember it.

NG: Two and a half years.

SY: This is what your mother told you.

NG: No, I remember when my brother came home. Maybe it might've been my youngest brother, not that one. It might've been...

SY: There was no similar story for your youngest brother. By then he was over it. [Laughs]

NG: No. [Laughs]

SY: So your youngest brother in Tule Lake, your mother was pregnant, then, for much of the time that she was in camp.

NG: Yeah, she was.

SY: She was either pregnant or delivering. So the facilities there must, she...

NG: Yeah, I've never talked to her about that. I should. When I get back I'm gonna see how, what her birthing experience was. [Laughs]

SY: Yeah, I know. So anyway, so you guys were in Tule and eventually the war ended. Is that why they were not sent back to Japan?

NG: Yeah. Right, right. And we were all together. My grandmother was just a couple of barracks down, so very close to my grandparents and they totally, I think I told you how they totally spoiled me. And my mom, I think I told you how I have visions of my mom as I'm hiding under the bed or wherever and she's, my grandmother's protecting me from my mother. [Laughs] She would do that.

SY: Were you the only, there were other, did your aunts and uncles have kids?

NG: Yeah. My uncle had three boys. Well, two boys in camp, and one was just a year younger than me, so he was born before. Yeah, he was born before the war -- before camp I mean -- and the other one was born in Manzanar just like my other brother. But they were younger. I don't know, they, I don't know what their... I was, I just seemed like, I felt like I was the closest to them. They might have had the same relationship. And they probably did 'cause later on they did move. My grandparents stayed with my eldest, the eldest son, my uncle.

SY: So they lived with their, them and their kids for a while.

NG: Yeah.

SY: What's interesting about your family is that you all stayed very close, geographically anyway. I mean, you never, when you were in camp you were all together, except for the eldest daughter.

NG: Right, yeah.

SY: And then the son that went into the service, right?

NG: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.