<Begin Segment 8>

SY: Do you remember your teachers?

RN: Yeah, I remember her and I can't remember her name. But yeah, I do remember my teachers.

SY: Caucasians?

RN: Yeah. They were, I believe they were volunteer Quakers, because I think the Quakers were the only group that voiced their opinion against the incarceration of Japanese Americans. So there was a lot of Quaker, Friends, what is it called?

SY: American Friends Service Committee.

RN: Yeah, right.

SY: So originally, but didn't that change as you stayed in camp?

RN: No.

SY: You had always had Caucasian teachers?

RN: Yeah, I did. But I know later there were Nisei teachers, but...

SY: For you it was just...

RN: Yeah, they were all...

SY: And do you remember the size of your classes?

RN: Oh, boy, I don't.

SY: You were so young.

RN: Yeah.

SY: And did you feel that camp was harder in some ways in terms of your peer, all your peers being Japanese?

RN: No. Yeah, I can't say... I don't know if I was more comfortable or less comfortable, I can't really say.

SY: Were you a good student back then?

RN: [Laughs] And that's another story I tell in the film is that, well, typical JA family, you come back with anything under an A... and so I brought my report card and I had a C. Then my mom was ironing and she burst into tears. And that was very dramatic for me, and I was a good student ever since that. But now, as an adult, I look back, and I know it wasn't just because I had a bad grade. I think it was just everything, being in camp and all of that.

SY: What was the C in?

RN: I think it was English or something like that.

SY: Something very basic.

RN: Oh, math. I'm sorry, it was math. So anyway...

SY: So you started studying harder after that.

RN: Yeah, yeah. [Laughs]

SY: Applying yourself.

RN: Applying myself a little bit more.

SY: What I've heard is that the competition was really harder in camp.

RN: Oh, well, I think in elementary school that element wasn't there. I can imagine in high school, fellow JA, high achieving JA students.

SY: So you spent time outside of school just playing with your friends?

RN: Yeah. It was actually, that's where I think camp was, for kids, there was a lot of kids. And so we played marbles was a big deal, tops, yo-yos and kind of making things out of salvaged wood. Then they had big firebreaks between all the barracks, and so eventually backstops were made and so baseball fields were made, so we were able to play baseball.

SY: You were old enough to play baseball?

RN: Well, with my friends. We didn't play real baseball. And there was a lot of kite flying there, actually, a lot of the adults flew kites because it was a great place, no trees and a lot of wind. So it was kite flying. I don't want to paint too good of a picture of camp, but you have to... qualify that was I was a kid then. I think my parents did a really good job of trying to keep things normal.

SY: You never heard them complaining?

RN: Yeah, never complained. My mother was a pretty positive, positive person. So I want to put that in context.

SY: You know, I didn't ask you, because your mother is Nisei and your father is Issei, was there a big age difference between them?

RN: Probably nine or ten years, yeah.

SY: More than most.

RN: Yeah. Well, I'm not sure, but it was more than six, I know.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.