<Begin Segment 9>

SY: But they... actually, how many years total were you there at Manzanar?

RN: I think two and a half years, then we went to Denver because Japanese were not allowed to move into L.A. yet. So you could get out of camp as long as you moved east.

SY: You left early, huh?

RN: Yeah, yeah. Not too early, but we left before the camps were emptied.

SY: Uh-huh. So was your father's brother in Denver by then?

RN: Yeah. He left before the evacuation. Like I said, he's a smart guy, and so I guess he had heard to leave, so he went to Denver. In fact, that's where we went when we got out of camp. We went to Denver and stayed with my uncle. So that's why we went to Denver.

SY: Uh-huh. Do you remember... or I'm sure this is probably something that as a child you didn't know, but them having to sign the "loyalty oath"?

RN: No, I don't remember any of those things.

SY: Or them talking about leaving camp?

RN: No, no. No, I didn't.

SY: None of that. And generally never any complaints except for the few times you saw your mother...

RN: Yeah, and my grades.

[Interruption]

RN: I'm trying to think, yeah, just more of an overall assessment of camp as a kid. It was different but not the same as if I was a teenager or if I was an adult, I'm sure of that. So, yeah, the camp... see, for the real trauma was before camp and getting, after I came out of camp. Camp itself was not that bad once again in context, 'cause I had plenty of people to play with, kids to play with, I had school, and my parents were pretty cool. But just before camp, after Pearl Harbor was very traumatic. And then moving to Denver was okay. Denver was fine, but coming back to L.A. was probably the most miserable. That was very, very openly hostile to the Japanese or Asians probably in general.

SY: So let's talk a little bit more about Denver. So when you went to Denver you were, by that time, eight or nine?

RN: Yeah. Probably eight.

SY: Eight?

RN: Yeah.

SY: So lived with your...

RN: Uncle, which I can't remember his name anyway.

SY: But in a house?

RN: He had... by that time, he had, they made shoyu, umeboshi and tofu. And I won't call it a... well, a factory, I mean. And so he had about five or six workers there, and they all lived right around. But we ate communally. People worked there, including...

SY: All Japanese Americans?

RN: Yeah, yeah.

SY: And most of them had been in camp or had not?

RN: You know, I don't know that. They might have left the West Coast before, I'm not sure. So we lived, it was kind of communal living. We had our own apartment like area, but we would eat together with people who worked there and their families.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.