<Begin Segment 11>

SY: So backing up again, when you're going to high school, do you remember your courses? Was it tough? Was it fairly easy? Was it easier or harder?

AM: I thought I was real good in math, until I hit college level math and I found out how dumb I was. [Laughs]

SY: Was it, what was the competition like? What were the other students like?

AM: In camp? I really didn't know. I, you made me remember something I said at the Santa Monica High School, when we were awarded our diplomas, that, I said something about, our grades were, the Asians' grades were high in high school, so I was wondering how it would be when they all got together. But I know many people really didn't study.

SY: In camp?

AM: In camp.

SY: In camp you didn't study.

AM: But...

SY: Was that you? Did you not study?

AM: No, I studied. We have, in our class of '44, we had many people movers. People like Dr. Gordon Sato -- was that his name? -- he did the Manzanar Project in Africa. And there's Bruce Kaji, who founded, helped found the museum in L.A., and yeah, a lot of people who were people movers.

SY: And yourself.

AM: No, I don't consider myself that. [Laughs]

SY: How about Ralph Lazo? Did you meet him in, in...

AM: He was a classmate of mine. I didn't get to know him good, but we always talked to each other when we were together.

SY: And did you find it unusual that there was somebody who was not Japanese who was --

AM: Yeah, he was probably the most popular fellow in camp because we thought that everybody in camp knew him, simply because he didn't belong there.

SY: And what about his personality? Was he --

AM: He was, he was a cheerleader in actual sports. Yeah, he was, he was really something. Outgoing, popular, knew all the girls. [Laughs]

SY: So nobody, did anybody ever ask him how he got there and why, why he got in?

AM: We often talked about it. We even talked about, did he get redress? [Laughs]

SY: After camp. But did he ever say how, he just came on a train? Did he say how he got in?

AM: No. I guess, he was swarthy, so maybe to the soldiers, they couldn't tell the difference between a Nisei and him, I guess.

SY: And did he say why he wanted to be in camp? Did he tell you, actually tell you?

AM: Well, the story I've heard is that he thought that what the government was doing was very unfair because he lived daily with them, his Nisei friends, and he knew that they weren't doing anything bad or sabotaging or anything like that, and so he couldn't understand why they were doing this. And it upset him to the point that he had decided one day to accompany them.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.