<Begin Segment 3>

MN: Now I want to go back to your prewar life a little bit. And you were living in Orange County, and is it Westminster?

TY: Westminster.

MN: What was the neighborhood like that you grew up in?

TY: Well, as far as I remember, it was a very rural setting. Some paved streets, more dirt roads, and I think the thing that was more important to us was that there were Japanese farmers, not truck farmers, they actually owned the land. So they were quite well-off. And that's how it was for us. I remember when we were there for some years, we lived in an abandoned church that my father converted to housing us. And that was an interesting thing because he never did take the pews out. They were still in there, so here, as a kid, running through that place was fun. At that time, I think it would have been my two brothers and myself. My older brother being more responsible, of course, but the rest of us, we were just, we would raise hell. And my mom didn't care too terribly much, because as long as they weren't doing it in the house, she didn't care, that was okay. So it gave us a spot to be in, so I thought that was neat.

MN: Now who were your playmates?

TY: Well, at the time it was just my brothers and sisters, that's all there were. There were hakujins around and Hispanic types, but we never associated with any of them.

MN: So your father is a carpenter, and at home, did he, like, build the family ofuro?

TY: Oh, yes, we had those wherever we went. So whether we were accultured to understand any of that while it was there, here is a boiling tub of water, you get in it. And I think that that was part of our introduction to being Japanese, I guess. Now, the thing that... I don't want to say the word "isolated," but I think the only neighbor that we had that we particularly enjoyed was a woman next door to us, her name was Mrs. Patterson, and she was a retired teacher. And at the time, she must have been in her, oh, probably in her seventies. And I remember when we came out of camp, we were staying in Toyo Hotel, and my father and mom wanted to go visit Mrs. Patterson 'cause she was close to ninety then. So they wanted to go and visit her because they enjoyed her. And at one point, in Mrs. Patterson's house, there was plumbing, but they didn't have like porcelain fixtures. So my father built her a sink out of corrugated tin, and so she had a place to wash her dishes and stuff like that. And when we came out of camp, she wanted to show me that, the tin washbasin. And I was kind of impressed. I said, "Oh, this is kind of good."

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.