<Begin Segment 8>

MN: Now when you were going to school in Poston, were there any hakujin kids of administrators in your class?

TY: Well, I think like maybe the principal and a few teachers, but that's it. So I don't know of any -- so it was hard when I came out of camp to understand that there were people that were not Japanese that could be black and/or Hispanic. And I think that that was a thing that I had not experienced before, because in camp, all you ever saw were Japanese and maybe a few whites, that's it.

MN: One more thing I want to ask about your father is the auditorium. Did your father work on the auditorium?

TY: No, he didn't really work on the auditorium, 'cause that was basically done by the contractor, and maybe they did some modifications but that was it. I mean, the building itself was built by the contractor.

MN: And these were outside contractors?

TY: Uh-huh, the ones that come in for twenty hours a day.

MN: You know, when you were in Poston, did you attend a Japanese language school?

TY: I avoided that. Because I didn't want to, and my mom didn't force me to, so I avoided it was much as I could. I think later on I took a little bit of it, but not much.

MN: So when you said you avoided it, did you just not go and told your parents you were going?

TY: No, I never told her that, 'cause she knows where I was going. So I just said, "I'm not going."

MN: How about church? Did you go to church in camp?

TY: Yes, I did. I think... I had no idea what church I should go to, so I made my rounds. I went to a... I think I went to a Methodist, I know I went to Buddhist 'cause that's where I sort of related to. But it was all very interesting to me, and I didn't have any... I didn't feel like I belonged to anything in particular, but it was interesting to go to. I think, for me, after I came out of camp, that I understood that I really was Buddhist, and so I went to Koyasan. So that was where I started to understand who and where I should be going.

MN: So when you got into camp and you're with a lot of these Japanese American kids, were you able to make a lot of friends?

TY: Not really, because we were, in the very beginning, a family with no means. We didn't have any money like some of the kids that had come in from middle class families whose father was a doctor or something, professional. And they would... this is not necessarily lorded over you, but you knew, they were saying, "Look, I got this, you don't." And so I think what I did was sort of stick around with my family, 'cause it was large enough that I could socialize with them, and that's what I did lots of time.

MN: So there was already kind of this strata going on.

TY: [Nods].

MN: Do you remember if there was, like, any talks of burakumin?

TY: Not really. Not that I could remember.

MN: What kind of games did you play, then, with your siblings or with yourself? How did you spend your time?

TY: Before I went to school, I think they played all of the hide and seek, throwing the ball over the barracks, that kind of stuff. So nothing like baseball 'til later on. So we were, not restricted, but we didn't have like a diamond yet or anything like that, so you had to do what you could do. Later on, of course, they had regular sports, but that wasn't until later on, maybe a couple years later.

MN: What about your mother? Your father was doing a lot of carpentry, what did your mother do in camp?

TY: Taking care of babies. Because I had two younger ones in camp, so she was busy all the time.

MN: I imagine that she had to wash the diaper, there was no disposable diapers?

TY: No disposables. She had to dispose of the kids. They just had the diapers that she had to wash.

MN: That's like a twenty-four hour thing.

TY: Oh, yeah. And I think at the time, like for instance, between my brother and sister, Kimio and Nori, I think it's about eighteen months. So you know one wasn't out of diapers yet and she was still having to wash theirs. I remember once, though, my mom sent me off to get the formula for my brother. And I said, "Oh, this is the milk product," so I opened the lid, tasted it, said, "Oh, this is yuck." I don't see how they got any kid to drink that stuff, I'm serious. I'm trying to think of that formula that they had, but it was terrible. And to this day, I think about the poor kids who drink that stuff, I said, "Oh, no. I'd rather starve." [Laughs]

MN: Well, now, your mother was, she delivered the two kids in camp, until she delivered them, was she able to walk to the hospital to deliver the babies, or how did she...

TY: As far as I remember, she walked to the hospital, because it wasn't that far away. It was at the end of our block, so it wasn't like she had to go for miles.

MN: And she never had any complications with the pregnancy?

TY: Not that I know of.

MN: Now your mother's also known for her haiku and beautiful calligraphy.

TY: Oh, yes, yes. And this is the thing that's so sad. She really wanted to do that, but you know when you think about the fact that she didn't have the time for it, and yes, people had asked her while we were in camp even to compose some haiku for them, because they had this thought and they would like to have it put down. So my mother, "Sure, when I have the time I'll write it up for you." And she would do it in a beautiful hand. And she only went to, I think, probably the seventh or eighth grade dake, and she felt very comfortable and not intimidated by any of the people that went to college. The thing that was impressive was when we came out of camp, on the emperor's birthday, they had asked people to submit poems and to write prose, I guess, and she would submit them and a couple of them got accepted by them. But of course she didn't use her name, she used... you know how they make these things up, she used the name, I can't remember what it was, but she used that. And she got published by them. I never saw it, but I heard about it. I was very taken by the fact that she had this capability.

MN: Well, I think your sister has a lot of it translated, right?

TY: Those are the later ones.

MN: Later one. Now, when your, when the government started about drafting the Nisei out of camp, was your oldest brother old enough to be drafted?

TY: He was, but one of the things that kind of kept him from going was that he had a heart murmur, so he was exempt. So I thought, I was glad for that. I didn't know anything about being exempt, but I saw all these other people signing these sheets that they didn't want to go, but felt that they needed to go, so that's sad.

MN: You know, when all this started to come out and the "loyalty questionnaire" came out, was that an issue in your family?

TY: Not really. Because whatever it was, my mom and dad... well, my mom more than anybody, stated, "We can't go back to Japan. We didn't want to be there, so what's the point?" She was strongly against going back there. My father was saying, "Well, we can always go back." She said, "You go. I'm keeping the kids, we're staying here." So she was the strong one.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.