<Begin Segment 19>

[This transcript has been extensively edited by the narrator.]

SY: And then how was it that you ended up getting out of camp?

GN: Well, they were letting people exit camp to go to school, because some of them were older that had been taken out of school. [Addressing husband] Yosh, what is the name of that professor that started the student relocation movement? The professor from Whittier College? Dr. Robert O'Brien. And that's a very heroic story, Dr. Robert O'Brien's. He was a professor at the University of Washington, and he had all these (Japanese American) students. He taught sociology (at the University of Washington), but he was also a doctorate of religion at the Congregational United Church of Christ. That's what we are, we belong to UCC. He talked to his wife and said, "This is a terrible thing that they are doing to Japanese Americans, interrupting their education. They are very loyal people." And he said she was nine months pregnant and they were walking along the waterfront in Seattle. It was December 7th, and he knew, too. He said, "They're going to come and take my students away or have a curfew on them,(so) I have to reunite them with their families." And here she was ready to have this child, and she said, "No, Robert, you can't go. You've got to be with me when I have the child." And he said, "You'll just have to grit your teeth and just get to the hospital any way you can if the baby starts coming, but I'm going to reunite my students with their parents." So under cover of darkness -- and he could have been arrested because it was against the law (because) there was a curfew. He put a blanket over them and he would drive them over to the other side of the mountains, to Eastern Washington, and he reunited them with their families. (When the Executive Order 9066 was issued for our evacuation from the West Coast, they were united with their families to leave together).

In the meantime she had this baby. It was a very difficult delivery for her first child, and nurses would say, "What an uncaring husband," and all these remarks that went on. Finally he shows up after he has delivered his last student, and he takes her home. But then he says, "I can't let them be in those camps, I've got to get them out and find them colleges out of the Pacific Coast Defense Command." So he went to the Congregational Church and asked them, and they said, "No." And then he went to the Quakers. He went to Philadelphia to the Quakers and asked them, and they said, "Yes, we will help you, we will find homes for the students among the Quakers, we will find universities for qualified students." So then the next big job was going to the camps to try to convince the parents to let their kids go. Because we had been mistreated so badly and they didn't know what it was going to be like on the outside for them, so they were fearful, but some parents, (realized) their kids were in the senior year and everything had been disrupted for them, so they let them go.

SY: So what happened to you? What was your experience? Who actually helped you?

GN: Okay. Well, actually, even though I had gone to Grand Junction to be with my (grandparents), I was still in contact with Helen Ely Brill and with the Quakers (in Philadelphia).

SY: So your parents had already left camp?

GN: My mother and my brother and I had left. The Shinodas (left the West Coast) under the cover of darkness. They were not supposed to travel (but) they escaped. And they have stories to tell, too; how (the police) would stop them while they were trying to leave and they had babies that they had to muffle their voices so that they wouldn't cry. They were hiding in the flower truck inside of the flower boxes.

SY: So this is the Shinoda family, where were they at the time?

GN: They were in Southern California and Northern California, but some of them escaped. They left and went to Colorado. And then they were unprepared (when) the police (stopped them) at the border in Colorado and looked at them and they thought, "Uh-oh, the jig's up." They were just petrified, and then (the policeman) said, "The Governor of Colorado welcomes you." That was (Governor) Ralph Carr. There were some real beacons (of hope) like that in the wilderness. (Governor) Ralph Carr was a Quaker.

SY: And that's how they managed to escape going to camp?

GN: They went to Grand Junction, Colorado. (Others went to Idaho).

SY: And they didn't have a sponsor there, they just left on their own?

GN: They just left on their own. And then another person that went was from Gilroy, the Garlic King, he's a big contributor to JANM, Hirasaki) is the last name. Anyway, the whole research department there (at JANM) was founded (by Manabe and Sumi Hiraski).

SY: Hirasaki.

GN: Hirasaki. They were at Grand Junction, too.

SY: So the reason your family went to Grand Junction is because the Shinodas were already there.

GN: Well, no, my grandfather had a stroke, a very disabling stroke. My uncle, my youngest uncle, Daniel, wanted to go to divinity school, to Boston Theological Seminary, but he really felt that he could not leave my grandfather without a caregiver. So he asked my mother if she would come. He depended on my mother for everything. My mother is a very long-suffering, wonderful woman, so she agreed to go take care of him.

SY: She took you and your brother.

GN: Yes, we went there to Grand Junction.

SY: Do you remember when that was?

GN: That was in... let's see, when was that?

SY: That was just before you graduated from high school then. Toward the end of the war.

GN: Yes, around '44. Summer of '44.

SY: So when you were in Grand Junction, you had been there a very short period of time, but you stayed in contact with this teacher.

GN: Well, we never lost contact. We've had contact until she died, all these years.

SY: And she was the one who encouraged you to go to...

GN: When I was still in camp and I was still a junior, she started the process. And then Robert O'Brien had already started the student relocation program, so they already had me in the pipeline looking for a place where I might go. And then they got the idea that maybe I could be relocated back to California after the war was over. That's when they decided that they would send me as a test case back to California. First they offered me some scholarships like to Black Mountain College, that's the place where Ruth Asawa went to school. Then another (Berea) college they offered me (a scholarship). In fact, (Yosh and I) went to see the crafts there (years later).

SY: So you decided, though, that you wanted to go back. How was it that you decided to come back to the West Coast?

GN: Well, actually, I'm glad that we went to Grand Junction because I had an outstanding English teacher. And we read Beowulf, and she really knew her literature. We read Chaucer, she was a real scholar. But the downside was I had this chemistry class. I probably would have been better off taking that at Manzanar, because all we did, all I can remember is you pour acid into water and it helps with baking certain things (and with) some recipes that I've concocted. (Our chemistry class had) canned tomatoes with the German prisoners of war. They were the same age we were. And that's what we had to do every day, instead of chemistry. The vice principal of the junior high school was our chemistry teacher, Mr. James.

SY: So you actually went to high school in Grand Junction for some time?

GN: The last semester, but I didn't have to take very many units. I took English and I took bookkeeping (and consumer electronics). I didn't really have to take any classes. I could have graduated, but I wanted to take senior English and I'm glad I did. Because when I went to Redlands, nobody had read all of (the literature that was presented to me).

SY: So you actually did not graduate from high school there.

GN: No, they sent me my diploma.

SY: They sent you a diploma from Grand Junction? Because before you graduated you went to Redlands?

GN: Before that, the official graduation, but I had more than completed the units. I had straight-A's.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.