<Begin Segment 6>

RD: Now, do you remember the day that you left camp?

Roy D.: I can't really remember except I remember getting on the train, and it took several days to get back. And it's amazing, this train came all the way back to California and it stopped in the very town that we left. Now, Loomis had only 250 people when we left, and when we came back, the train stopped and just let our family off the train. Fortunately, one of our family friends was there with a pickup truck. I don't know how... it was maybe just coincidental or he just happened to be there, but we got off the train with our few luggage, maybe three or four suitcases, and he took us to our little shack, which was our prewar home.

RD: Oh, you got to go back to where you were.

Roy D.: Yeah. And this shack had no indoor plumbing, had only a single cold water tap, and apparently had been used during the war by some farm laborers. But in reality we came back to almost the poor conditions at the camp which had hot and cold running water.

RD: And a swimming hole.

Roy D.: And a swimming hole.

RD: And a movie theater. Well, that's the first time I've ever heard that one. What did your parents tell you about why you were going and what was going on?

Roy D.: You mean during, at the beginning?

RD: Before the camp, yeah.

Roy D.: Well you have to remember, my parents spoke mostly Japanese. My dad spoke a little English but my mother spoke very little English. And they didn't, I can't recall them actually sitting down and telling us what was going to happen, but they were, I think, sort of accustomed to being told what to do in life. So they just followed the, I guess, what the army had told them to do to pack up and move out. So I cannot, to be honest with you, I cannot really recall them ever telling us anything.

RD: Nobody did. You're not the only one. To a person we've talked to, nobody's parents told them anything. But do you have children?

Roy D.: Yes, two.

RD: What did you tell your children?

Roy D.: Well, I guess I've told them about, a little bit about camp, and I've been writing an autobiography so I've written down a lot about the experience. And they're aware of what happened. The ideas, we haven't discussed it very much.

RD: What do you think would happen if they tried to do that to American citizens?

Roy D.: Oh, right now they would rebel, probably. [Laughs] They would be angry because it's the third and fourth generation Sansei and Yonsei who have really been outspoken about the injustice of the evacuation.

RD: I think the Sansei were very active in trying to get reparations.

Roy D.: Right. They were... well, they had become lawyers and everything and I think they were more aware of the unconstitutional action of the government.

RD: Did you get reparations from the government?

Roy D.: Yeah, I think we got twenty thousand dollars, you know, for three and a half years of incarceration I don't think is much, especially in today's money.

RD: Of course, they like to say, the black people didn't get the forty acres and the mule they were promised either. [Laughs] And why do you think it's important for, particularly for the Yonsei to know? Because we've noticed a lot of Yonsei don't know.

Roy D.: Right, right. Well, I think they ought to know that bad things could happen, and there could be a lot of injustices that shouldn't happen.

RD: Shouldn't happen to anyone?

Roy D.: Yeah.

RD: So when your parents came back, how did you end up going to college and becoming, well, you?

Roy D.: Well, it's a funny thing because my parents never told me to go to college or anything. But it was a given among most of my fellow Niseis that we went to college, so I did go. And it was during my experience in the army that I really decided to go to graduate school. And because I was with the research unit in Japan during the, right after the Korean conflict, I had, I was working in a research group and I asked, "Colonel, how does one become a researcher?" and he said, "You have to go to graduate school to learn how to do research." So after the army, I went to graduate school.

RD: Who was it we just talked to? Oh, yeah, it was you, when you said, "How do I do that?" right?

Roy D.: Oh, yeah. I said... I asked him, "How do you become a researcher?" I didn't even know what graduate school was at that time.

RD: And now tell us what you ended up being?

Roy D.: Well, I went to graduate school, got my PhD at the University of Wisconsin, I did some postdoc at the University of Illinois. My first job was at Syracuse University where I was assistant professor in microbiology. And then UC Davis offered me a job, so I came back to California finally. I was worried I kept going east, from the Midwest to New York, my first teaching job was at Syracuse University in New York. But I was happy to get back to California because I was coming home, really. And I taught there for forty-three years, a long time.

RD: And now you're starting a new life. Talk to me about Joan. Tell me how you met again.

Roy D.: Yeah, well, the first time I saw her was in Las Vegas at a reunion of our Heart Mountain class. And she was widowed and I was separated, and after forty-five years, I had a crush on her in the eighth grade in Heart Mountain. But we had separate lives for forty-five years, but we finally met again. And so after a very brief romance again, we got married in Reno. The two of us snuck away, got married on Valentine's Day, and it's been eighteen years since.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2010 Raechel Donahue and Garrett Lindemann and Densho. All Rights Reserved.