<Begin Segment 4>

RD: And my last question is, why is this important for the outside to know what went on? Because we don't see this in our schoolbooks.

SU: Well, it's important for our children to know that we did, we were incarcerated during the war, we had nothing to do, I mean, we were incarcerate without any criminal activities. And so the most important thing is when we came out of camp, that was the worst time for me, out of camp with the prejudice and all these taunting. But in a Japanese community, we told each other that we have to do more than a hundred percent of anything we did, we had to do more than a hundred percent to prove that we were good, loyal citizens. So when I got out of eighth grade, went to high school, and I just said, "I'm going to just go ahead and study hard and get on, do the best I could," without any... what's the word I want?

RD: Without any bitterness.

SU: Without any bitterness, uh-huh. So I went on, I went to, I graduated high school, went to San Jose State college, became a teacher, and I taught for twenty years, retired early, and then I got a job as a claims representative for social security, and I think I did well. I think I did okay.

RD: You did do well. And it was kind of ironic, when you were teaching, that none of this was in the schoolbooks.

SU: I know.

Off camera: What did you tell your children about your internment?

SU: You know, I never really liked to talk about my internment. Chuck did, he was able to talk to them, but I never was able to. I don't know what it is, but deep inside of me, I just felt I was incarcerated, I was in jail. And you know, that's shameful to me, and I just couldn't get myself to tell them, although I do have some little memorabilias from camp I show them, but I don't tell them anything.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2010 Raechel Donahue and Garrett Lindemann and Densho. All Rights Reserved.