<Begin Segment 4>

MA: So we talked earlier about your parents while you were in camp and sort of really trying to create a sense of normalcy for you. One example you gave was your father bringing the meals into, into the barracks and having meals together. Can you talk a little bit more about that and how that affected you and your memories of camp?

AH: It was really interesting. I just remember -- you know, these interviews are good because it makes me really think about my surroundings. I just remember that I was doted upon. I was surrounded by people who were real kind, and my father was a very positive person, and his comment is -- this is after camp -- he told us that, you know, the camp wasn't too bad because he came from a farm, they were very poor farmers. And he says that going to Topaz, we had a bed to sleep in, we had food, we had, we didn't have to have outhouses, we had actually latrines, and he says it really wasn't that bad. And he was always, my parents were always encouraging us to do good. Grace Oshita's a cousin of mine who was there when she was seventeen, she remembers a lot. And I have a lot -- I have a hard time talking about this -- to thank her for because she's the one that instilled me to do what I'm doing, what I'm doing now, kind of carrying on what she started years ago. I guess forty years ago she started. And I started talking about Topaz when my kids were in elementary school. But anyway, she was raised by her grandma because her mother passed away. And her grandma was not my blood grandma, but she was the only grandma I knew. My maternal and my paternal grandmothers, I didn't know them, I don't remember them. But (Grace's grandma) was a powerful influence on me, too, because she only had a fourth grade education, but she was so knowledgeable about life, you know. Like if I would get discouraged, I remember her telling me in Japanese -- see, we spoke a lot of Japanese, and I didn't realize that. Isn't that funny how you don't realize it at that time? But when I think about it, even in the last few years, I thought, gee, we must have, I must have spoken a lot of Japanese because I'm starting, we were ashamed to speak it after war, after the war. But now I feel more relaxed and I'm speaking a lot more Japanese. But I remember her telling me in Japanese that, "Alice, you're gonna be okay, and you could do this, and I know that because of your talent and how smart you are, you're going to do really good." And that's the kind of encouragement I was surrounded by all the time. And my younger brother was, too, so I just remember just normal childhood, and I remember when we moved into a normal home after camp, I thought, I realized, gee, this, I thought the barracks were places where everybody lived. I thought it was a normal thing for people to live in barracks. I'm a nurse and I've done lots of social work kinds of stuff and have learned that even people in poverty, that they're okay with it because they're so used to living in poverty and they don't know that there's a better way of living. And probably that applied to me when I was in Topaz, that it was normal to live in a barrack, there was nothing wrong with it.

MA: And it seems like your family really did a lot to create a nurturing environment and really, you know, establish normalcy for you and your brother.

AH: Yeah, yeah. And you know, when you're growing up, you just take those things for granted. But I look back and I thought, "That's just amazing."

MA: Yeah.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.