<Begin Segment 22>

TI: How about things like U.S. history or civics? You were, like, at the point of high school where you would do a lot of civics.

NH: Oh yeah, uh-huh.

TI: Did you guys cover things like that?

NH: Oh, yeah.

TI: The Constitution, democracy...

NH: Yeah, all that.

TI: And so how was that learning those things while you...

NH: And being in camp? [Laughs]

TI: ...while being in camp?

NH: I don't know. It was very strange, huh?

TI: Did people write, like, write papers about things like what democracy means to them? It seems like you start writing and thinking about these things in high school, and you were in this very unique situation.

NH: I don't remember, but I know we studied U.S. history. But we were in a very strange place to be studying that, huh?

TI: So you don't recall any discussions about --

NH: Well, all I was, I was always involved in student government, and we tried to do things in a sort of democratic manner as much as possible, and we'd vote on this and we'd vote that that. It was crazy. But it was okay. I think that was probably, it was real, we weren't thinking up in the clouds or anything like that, but it was real. And we had other kinds of student activity, too, we had, we couldn't go out, leave camp, but we had student athletic teams from outside come in, and they would come and play football with us. And we would somehow or another scrounge around to get enough football uniforms so we could field a team. And I don't think we won in football very much. But when it came time to play baseball, baseball we could hold our own pretty good, and basketball, they were much, much taller than us. And we didn't have a, well, we did have an indoor gym, finally, which was an indoor gym auditorium with a stage and finally built one of those for us. But not the very first year.

TI: Earlier you were talking about student government, and as you learn and participate there, I'm curious what you knew about the JACL during this time. There were older Niseis...

NH: Those were the older Nisei people, yeah.

TI: Yeah, so did you follow their activities and what they were doing and talking about?

NH: Actually, I didn't. I didn't know too much about JACL at all. I knew that there was such a thing, but I also knew that they were all these older guys were running it. So I said, "Well, I guess eventually I'll become a member, but not yet."

TI: But more than just a group, I mean, they were running not only the JACL, but in some camps they were running a lot of the operations or things like that. Was that true also in Tanforan and Topaz, that they were pretty active?

NH: I'm sure it was, yeah.

TI: And did that cause any tension or friction between the older Niseis and the Isseis? Because generally the Isseis would have been the leaders of the community, but now you had this Nisei group taking more charge.

NH: Well, I think I was just too young to know what was going on. Sometimes, like I say, I think I was so naive. "This is the way it's supposed to be, so this is what we're going to do," and just went along with it. I don't know. So, but I knew that eventually I would become part of JACL. I didn't, but I knew that, at that time I thought, "Well, my turn will come."

<End Segment 22> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.