Densho Digital Archive - Chiyoko Yano Interview (denshovh-ychiyoko

<Begin Segment 16>

MA: Okay. So then you were in D.C. for three months and then decided to return to Topaz?

CY: Well, Topaz, that was because Joyce was coming.

MA: And you wanted to be with family?

CY: Yes, uh-huh. Otherwise I'd be all by myself in Washington, D.C.

MA: What was the process like to get back into camp? Was it just easy because...

CY: Well, they knew, they knew me, and they knew I was coming back when they sent me out. And so they expected me back, so there was no, no paperwork problems at all. They just, they were expecting me back.

MA: And your husband, then, remained in, in Virginia? In Washington, D.C.

CY: Yes, in Washington.

MA: So you get back to Topaz, and you had Joyce in Topaz, is that right?

CY: Uh-huh.

MA: And what was the medical care like in Topaz, the hospital?

CY: Oh, it was very nice. We, we had better, I understand we had better medical care than the average citizens living outside in Delta because we had very good doctors. They were Japanese doctors, well-trained, whereas in Delta it was a small country town and they just had one country doctor.

MA: And were the nurses and the staff also internees?

CY: The nurses and staff, some of them were Caucasians, and the head nurses were all Caucasians, the RNs. And then like my sister was only fifteen, well, they all worked as a nurse's aide. And, but they were all Japanese people, so we, I think in general, we got very good care.

MA: And the facilities of the hospital, how modern were they? Were they up to, sort of, standards at the time?

CY: Well, at that time, I wasn't too familiar with the medical world at all. And it was my first experience, and so I really didn't know how much was good and how much was bad. But now that I went to the museum and saw what the hospital rooms, you know, the hospital bed and things were, they look very, very primitive compared to what we have at the modern hospitals now. But at that time, I couldn't tell the difference. I didn't know any better.

MA: And when was Joyce born?

CY: May 13, 1945.

MA: So right before the...

CY: She was premature, she only weighed four pounds. She was...

MA: How many months, how many weeks premature?

CY: She was six weeks premature. I wasn't expecting her until June.

MA: So she was born in May, and that was pretty close to the end of the war.

CY: Yes, three months before. The war ended August 15th, and she's born May 13th. She was born on Sunday, Mother's Day, May 13th.

MA: And so how did you feel when you heard the news about the end of the war and particularly the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

CY: Well, my father, just like I said, was a man of few words. And he didn't express themselves like other parents did that was very pro-Japanese. And so he didn't say anything against the United States or anything, that they dropped the bomb.