<Begin Segment 19>

TI: So tell me about the school in Jerome. So both of you were in high school when you went to Jerome. So Yoshiko, what was high school in Jerome like compared to high school in Watsonville?

YN: Do you remember? I don't remember too much. I should, at that age, but I just went, and one class, you don't change like over here. I don't remember.

TI: How about you, Eiko? Any memories of school?

EN: Lot of Caucasian teachers. Lot of people say we talk different, you know, but they talked different, too. Because in Arkansas, they speak differently.

TI: What about just, just general memories of Jerome? Anything that, any event or anything that you can remember about Jerome? So when people ask you about, what memories do you have of Jerome, what would be some?

EN: Well, we made a lot of friends. Still, once in a while, they send us, letters to us. That's where I graduated, in Jerome. [Addressing Yoshiko] You graduated in Rohwer? I graduated in Jerome. Then my mother said, "Oh, you have to have a graduation clothes." [Laughs] So we got a, they let us have an okay to go out to Little Rock. But I thought, gee, we thought we were put in camp and we can't go anywhere, but you should see all the colored people. They were treated worse than we were. We got on a bus, and then they said, "You don't belong here. You belong in the front where all the Caucasians are." I didn't know that, and I was surprised. (Narr. note: We also had a friend from camp by the name of Aiko, who worked for the WRA office. Although she was a very religious person, she was excluded from the Christian church in Watsonville after the war. In addition, her family home in Caruthers near Fresno was shot at).

YN: Too bad, huh?

EN: In California, they didn't treat them like that. So I thought, gee, how fortunate we are. So we can't complain too much.

TI: So this was your first experience with a segregated South, segregated blacks from whites. And they treated the Japanese as more, as white, rather than black.

EN: Yes. And then when they get off the bus, they have to go underground and go somewhere else to get out to the streets. But we were just fortunate to get out in the streets right away.

TI: So did either one of you ever think about that, you know, so here our country, in the South they had the segregation, the fact that you guys were in camps because of your race, because you were Japanese, did you ever think about those kind of ideas or thoughts or talk about it?

YN: We didn't talk about it. We were told, and then we just did what we were supposed to. I guess they were protecting us by putting us there, but in a way, that's true, too.

TI: And why do you say that? Why do think that's true, in a way?

YN: Because they could treat us badly there, if we were here, still. At least we were safer there. Nobody would bother us.

TI: And so do you think -- because you grew up in Watsonville -- do you think if, during the war, if you had stayed in Watsonville, that it would have been dangerous for you to be here?

YN: I think so.

TI: Because you think people would have, what, maybe tried to hurt you or destroy your property, things like that?

YN: Yeah.

TI: Earlier I asked you about your parents and how hard they worked raising so many children and the farm. So now you're at Jerome, and there, they don't have to worry about the farm and your mom doesn't have to cook. So did your mom and dad have more time to relax when they were at Jerome?

EN: My father worked in the kitchen, so he had to go to work all the time, every day, to the kitchen. My mother, she had to wash clothes.

YN: She spent all her life washing clothes.

TI: Oh, so in camp, she was just constantly washing.

EN: Yeah, and hanging them, and drying them, and folding them. It was a lot of work.

TI: Well, how about for the two of you? Did life change when you were in camp? Did you have more time to do different things?

YN: I forgot what we did. I took classes, I kind of remember. Just like regular going to school.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Watsonville - Santa Cruz JACL. All Rights Reserved.