Densho Digital Archive - Nancy Iwami Interview (denshovh-inancy-01-0018)

<Begin Segment 18>

MA: And so your mother and father and brothers and sisters, did they stay in Poston?

NI: They went to Poston, yes, my folks and my youngest brother who was sixteen years younger than I, stayed with the parents. All the rest, well, two, two sisters came to Denver, or was it three? Three, and one was married and she went to, Tooele, they called, in Utah, where there was sort of an army depot there, I guess, her husband worked in there. They wanted Japanese from various camps to come, and so he went there. And then my other brother went to Cleveland, so the three, my mother and father and the youngest stayed in camp. But I think towards the end, they were enjoying it.

MA: Your folks were enjoying it?

NI: First vacation they've ever had in their life, 'cause they were elderly, well, in their sixties, I think, maybe.

MA: So it was a, a break where they didn't have to work so hard manually, manual labor, right?

NI: No manual labor, but they were helping in the kitchen, I think, towards the end, too, because all the young people were being drafted -- not drafted, but... well, yes, weren't they drafted?

MA: Uh-huh.

NI: Leaving camp, and others weren't, were leaving camp. So in the end, it was just the elderly and the (young).

MA: And your family, sounds like, really scattered, the siblings sort of went all over.

NI: Uh-huh, we were, but in the end, we all came back, we all came back to Watsonville. Except one sister, she married out of town.