<Begin Segment 7>

ET: That's exactly what happened.

HT: That's the way it was. That's why, that stone that we have, at the reunion, we won it because we never got married in camp. We met in camp, but married later on, outside of camp.

ET: There were a number of us, our life started in camp. It's 1944, 1945, we met. We didn't get married until 1949.

AD: And tell us, where did you go on your honeymoon?

HT: You wouldn't believe it.

ET: [Laughs] Yeah, camp.

HT: We went back to camp.

ET: Honeymoon. Well, we got married in Sun Valley, and then we drove down to Twin Falls and stayed there and went to visit the camp. In those days, the camp was still, not going, it's completely empty. And a lot of the farmers moved in.

HT: Lot of the barracks were gone by then.

ET: Lot of the barracks were gone. And I see these barracks in the farmland all around Twin Falls.

AD: What made you want to go back to camp for your...

ET: Then we went back twice, twice or three times.

HT: Just to see.

ET: We took even kids down there. Then...

HT: But by that time, there was hardly anything left except for the entrance. They had a stone entrance there, and it was there, but it didn't mean anything to the kids. And they never asked us questions because once we started talking, my son would say, "There they go again." And so it got to the point where they never asked, so we never said anything.

ET: It really wasn't a bad place to go to take trip, taking family down there. And each time... it's not a sad experience to go and see, no. The last one was Idaho, kind of declared that as a special historical site. Now, the Clinton just recently made that into a national memorial, Minidoka. So is the other camps, ten of them all together.

HT: So one year we took a trip down to Tule Lake, too.

ET: I'm glad that the federal government really...

HT: That was a biggie.

ET: ...put that kind of an effort to keep that into a part of history, and I think one is they're not ashamed to say that the federal government did make mistakes.

AD: How did you feel when you went back to what was a camp? What do you remember feeling?

HT: "Oh, is that all that's left?" Because lot of the places where we lived is gone now. The only thing we saw was the warehouses. The rest is all gone, so it's sort of hard to tell where you had spent so much time. But it's just the idea that we went. They're gonna have another reunion this year, I think. Is that what it is?

ET: I think so. I think...

HT: But I've never gone to a reunion.

ET: It's not a real, the place to remember, a bad place, that's for sure. I think it's assurance of maybe that will never happen again. And I think we do have senators and national congressmen from the Japanese Americans will make sure that that will never happen again. And I think it's politically, we are matured enough. See, I was probably the most average age, just twenty-one, twenty-two, that age at the time. This is why we started our conversation, what is happening, and it's very hard to recollect anything. Nothing happened according to the schedule. Everything happened in surprises. And maybe that part is so quick, and happened in such a short time, that really didn't give us chance to make any kind of sense out of this. What I really, really feel when I go there -- my personal feeling. I don't know about her or anybody else, but it's kind of sad that you wasted that time. Even though mine was less than a year, but I wasted that time. I could have been doing service, I could have done other things. But that didn't happen. Military record, I don't know whether I have any kind of military record, although I was given a commission at the time, but never had to serve. It was one of those strange times. So just kind of a feeling of blank sort of a period, very confusing. Lot of things happened, but nothing really positive.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.