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FC: What's it like to be a three- or four-year-old kid in camp? What happens? What do you do?

GY: You know, we were all the same. We all had the same color hair, we all had the same eyes, and we were all in the same position. So life as a three- or four-year-old kid was great fun. I didn't know that there was anybody different from us. The, one of the big treats was to go for the oyatsu. You used to go and get an orange or apple, and that was the snack for the day that we looked forward to. There was a, there was a certain amount of things that we did together. You know, you went to the Buddhist temple and they let you play little games and win prizes.

The one thing that was the real limitation was that we were always told, Mother always told us never to cross the barbed wire fence. And she used to point to the guard up there and said, "You know, he has a rifle and he's going to shoot you if you cross the barbed wire fence." I remember she put enough fear in us that we never went near the barbed wire fence, because she said, "You know, there was a little old man who was collecting some rocks and he crossed the barbed wire and was shot and killed." Maybe everyone grows up with certain limitations of, caveats and warnings that a parent puts on, but the barbed wire fence and the guard in the tower is still in my mind's eye after fifty years.

FC: Did it bother you in camp or after camp, being the daughter of a jailbird?

GY: I didn't know that there was anything... all I know is that my dad was gone. And after camp, he comes out. And for a long time I thought he was a different person. He was much thinner, he was, there was a different person. And as a child, I remember him as kind of a robust, happy soul, and he came back a much more subdued individual. And for a long time I thought it wasn't the same person. In camp, there was never the stigma of what my father did and, or if there was I didn't know it. It was afterwards that it became more apparent that what he did was not what everyone in the Japanese community accepted as the proper course of action. So I learned later that he was different. [Laughs]

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1993, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.