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TI: Now I'm going to switch gears, and I wanted to go back and ask a little bit more about your experiences with the kids that came out of camp. And I was just curious if you could kind of share, I mean, what do you think they thought of you and the other kids from Salt Lake City?

MT: After a while I said to myself -- and I talked to a couple of my friends -- says, "I wonder why they are treating us like they are." They wasn't too nice at all. Well, I think it's because they went through camp life, which is a little bit different from what they used to be before. Camp life is, to me, it was, there were so many of these young people from different environment got together, and they're, I guess, they're always fighting or something. And they were jealous of the fact that we didn't have to go through that, or they don't know we went through hardship, but they didn't know that. But they figured we were, we didn't go to camp and we had a good life. That's why I guess they resented us, that's why they kind of picked on us in that fact, until they found out later on that we went through hell, too. So a couple of kids I remember used to always pick on me. They get upset because I used to be a leader of my group. I don't know. I can't forget that guy, though. [Laughs] But once in a while...

SF: Do you, do you have any ideas about where these kids came from or anything more about, were they from a particular area or something like that?

MT: I think they're mostly from San Francisco and Los Angeles, those kids were. Because I lived in San Francisco for a while. They still, those friends I have in San Francisco are entirely different from friends I had in Salt Lake City. All their thinking, everything was different. Because... but there's a territorial thing that San Francisco, Los Angeles, Japanese people, seem like they're kind of cliquish. They're all cliquish, in fact, unfortunately, lot of people say San Jose is very cliquish, too, unless you were born with them, went to grade school with them, high school, then you're friends. But if you're a stranger in town, you're not part of the clique. You'd be one lonely guy out there. I felt that way anyhow. But Salt Lake was definitely... well, what I was taught to do was when you see any stranger in town, Japanese people, make him feel welcome. Talk to him. But that's why I enjoyed Sunday school. I'd go to school, Sundays, church, we'd see some people from maybe out of camp or some strange face come in, then I'll go and talk to them right away and make them feel welcome. They don't do that here. They're welcome. Then you see them come back again. 'Cause they feel, gee, how many friends, and they come back. And unfortunately, this church over here really didn't do that until I talked to the reverend over here one day and I said, "Why don't you have some welcoming person go up to people, strange people, come and talk to them, so they come back?" He says, "Ignore them." Well, this sensei says -- I ain't going to tell you his name -- but Sensei says, "They don't come to church to socialize, they're supposed to come to church and pray." I said, "Bullshit." Oh, yeah, he and I began arguments. And I said, "You won't see me in this church again," and I never went back. Because I didn't like his thinking. You can't treat that, people.

I'll sit there, there's a dozen students from San Francisco State taking religious philosophies, they were sitting in back of me. Nobody ever came up to them and said, "Hello," nothing. And after the sermon's over, they all go home. So these people sit there going like this, and so I turned around and says, "I'm not the welcome party, but if there's anything you want to ask me, I would be glad to help you." So they asked me, "Oh, thank you." They asked me questions. So I said, "Look, I'll tell you, I'll give you a personal tour of this church. I'm not supposed to, but I will anyhow." I took 'em and I showed 'em the butsudan and I tell 'em each person, [inaudible] and everything I'd tell 'em. And so they got an education. Oh, yeah, they were real happy. And I said, "You're welcome to come back anytime you want." They said, "Oh, yeah, we will." And I talked with Sensei about this, and, "That wasn't your job." I said, "Whose job is it?" So that's why, now this new sensei is different now. He thinks like me. [Laughs]

TI: But that kind of thinking, that cliquishness, that cliquishness, you think, is part of, like, the Japanese community almost sometimes, in some of these bigger cities, that they're more...

HT: They're more... in a big town like this, there'd be more cliquish feel. But Salt Lake wasn't any, you're all friends, everybody's friends. Party, everybody's invited. But in San Francisco, we had the Gales, the Plutos, we had different groups always fighting.

SF: You mentioned some of the cliquish guys. Were there any women or girls who used to come from the camps that used to be different or did you notice them?

HT: Yeah, one especially. She's my wife. [Laughs] She went to Gila River and I talked to her about camp all the time. She told me, "I had nothing against the camp, I had a good time. I made a lot of friends, we had parties." So I don't know, I guess I would have never met her if she didn't go to camp.

SF: But there were no, like, gangs of girls that used to come into Salt Lake?

HT: No. But... oh, skipping back again, I remember a story about during the war, like in Denver, Colorado, it was pretty bad. I had a bunch of friends that one day about twelve of 'em I think went to a movie, was going home, and going through a park, and they were surrounded by maybe thirty or forty girls, gang. They came after them. The twelve guys didn't have a chance against those girls. There was one big guy, he couldn't run because so big, you know. [Laughs] They caught up with him and they beat the heck out of him and they got a razor blade and cut him from ear to ear.

TI: This was in Denver?

HT: Yeah, in Denver. And so that was in, it wasn't Japanese gang, either. So this guy went and got some reinforcement, came back, and they saw him cut ear to ear, razor. He lives in San Francisco. I see him all the time, and you could see big scar right across like this. But that kind of thing happened in Denver. Salt Lake, in Salt Lake, we didn't come to that extreme, no. If we were somewhere, they threw rock at us or something. But Denver, I guess they must have had worse time.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.