Densho Digital Archive - Aya Fujii - Taka Mizote Interview (denshovh-faya

<Begin Segment 19>

RP: Yes, that was another very positive experience for you during this time. You met your husband in the, was it the tent camp when you first met him?

AF: Yes.

RP: Tell us a little bit about him.

AF: Well, I met him in camp, at the tent camp.

RP: How did you guys meet?

AF: Well, social, social things. And then we just went together and then he went into the army. He was only in there like a year, just a little over a year, he never went overseas. And I went on to college and I know my mother said, "You can't get married until you learn how to drive and graduate from college." I think she told me to learn how to drive so after I got married I could come home. [Laughs] Anyhow, so after I graduated from college I got married.

RP: There was another interesting community around the Ontario Nyssa area. There was a group of Basques? Did you have any contact with them at all?

AF: Right, yes, they raised sheep and they run their cattle through town, I mean, everything comes to a standstill. And it's really something in that all the dust that the animals create. Do you remember them going through?

TM: No, I don't.

AF: Oh yes, that's a big Basque population out that way and they herd their sheep through the town and no way can you get around 'em until they pass through, yes.

RP: So your family, did your two brothers who were in the military, you mentioned they used to come back to the farm on furlough to check on things.

TM: Yes, they did, right.

RP: Did they ever have a chance to visit you while you were at the camps?

TM: Yes.

RP: Which one did they --

TM: They never came to the tent but they came to Adrian, you know.

RP: And so did they feel about seeing you out there?

TM: Well, I'm sure they felt, we never really asked them.

AF: Well, my brother, Art wrote to the Hillsboro paper (saying), "I'm serving in the army and my parents and family are in this camp, how could this be?" I mean, it was kind of a letter that he just was so frustrated and I remember cutting it out and saving it and I gave it to my brother and he can't remember even mailing that letter but that's how he felt and he wrote it, he wrote to the editor.

RP: This is during the war?

AF: Yes.

TM: Yes.

AF: And I think he sent pictures, I mean, a lot of things were censored you know, the letters he sent home, but on the pictures that he took he would write on the back like this is the name of this person but it really told us where he was, kind of you, know. Do you remember that?

TM: Yes, he wrote --

AF: He wrote it in English but he wrote like the person in this picture is, this is his name but that's wasn't what it was. He kind of told us where he was in France.

TM: Well, he wrote in his very elementary Japanese.

RP: And the fact that they were serving in the military, for other folks who were in the War Relocation Centers, some of their parents got, shall we say, there was bitterness, why are your sons serving while we're in this camp, that type of thing. But of course it was also a source of pride too for the parents to know that their sons were serving their country. Being where you were, you weren't exposed to any type of a "loyalty questionnaire" which really divided those camps.

TM: Yes, I know in the relocation centers there were a lot of disloyal groups.