Densho Digital Archive - Doris Nitta Interview (denshovh-ndoris-01-0019)

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RP: You had a... your personal experience was kind of similar too because you graduated high school 1947, right? And then you went to college for a while and you got a job with the federal government, same government that put you into camp. Where did you end up working?

DT: Well, when we came home, 1945 August, they were building this army depot, Sacramento Signal Depot about one-third... about one-third mile from our place. And so when I graduated college, two year college, I went and applied for a job there and it turned out a friend of mine... no, the boss, the big boss was a Caucasian man but he was on vacation and a fellow who worked for him was a friend of mine, a Japanese. And he interviewed me and gave me a test and everything and he told the big boss that I was okay so they hired me so I had no problem getting a job. And I got in as a clerk and thirty five years later I moved around and I retired when I was a program analyst. But when I went to work there I knew I was going to retire from there. Nowadays, kids just move on all over and jobs you don't know when you're going to lose your job. But I knew I was going to work there forever and my husband got transferred over and then we moved from that house, 'cause my dad told my sister that said, if Do would move that he says, I could, Mama and I could move into that house. So I went home and told Bill, I says, "Well, if Papa wants to move into our house we're buying a house," and we moved to another place about five six miles away. And Papa and Mama moved into our place but we didn't charge them rent or anything. And when we sold it, when they sold their land they paid us what it was just minimal. But anyway, when we moved to another place Bill was working in Sacramento and then he got an offer to work Bank America in Woodland and so he accepted it but he had to move to Woodland. So we had to move thirty miles away and I commuted from Woodland until I had my thirty-five years. And I got out of there because the commute was terrible with the fog and then the carpool, oh, I could write a book about the carpool, the weird people I rode with. [Laughs]

RP: Doris, did you face any obstacles in locating housing?

DT: No, my sister did.

RP: What way?

DT: Well, when they got married apartment, it'd be advertised and then she'd go there and they says, "Oh, it's already taken." But then they wanted to build a home and the people who tried to buy it before they weren't vets so people around there they signed up and wouldn't let 'em buy but when my sister, my husband, her husband, he was a vet so they allowed. And then people liked 'em. And my sister and my brother-in-law were neat and they kept their place real nice. But people didn't know so people were real nice after my sister and brother-in-law moved in but we had no problem.

RP: Was that your sister Grace?

DT: Uh-huh, 'cause when we got married we moved into Bill's second cousin's apartment so he's not going to discriminate against us. And then we moved... then my sister wanted, she was running a grocery store and she was having so much problem with the people living above her. So when they moved out she asked us to move in, so we moved in her place so we had no problem.

RP: Before the war Florin was a very thriving farming community. How did the war, the evacuation, the camp experience change the community when you returned? What was the impact of incarceration on the Florin community?

DT: Well, not even fifty percent of the people before the war came back 'cause they lost their land. But I feel like that was the best thing that happened. We would all be farmers yet and after the war, we had Bob Matsui who was a congressman and a lot of them that became congressmen and everything. Well, I think it's the best thing. That's my -- oh, people will get mad at me if I said that but there were good things and bad things.