<Begin Segment 11>

RP: So you left Amache, you were involved with this great community within your block and your high school.

TA: So we've had, we've had many reunions. I have worked on some of them. We met in San Francisco, we met, I think, in Los Angeles, and our attendance has always been very good because people, especially from our block are all together, but we've made so many other friends as well.

RP: Have you attended some of the Amache reunions, the camp reunions?

TA: Yes. I've also gone to Denver, where we took a bus and went to the Amache site.

RP: When did you do that? 2008?

TA: No, earlier than that.

RP: Earlier.

TA: Earlier than that, yes.

RP: And so how did...

TA: It looked very bleak, and we said, "This is where we were?" [Laughs]

RP: So what did it bring up for you when you walked back on that ground that you formerly lived at?

TA: Well, I didn't know where our block was, and I thought, "I would never want to come back here again." Not only was the experience, in spite of all my friends, a good experience, that, it doesn't, there is nothing there that would say, "Come back here because this was home for you." It was not home.

RP: What happened with your, with your mother? Did she travel back with you from Amache?

TA: I don't know. I have no recollection. But she ended up having to go to a sanitarium here, and she remained there until she died. So I did stay with the Yoshimunes the whole time.

RP: You traveled back with them?

TA: Uh-huh, I think that was what it was. I don't know how, nobody's ever asked me that, and even if, no matter how much you probed, I would not know. So when I say I really don't know my mother very well, it really is like a stranger to me. And people don't understand that. I can relate more to my father, even that short period of time. Which I feel kind of sad. I do have two little things that she made for me while she was in one of the sanitariums. It was kind of a little crafty kind of a little pin, and that's the only thing I have that's, connects me to my mother.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.