<Begin Segment 1>

RP: Okay, this is an oral history interview for the Manzanar National Historic Site. This afternoon we're talking with Miyo Nagai, and the interview is taking place at her sister's residence at 2718 Hyperion Street, Los Angeles, California. The date is May 10, 2011. The interviewer is Richard Potashin, and the videographer is Kirk Peterson, and also sitting in on our interview this afternoon is Miyo's daughter, Shari, and her son, Dan. And we'll be talking with Miyo about her experiences as an incarceree at the Manzanar War Relocation Center during World War II. Our interview will be archived in the Park's library, and Miyo, do I have permission to go ahead and conduct our interview?

MN: Yes.

RP: Thank you so much for sharing your afternoon with us.

MN: Well, it's our honor. [Laughs] Thank you.

RP: Let's start out with the basic beginning question, where were you born and what year?

MN: San Diego -- actually it was La Jolla, the little, it's basically San Diego, but La Jolla. Pacific Beach, there's a place there, an area, 1925.

RP: And can you give us your full name at birth?

MN: It's just Miyoko Sakai, S-A-K-A-I, and my middle name, I understand, one of my mother's friends, American friends, decided that Japanese names are hard to pronounce, in those days, so she gave each of the daughters, four girls, all flower names. So mine is Violet, my other sister that's passed away, that was working in the hospital, Etchan, Etsuko, hers is Rose, and hers [points off camera] is Lillian, and my older sister -- and then I had another sister, she was, she was in camp for a short while, but she had a, I understand when she was small she had an... oh gosh, they called it sleeping sickness at the time, and it damaged her brain, paralyzed part of it -- her name was Pansy. So we all got flower names. [Laughs]

RP: That's perfect, 'cause you were in the flower business.

MN: Well, and we've always had, my uncle apparently was in the flower business, wholesale growing, and my grandpa, up in the valley here, San Fernando Valley, just this side of, actually it's Carson Valley, but it's just this side of [inaudible], big area there.

RP: What did, do you know what your first and last names mean in Japanese?

MN: My first name is supposed to be, yes, and the letter it's written, the letter, the way, in Japanese it spells, supposed to be, utsukushii means "beautiful," I guess. And now, Nagai, in English it's -- that's Fred's name, my maiden name was Sakai, S-A-K-A-I, okay? But they made it, when you write it, it looks like "snow," and with this little letter it means "eaves," Sakai, S-A-K-A-I. When I got married, I got married to Fred and his name is Nagai. Alright, and that means "long" in Japanese, I mean in English. Yeah.

RP: Let's talk a little bit about your parents. First, your dad, what was his name?

MN: Masao. I'm, I don't know too much about my dad because when I was four months old he was, he passed away. He was killed in an accident. So Sumi would know. She was already ten then.

RP: Where did your dad come from in Japan?

MN: Nagoya.

RP: And he was originally a doctor?

MN: In Japan.

RP: In Japan.

MN: But you can't get a license here, in those days. So he followed other professions, and I understand he worked from ground up. From what I found, he was, he used to work, like, in a chicken, raising chickens. And then a pig ranch, he took care of the pigs in those days. But he passed away early. He passed away, apparently, in his forties. That's when he had, yeah, the accident. So I haven't, only thing I know is I just thought, when I was growing up, everybody doesn't have a father. I mean, you know. But my uncle, he kind of took over, my mother's brother, and he kind of looked after us too, but my mother, she's the one that raised us, all five of us.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 2>

RP: Yes, your mom's name?

MN: My mom's name? Yuki, Y-U-K-I. And that means snow in Japanese, and so Shari, her middle, her Japanese name is Yukiko, after Grandma.

RP: And your mother's maiden name?

MN: Kawakami.

RP: And she, your mother came over with her parents originally?

MN: No, she, well, she came over when she was, I understand, about sixteen. And she didn't know English or anything, and apparently she was, they docked up in San Francisco somewhere -- they call it, what is it, Ellis Island or something -- she didn't know how to dress, she only knew Japanese customs, and someone, some lady, real nice lady that was a wealthy person, she took her in and showed her the trade, all the, what you're supposed to do here, how to dress correctly. Showed her how to set up, like, well, she kind of helped her in the home, so she showed her how to set up dishes and all, did all that for her. I'm not sure how she met my dad or if this is why she came over. But she was up in, I think it was up there near San Francisco somewhere, when she first came from Japan. But she learned, and even the, when she was taught how to dress, well, in those days they had these big beautiful dresses with big sleeves and big hats, well, even as she grew older she always liked big hats with big flowers and everything. She looked good in those. [Laughs]

RP: What else do you remember about your Mom?

MN: My mom? Well, she's a hard worker. I mean, she said she had to, when my dad passed away in San Diego -- this is where we were, apparently I was born down there -- but we were living down there and, because she was by herself with the five children, she came to live with Grandma and Grandpa up here in the valley, San Fernando Valley, which is some, they had a place up there. And what she did was, well, when she, before my dad died, apparently, to make ends meet she would bake and do preserves and everything, strawberry preserves, but when she came up here to live with Grandma and Grandpa, and there was a huge flower growing farm up there and she would have to cook for maybe fifteen, twenty people, workers and everyone, plus go out in the field and pitch in. And then also, we lived in a house right, not in the main house but we lived in a home right on the ranch there, and so she had to -- this is when Sumi used to, she had to do a lot of the cooking, my older sister Sumi, and she had to kind of take care of all of us. But she had to go to school too. [Laughs]

RP: What values or lessons did you get from your mother?

MN: My mother? You know, she always said that, and she's always told us, if you work hard, you're not afraid of work, and she said that, you be honest, she says, and she used to tell us, if you ever have, run a flower shop -- from, actually from the wholesale end of it, she moved out, right close by here, up on Los Feliz here, opened up a small flower shop -- and she said, "If you're not afraid of working," and she said, "you'll never, never starve." And that's true. You learn the profession. I started, I think, helping there, I don't know, maybe when I was seven or eight, doing little things. Family business. And I don't think I got to wait on customers. Maybe I did, but I learned, through my experience I've learned how to make corsages, arrangements. Well, my arrangements were not as good as hers, Sumi's, but I used to like to do small things, like for the weddings. And when they had the weddings they, in those days everyone had big fancy weddings and so the crew, flower shop crew, mostly the driver and maybe two or three of us, we would go there and help decorate the church and everything. And I learned, we learned. And it's something that I feel you treasure it, you know? You can't just learn by going to school or something. And the customers, we had real nice customers. So holidays, well, even during the week, as I, after I went, start going to school, if we didn't go to Japanese language school, which was either all day Saturday or after your regular school on weekdays, we'd go to the shop and help. [Laughs] But it was, we learned.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 3>

RP: You mentioned your other three sisters. You also had a brother.

MN: I had a brother. He was next to me in, age wise, 'cause I'm the bottom of the barrel there. And he kind of, when I went to school he kind of looked after me. For a short time we were both in elementary school real close by here, and he would see to it that I got to school, 'cause you know, and he would put me on his bike and take me down to school. I'd get grease on my dresses. [Laughs] And so there were times when, if Grandma didn't have time to make my lunch or something, well, he would go around to the corner there, and there was apparently a small short order place where they would have hamburgers, and he would leave the grounds and go buy a hamburger and then wait for me to get out for lunchtime and bring it to me. But I remember, even if, when he was learning, he had a car, as we grew older he still saw that I got to school okay. And then after school, well, then my mother had one of her drivers come down and pick me up. And as I got older I got to walk home. [Laughs]

RP: Now, something else to mention about your brother is he got involved in race cars.

MN: My brother, yes.

RP: How did that all come about?

MN: How did I, well, I guess when he was in his, maybe his high school days, he used to like to, and he had friends that liked to take cars apart. They didn't, no one bought new cars. They'd take cars and they'd, everyone had their own little specialty that they did, and he had friends that were in the garage business too. In fact, I believe there's some that, we just learned recently, I think Shari said it was at Santa Monica, there's a few of the garages down there that they used to have, help build up the cars and things, racing cars. But he, I don't know how he got to know, because in school, when he went to school he used to do beautiful work. He did, like, they used to teach woodshop and things. It was like cooking and sewing for the girls. Well, he made some beautiful tables and things, and I think Sumi has some around here that he made. We still -- the solid wood, nothing of this plastic or artificial. But he got to, he had friends that worked on cars and they built up cars, and how he got to racing, I really don't know. But they all used to go up to, was that Muroc Dry Lakes?

RP: Did you ever go out there and see him race?

MN: No. Apparently if you, apparently it was a hard day drive. You leave like, real late at night, like ten o'clock or midnight, because it was so hot, and then apparently they raced early in the morning. But he, as far as I know, he had like two cars, not at the same time, though. Gradually, as you work up you get one basic car, and then you get rid of that one and you get another one. And then the final car he had, apparently you have a picture of it. That one was, he told, and my mother used to tell him, this was after had graduated and everything and she said, "You know..." in those days, if you're in, if you're about eighteen, nineteen, you better grow up. [Laughs] So she said that, she says, "You're old enough now," she said, "to take on a little more responsibility." He helped at the shop and did things like that, driver, and he did the delivery too. But so he said, "Grandma," he said, he kept winning these trophies, and at the time I thought, "Oh, that's nice." But being a teenager, it didn't really mean that much to me, 'cause all the fellows would come by and they'd come in their jeans and things and they'd be talking about car things or they'd be taking one car apart in the back. So anyway, so it didn't mean -- but now, I mean, as you think about it, he told her he was racing and he was getting these trophies all the time. Many of the trophies, we still have them. We still have them. But there's a car sitting on top, all these beautiful trophies with his name engraved, and I think the last one I remember was like a big plaque or something with a car on it. But he said, "Grandma, if -- Mom," he says, "if I win this one more race," he says, "then I promise you I'll settle down." [Laughs] He did win one of the big ones, though, up in Muroc, and they used to go to Salt Lake City. Apparently there's some salt flats up there. They used to go up there too, drive like all night. But I know Muroc Dry Lakes, and so to me, I don't know, that seems, there's a meaning to that place for us. And no ice chest, I don't know, they used to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and take it to the water. But he built the cars and so even, I don't even, I don't think he took his own regular car apart. He did the racing cars, fixed 'em up really shiny, shiny. Did a lot of the work himself. And it's amazing, there's probably several people yet that, in his era, are still living. And Shari took me to a, one of these car shows, not just the new cars, these were for the racing, in Pomona not too long ago, and I was so impressed. I was so happy to be able to go 'cause these are some of the people that he had worked with, and they mentioned his name. In fact, they even gave us a representative saying that part of Dan -- his name was Dan too, Daniel -- but, "Dan's family is here and they wanted us to let them know who we were," and it was really, it was quite an honor. But all these years, and these men are up in their eighties, I'd say late eighties maybe and some are in their early nineties, and some are still, they're able to remember things and talk about old times.

RP: Unfortunately Danny met a untimely death.

MN: He met an unfortunate accident right after this, the last race he won was, I think it was like a hundred and twenty miles an hour or something. Anyway, he won that race and it was just about a month or so after that. He'd just turned twenty-one too, and a motorcycle accident. And our family never, well, what was told to my mother was he was up in the area here, which is called Forestland Drive, but it was called, I think, Mulholland Drive at the time. It's the street in the back of the hills here, of Griffith Park, and apparently, I don't know what he was doing, racing or what, boys are boys, and he had gotten a -- 'cause he didn't have a motorcycle; my mother never said too much, but she was against motorcycles, you know? [Laughs] And so apparently he was on the motorcycle and went over, around this curve, and they said that the sun blinded him and he hit a telephone pole in this big open space, went around the corner and apparently gravel or something and he skidded up. It was... so this is, this is what they told her, that he had died on the spot. So we never got to really see the, you know. That road is, it's now called Forestland Drive, but it gives you a funny feeling when you go there, knowing that it's the spot. But unfortunately, that's what happened.

RP: Yeah, like Dead Man's Curve.

MN: Yeah, so he never made that final, final race that he told her. And she wondered, "Why are you so intent on going on this one race that you think, you've gotten all these trophies?" He said, "They're offering a television." And that's when television was apparently brand new, and there's this young fellow named Tommy Lee, he has, I understand there's a radio station or something near the Hollywood sign up here. Anyway, apparently he was doing the sponsoring of that and gonna donate, and he said, "That's what I'm gonna get for you, Mom." But that never happened. But, and just recently -- this is, what, seventy years ago -- there's so many people, his name pops up in some of these magazines, hot rod magazines. It's interesting. In fact, I met a friend -- I used to take, I used to go ballroom dancing -- and we were talking and then this fellow said to me, out of the clear blue sky he said, he was living in New York at the time and he said, "You know," he said, "there used to be a --" and he was Japanese; this group we danced with were Hawaiians, Japanese, mostly Orientals -- and he said, "There's this young fellow," he says, "When I was in New York, I read in this hot rod magazine about this young fellow." And he said, "It's too bad that he had to die so young." And I said, "What was his name?" So he, and he told me. He said, "His name is Dan Sakai." Well, of course my name is different, it was Nagai, so, and I said, "Oh, that was my brother." And he says, "You're kidding." And I said, "Yes, that was my brother." And he said, "Oh," he said, "I'll be doggone," he says. [Laughs] Well or course, he's the fellow that was interested in cars because he had a garage or service station or something in New York, and so he, anything with cars, he was interested in. It's interesting how many people...

RP: Still remember him.

MN: Yeah, remember.

RP: Thank you. That's a great story.

MN: But it was, he, I guess he died of fast, he had a fast life, young life.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 4>

RP: I wanted to talk a little bit about the area that you grew up in, the Los Feliz area. Your, it's really amazing to me that your mom, shortly after her husband's death, decides to --

MN: Well, she, she was working on the flower farm, up there in what they call Sun Valley now, but there was like fifty acres and so they would plant flowers in one section and then the following year go to another section. And so then she decided that she wanted to open a retail flower shop. So then with the help of my uncle and everything, well, then she found this spot right up on Los Feliz here and she opened up a small flower shop.

RP: Did you also live at that...

MN: There was a house right on the property, and it used to be, like, all the property up there was like a big estate, estate of William Mead, and they didn't sell the place. You could rent it or lease it. And the, what they wanted was, they, we couldn't buy just part of the property. You had to buy either, they wanted everything. Well, they owned, they owned from, I'd say from Hillhurst, which comes into Los Feliz, all the way down to Western Avenue, all the north side of that.

RP: So did your mother actually purchase that, or just lease it?

MN: We leased it, and then she was able to buy one portion of the shop, but that was -- I mean of a lot -- but that wasn't enough to, that was a lot with a house on it and we lived there for a while, but then we lived in this other house right next to the shop.

RP: Tell us what the shop was like when you were growing up.

MN: It was open, and we had, like, flowers in buckets, real flowers, no artificial. And she stayed, she stayed open three hundred and sixty-five days. She would not close. She said, and New Year's Day -- New Year's Day is a big celebration for Japanese people, you know -- "No," she says, "If you close on New Year's Day," she says, "No," she says, "You'll go broke." She says, "You have to stay open to bring money in." So wherever, and then holidays, well, we used to go on picnics and things. My uncle would take us, but she would stay at that shop. And she'd open like eight in the morning sometimes, or earlier, 'til ten o'clock. But it was safe then. And we had, we didn't, we didn't really lock the place. We had these canvas awnings and we'd just roll 'em up, put 'em down. [Laughs] I mean, that's what, that's the way... and the shop was very nice. We had a lot of customers, a lot of customers. In this area, used to be a lot of Jewish people and English people and German people, but they were all hardworking, but a lot of 'em had, like one of the good customers we had was, he was president of Blue Diamond.

RP: Construction company?

MN: Yeah, the big, you know the rock consolidation? And his name was Van Rothenberg. Well, his wife used to come all the time, and then she also had lots of movie stars come in.

RP: Yeah, why don't you share a few names with us, people you remember seeing?

MN: Okay, we had, like, Mae West. I mean, she never got out of her car, but she would come, and always dressed up pretty and everything, and her chauffeur would, whatever she wanted, would take the flower and show her, and then she would purchase it or something. And then we had, like Olivia de Havilland. She lived right up here, just north of Los Feliz there near us. And then her sister, Joan Fontaine. And they never thought, we never had the, everybody chasing after them. [Laughs] No, it just, and they were very, very plain, honest people, and we had, like, people that were, that did cartoons for the newspaper. And we had, they came, and there was a Earl C. Anthony, he had the big radio station or something down here on Vermont or somewhere. He would come every day, I remember, and he would buy one mystery gardenia. And those gardenias were, apparently, at the time, a dollar, a dollar and a half each, and that's a lot of money. But that's what he would stop and buy every, yeah.

RP: Now, were most of the flowers that you sold from the flower farm that you were, that family...

MN: From the farm? Some were, and a lot of 'em were taken down to the flower market, and then whatever, to make up for or else, well, sometimes we grew flowers too up there in the back of the shop.

RP: In Los Feliz?

MN: In Los Feliz.

RP: What did you grow?

MN: We grew mostly sweet peas, we had carnations, and mums, those big fat mums. And my grandfather, he left the farm and then he came, stayed with my mom 'cause we had a second house in the back, and he was like the management and he took care of... and I think we had maybe one or two helpers that came in that I remember.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 5>

RP: You mentioned your uncle. What was his name?

MN: Kawakami.

RP: First name?

MN: Saichi.

RP: And he was the uncle that --

MN: S-A-I-C-H-I Kawakami, K-A-W-A-K-A-M-I. He was in camp.

RP: And he was the one that ran the flower farm?

MN: The farm? He had, he had part of the farm. And then I had another uncle who was my mother's brother also, younger brother, he had, he ran the other part of the farm. So the two of 'em were running, two different types of flowers and they were running it.

RP: So what did you grow at the farm? What, was there any primary flowers that you grew?

MN: The primary flowers were, like, my uncle's, Saichi, the one who was in Manzanar, his -- I should've got his picture for you -- he has grown delphinium. Those are the big blue ones. I mean, he took pride in those, and he was the only one that'd go through the fields and cut those for the market. And he would have ranunculus, and what else did they have? Like they would have, let's see, stocks, those big white ones, they would have.

RP: They have a great odor to them.

MN: And they would have, and then he and another man would have snapdragons. In fact, they got, they grew them and they were nice big fat ones. I should've brought the picture of, I have this picture. He won an award. They used to have flower shows at the Hollywood Park Racetrack, and then we would go down there and my sister would be, help too. She would be the main decorator there. And that was like a show, but then they were awarded different awards for the flowers, specialty flowers.

RP: Your sister showed me a photograph of a, let's see, of a garden that was built at the ranch.

MN: Uh-huh, Japanese garden.

RP: Mr. Kato. And do you remember, recall that taking place?

MN: Yes. It was beautiful. It was really -- and I understand that they got their, the volcanic rock up in the valley there, Owens Valley. Apparently there was a lot of volcanic rock up there, and it was okay to just pick it up. [Laughs]

RP: Did, can you describe, maybe briefly describe the garden as you recall it?

MN: It was a Japanese garden with a big, big waterfall. This was all volcanic rock. And he had, it was quite a large place because it had, being a property out there, it must've taken all of, I would say it was no little thing, maybe the yard itself, the garden itself must've taken up a good half, hundred feet, maybe, no, hundred fifty feet of a city. And the width too was wide. But it was beautiful. He had the bridge, Japanese bridge, and then he had these little Japanese stone lanterns. Those were, well, they were popular, but there's, the people that were making those were, there were a lot of people like that around. Now you can't find those things. But it was a beautiful... and they had regular koi in there, Japanese koi. But he had this waterfall coming down, very nice.

RP: And the water was from, was from a pipe?

MN: From a pipe, regular pipe. And apparently when they had a big ranch like that, you get a special rate, ranch rate or something, and they had this big meter at the end of the property there, but they would get a special rate. And I don't know what, either the water was recycled or what, but it was always kept very, very nice. The pond itself was quite big. I remember it was no ten, fifteen foot pond. It was quite large.

RP: And did you actually watch Mr. Kato building the garden?

MN: I didn't actually stay, well, 'cause it was out in the valley. But I know my uncle, and then he had several helpers, Japanese and Hispanic helpers, help. That's way back in, oh gosh, I must've been in elementary school, I think. And then what he did was, when they decided that he was getting to, up in years, he, his son took over the flower ranch. But it was huge. I mean, it was hard to get help too. He took, he bought a home in Northridge, and this, Northridge had a big, flat backyard, so he took, had them dismantle all that volcanic rock and rebuild it. That home, apparently, that garden must be still there.

RP: Really?

MN: Uh-huh. My aunt passed away a couple years ago, so they did sell the home, but while they were living there he had this big Japanese garden. The whole backyard was Japanese garden, and one small area was for goldfish only, but the other was partly for the koi. But it was very, very similar as far as structure and design. I don't know if Mr. Kato, maybe he did help him with that too.

RP: Your sister described the garden as being in terrible disrepair when you returned from camp.

MN: Up at the ranch, yes.

RP: At the ranch. The bridge was broken.

MN: Yes, because we had a caretaker, but, you know. He didn't, he didn't do any farming or anything. He was that, he wasn't, he just took, kind of watched the place. And 'cause the pine trees, the pretty pine trees and things that they had shaped and everything, that was all kind of let go. It was there, but not, it wasn't taken care of.

RP: And the, you had mentioned that the garden had been transplanted to your uncle's place?

MN: In Northridge?

RP: Yeah, that would've been, would that have been Seichi?

MN: Saichi.

RP: Saichi.

MN: Saichi, uh-huh. My uncle, Kyu, Kyu... his name was Kyui or Kyusan. He passed away before, right before the, '42, the war.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 6>

RP: And where did you attend school, elementary school?

MN: Elementary school? Here in the neighborhood, Los Feliz Elementary. 'Cause we lived right up here on Los Feliz, and the thing of it is, I wanted to go to Commonwealth School because -- not Commonwealth School, Franklin Avenue School -- it was so close, but because I was within half a block of the borderline, I had to go to Los Feliz Elementary, which is down here on Hollywood Boulevard and Vermont. And it was alright, though. On the way home, as I got older she, my mother used to let me walk home. And then, so there's the Woolworth's ten cent, dime store and everything, I'd stop in and look at things right there, walk home. And then there were, like, homes, apartment houses and things, but when I got up to Los Feliz there was, at first there were no signals up there, no signals. Then they had they those signals that used to the stop and go like this, but I wasn't allowed to cross the street, so I would have to stand in front of the shop, where the shop was across the street and wait until my mother came and picked me up.

RP: So you grew up in a predominantly Caucasian area.

MN: Yes, yes.

RP: Were there any other Japanese families around?

MN: Not a whole lot, and my friends were all south of Los Feliz, down in, more in like the, I should say, well, south, like Fountain Avenue, in the Virgil area. And that's where we went to language school. And so, and then being that there was so few, actually in, I was the only one in elementary school that was Japanese. They were all Caucasians. In fact, I went to school with, you know the Times' Chamberlain or something, there's Times, L.A. Times, they used to, I think they used to run it or own it or something. Anyway, the two, there was a young girl, a son and a daughter, immaculately, every day just, their clothes are just pressed to a T, they come in a chauffeur-driven car, and my goodness, and they're picked up. But they were the quiet, most quiet kids. I wonder what happened to them. I went to Los Feliz with them.

RP: So how were you treated in school, as the only Japanese American?

MN: I was, I was treated, I mean, there was, they didn't have anything. I was treated very good, except one, sometimes the driver, my mother's driver would be a little late in picking me up after school so I had to wait right there, school grounds, and there was this one boy -- he looked like, well, he had, like, bobbed hair, always wore short pants, little different than other children -- and he kept bothering me and bothering me after school. Told the teacher, but he still kept it, so one day I got so angry at him I hit him with my lunch pail. [Laughs] Well, I got called in, but it was his fault. He never bothered me again. I used to dread waiting there and the driver's not waiting for me.

RP: So he, was he impugning your ethnic identity?

MN: I don't know, you know? I have no idea. But I had no trouble in school. And what happened was, after my brother had, well, he was in an upper grade at the time, but then he left right after, shortly after I enrolled at Los Feliz, 'cause he went on to junior high school, but we used to have carnival, Halloween. And so my mother would come down and she would dress me, not in a Halloween, I mean, she'd dress me up in a Japanese kimono, and so I'd always get to win first prize. [Laughs] And the prize was, like, a lei or something. And I thought, "Gee, how come I always get the prize? The others all dressed up in different costumes and things." But I used to always get first prize.

RP: So you were pretty comfortable with your Japanese ancestry?

MN: I am.

RP: Were you as a child too?

MN: As a child, we didn't have any, no one really bothered us. No. And even, we had to, when the war broke out, when we, we went up to Marshall High School, which is very close here, and at that time there must've been only about five or six of us students 'cause they were all white American families, and then we thought, we didn't know how they were, we had friends there, but we didn't go to school because we weren't sure how we were gonna get treated when the war broke out.

RP: So was that a decision that you made, or did, your mother made?

MN: Well, we got together with the other parents and talked it over. Just in case, you know. But we didn't have really any trouble, and we talked to, the school understand. They were good about it, and so what they did was they let us finish, they said they'll give us credit for the year that we were there, and they let us bring books home and gave us assignments that way. So we didn't have to, you know.

RP: You didn't miss any, you didn't get behind.

MN: No.

RP: How long did you...

MN: So that was December, and then things got a little more shaky around here, but we were very careful. In fact, we never went into Glendale. Glendale was like, they didn't like Japanese. But there were Japanese people living in Glendale. I don't know what they did. To me, Glendale was just far, far away. We never went to Glendale. Burbank was alright. In fact, we used to go to Burbank for our family doctor, who was a German doctor.

RP: Were there, were there any public areas that you wanted to go but you were prohibited from because of being Japanese? Swimming pools, theaters?

MN: Well, we kind of hesitated, and we, amongst our, my friends, I think we used to, stayed away. But we had our own little group that we'd have our socials and things. In fact, we had small parties at the church, church places.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 7>

RP: Let's talk a little bit about some of the social activities and religious observances that you were involved in, growing up as a kid. You mentioned that you used to participate in the Japanese ondo street dancing.

MN: Yes, down in Little Tokyo.

RP: During Nisei Week?

MN: During Nisei Week.

RP: Tell us about that.

MN: That was a big thing. [Laughs] And we'd go for practice weeks ahead, and I don't remember, I didn't, I mean, I didn't, my sisters never went, but apparently my mother had a driver that, designated driver or a friend that we would go together, and we would practice. This is out in a parking lot or something. And then when the final few days that they had -- usually it was like a Saturday and a Sunday or something -- well, my mother would dress us, we'd dress up in our kimonos and go down there and do street dancing. [Laughs] Well, we had, it was fun.

RP: How important was the Little Tokyo area to your upbringing? Did you spend time there when you had free time?

MN: Only, no, only time when we went there was for, like, something special. That was it. In fact, we used to go down there sometimes, they used to have Chinese restaurants there and we would go down there, not very often. In fact, so we didn't spend a whole lot, maybe when I was younger, my grandma, she would, when I'd stay, like over the weekend or something. Well, Saturday is a clean up day for her, so after we all finished cleaning the house and all this, then we'd get in, my uncle would drive us down to there and we would have dinner down there. And we'd go to some of the, their department stores and things. But that was about it. But it's grown up and gotten very modern now down there.

RP: Did you have association with a religious affiliation?

MN: You mean...

RP: Growing up.

MN: Any what?

RP: Did you, was your family affiliated with a church or religious --

MN: Yes, she was Buddhist church. There is one down there, Higashi Hongwanji. Okay, the big, that was on Second Street, and there's another one on... Nishi Hongwanji. Well, the original church was over on Mott Street in East L.A. there, and that's where we used to go for services and everything.

RP: We were just talking about ondo dancing, but you had a great love of dancing.

MN: I, well, I've always, in fact, I had this friend that, well, they were family friends and they lived across the street on Los Feliz, and the two sisters used to dance, apparently, on a stage, tap dance and do all these other kinds. And I used to think -- and they wore these real fancy clothes -- "Oh, that would be nice. I think I'd like to do that." [Laughs] But she, Kato, in my younger days, taught me how to tap dance, and she, certain days she had time so she told me to come on over after school. She'd show me. But she was, they traveled, and I thought, "Well, isn't that nice. They get to travel plus perform." Two sisters that did a lot of that. In fact, the sister, the brother -- his name was Togo Tanaka, he was in camp. I don't know if you've come across his name, I don't... but anyway, it was his sisters that were performers. And I thought, "Gosh, Chicago and all these places, New York," and they would actually do the dancing on the stage. But they never, I don't know what, I think maybe one of 'em, they moved out to the Midwest or something, so they never got to, Togo was in camp, I think.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 8>

RP: How did your mother's florist shop fare during the Depression years?

MN: Depression? Well, we did all... she had to, she knew how to, how should I say, not skimp but make the best of things, whatever we had. And we did a lot of the work ourselves. And it's amazing, well, I had to, like, we all pitched in and helped after school, my sisters too, she would take, we grew flowers in the back, so she'd take orders from other shops. And I'd get home from school and she'll say, "Oka Florist wants, they want five bunches or five dozen of sweet peas. You got to pick 'em by a certain time 'cause they're gonna come." So we had to get out there. And she had little extra coming in, but we had very good, not real good customers that were, they didn't do a lot of charging. It was all mostly cash and carry, which is nice. But we had nice, steady people that would come all the time, and a lot of 'em were, like you say, chauffeur-driven, and a lot of the people from the movies, design, dress designers. This man, I used to think, gee, but he was such a nice man. They said, "Oh no, he's terrible to work with." But you know Orry Keller, he did a beautiful job designing, and he'd come and he wants this, he wants this, he wants this in the shop, and then he'd buy so much -- he'd walk from the, his home, which was close by -- so then one of the drivers would put 'em in the truck and then take him home, and it was fine. Very, very down to earth people. We had some real nice people. Jergens lotion lady, she was, she used to live up in the hills there and she would come. She was the nicest, you would never know her background. She moved out to Ojai after a while.

RP: So your mom was, was the primary flower designer in the shop?

MN: She was primary designer, and then she hired this man was, who was, he came from Japan and she took him in. He didn't know too much English, so she said, "Well, you go to school at night." But he did some of the design work too, and then my sisters, they pitched in. We all had to learn part, or else we're behind. We have to help each other. Yeah, but she was more the primary design. And at that time we had a lot of people would buy flowers by the bunch, not just one stem, a bunch, and so, but she, and then if she felt that they were good customers she would offer them an extra one or something. This was her way of doing things.

RP: Good businesswoman.

MN: Well, she was a businesswoman. But she had to, she didn't drive, she didn't, she never did learn how to drive. She says no, and pretty soon, she got so mad one time, she said, this was after the war, and she said, she'd call me and she wants me to come now. And I said, "You have to give me fifteen, twenty minutes." [Laughs] She just, pretty soon she says, "I'm gonna drive a car. They have these new cars you just push a button and you can go." I said, "No, it's not that easy." But she managed. She'd, she got the city license. I know she'd take me with her and go on the bus or the red streetcar and go down to the city hall, and she'd get her city license and do all that herself.

RP: Did she also go down to the flower market to pick up flowers on occasion?

MN: Yeah.

RP: Where was that located?

MN: That was like four in the morning.

RP: Four in the morning.

MN: It's down on Seventh and Wall Street. It's changed now. It's still there. That's where, my husband was working there for forty years, out of there. But he had, Fred had, we had a flower shop and this was after war time, he was driving a truck and he would sell out of his truck. In other words, he would start out around here and go into Glendale, Pasadena, end up in Pomona, and then turn around and come back. But we'd go down there and my uncle would be selling wholesale flowers, but she would go down early in the morning and buy things that, to supplement, things that we didn't grow. 'Cause you had to have a nice variety or people don't come.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

RP: Let's shift over to... well, before we do, before the war, did you, did you have any idea that a war was coming?

MN: No, no idea, absolutely. I know that my, Sumi had a hard time getting, I mean, she was on the last boat, but being, we never really realized what was gonna happen. And we went to school, to the language school down here, Middlebury. No, we had no idea.

RP: What was language school like for you?

MN: It was Japanese. It was not that easy, but we had, like, not just one class. He had several layers of, like two or three layers of the beginners and up to more, a little bit more advanced students. And it didn't matter how old you were; if you didn't know anything, you're down in the beginners group. [Laughs] So we had some high school people, older people in there. But it was, we learned. It was very strict, and we weren't allowed to speak English at all. We had to be... but, and then we'd have to do speech sessions in Japanese. Just like regular school. But that's how I learned how to write and speak it, and they teach the, they call it universal Japanese. The people that speak it, they speak it, like, in Tokyo, but if you go north or south of Japan, I wouldn't even know what they were saying. It's different. It's very different.

[Interruption]

RP: This is tape two of a continuing interview with Miyo Nagai. And Miyo, we were just discussing your experiences at Japanese language school, and you say the programs were held there. What kind of programs?

MN: Like we would have to either have speech programs or like an acting program in Japanese, regular stage and everything. [Laughs] Yeah. And it was a, not a very big building, but they would have these partitions, so when the public, we had parents and everybody opened up, had to bring in the folding chairs.

RP: Did you have other events associated with the language school, picnics or...

MN: There was Sunday school. We had, I went to the Buddhist church there. They had a church service there.

RP: At the language school?

MN: At the language school, on Sundays. Different minister and everything, but rather than all the way to Mott Street, 'cause none of us drove.

RP: So it sounds like you were, you took Japanese language school pretty seriously.

MN: Well, you know, we'd, it wasn't easy. [Laughs] But we were, it was enough that we could read and communicate with other, like Grandma and Grandpa. My grandfather spoke English, so I didn't have, but my grandma...

RP: And how, and your mom also?

MN: She spoke English and Japanese. She had to learn English.

RP: Bilingual.

MN: So she was... but she insisted I go. I think my sisters used to go to school, maybe when I was real young, Japanese language school, when they, we were living out in the valley. 'Cause we moved out from San Diego and I, maybe after my dad passed away when I was four months old, we moved up into the, on the ranch in Sunland, and then that's probably when my sisters went to Japanese language school, 'cause they didn't go to language school out here. I was already, what, in, I don't know, fourth, third grade, fourth grade.

RP: And you went to high school, you said at John Marshall?

MN: John Marshall High School. They're still there, the old school.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 10>

RP: So tell us about December 7, 1942.

MN: Okay.

RP: I'm sorry, 1941. [Laughs]

MN: '41, yeah. That was, when we heard we couldn't believe what happened. I mean, for what? We didn't know the war was coming on. And we thought, and then we thought, well -- and we didn't have neighbor neighbors where we were living up here on Los Feliz, so it was all open space, like flower fields -- and then we thought, "Well, maybe we better not venture out too much," not knowing what the public was gonna be like. Now, people that came to the shop and knew us, they were fine.

RP: Nothing changed.

MN: Nothing changed there. But what happened was we were, we had these, they said they were from the FBI, come to the house, and usually toward evening and they would be very, very blunt about things. And they would come in, unannounced, and they would pull up the carpeting, and we had this old house, but pull it up to see if we had any trap doors or things down there in this house. And they looked, and we had, my sister had some, she brought some of these swords back, souvenirs from Japan. Well, they took those. They took the cameras. They said, "Well, you'll get 'em back," but we never saw it. That was the end of that. Whatever. And at the shop, we had this three level flower shop where, ground level and then there's a few steps, there's a working level, and then there's another two or three steps and that was the upper level where we did the big things. They insisted we had a cellar there hiding things, and they would stomp on that place, and we said, "There isn't anything." No, they would stomp on that place and just insist. But there wasn't any, we had nothing to hide. And here, we had no men in the family, just my mother, and my brother just died. And I thought, "Oh my gosh." But when they did come to the house, oh my goodness, they just insisted, just pull up the carpeting and just left it, nothing. Very --

RP: What was their attitude like?

MN: Their attitude? Like Mr., Mr. Big, you know? Like they were some, like they were higher [inaudible] or something, just really, they had the authority to do it. No excuses, nothing.

RP: No warrants.

MN: No, nothing. And you just stand there wondering, "Why are they doing all this?" And so their, later they were saying, "Well, maybe it's because my sister had gone to Japan and came back." But to us, they had nothing to do with it. I don't know. But they did, they took a lot of the souvenirs and things. They said that it was a contraband, so they took 'em.

RP: You never saw 'em again.

MN: No, we never saw any of those things again.

RP: So were you, you were visited once at the house?

MN: More than once.

RP: More than once, and then also at the flower shop.

MN: Well yes, 'cause it was connected. And so they would come up and they figure, well, they best, we must have a cellar or something here. I think... but they were very, very, like they're the hierarchy. They were must Mr., "You do as we say." We didn't say anything. We didn't give 'em any trouble. But we couldn't understand why they had to be like that. I --

RP: Was your -- I'm sorry, go ahead.

MN: I've seen some pictures of, I don't know, some of these officials. They wore coats and the tie and a suit and a hat. That's exactly how they dressed. [Laughs]

RP: How many of them were --

MN: Usually, usually they came in twos or threes. Not just one.

RP: Did you know certain Issei community leaders who were picked up by the FBI? Such as maybe the language school instructor?

MN: Let's see...

RP: People that were close to you or that you knew?

MN: That were close to us? No, not really. I know some of the fathers. Why, I don't know. And I have no idea why they were picked up. And some were, some of the fathers were sent down to, somewhere in Arizona, someplace down...

RP: Santa Fe?

MN: Somewhere. Not up at Tule Lake. They were sent to, they were saying down there they were not treated too well. I thought, "Well gosh, if we had my dad, I wonder what would've happened." I don't know. But they seemed to know who we had in the family, and they knew my sister had come back from Japan, but that was... they thought, well, maybe we had some connection. [Laughs]

RP: Were you affected at all by the travel restrictions and the curfew, business-wise or socially?

MN: Socially, yes. We were very, very young, careful, very careful. And we stayed, when we had curfew it was dark, everywhere was dark, and so we had this one room which was in the breakfast room, and we were able to cover up the, it was an inside room, so we were covering up, and quietly we listened. And you could hear people walking on Los Feliz, the people that were, I guess, neighborhood people walking around there. But pitch dark, my goodness.

RP: Those were the blackout.

MN: It was just blackout, just completely blackout. You'd be surprised how black it gets.

KP: When was the Battle of L.A.?

RP: I think it was in February. February, do you recall a, there was a scare, an alarm that there was some type of attack, war's coming, and antiaircraft guns opened up? There was sort of a panic throughout the city about an imminent attack.

MN: I'm not too sure about that.

RP: How were you feeling, as the, as the days and weeks progressed, what was your attitude? You were kind of, somewhat apprehensive about going to certain places.

MN: Certain places.

RP: Keeping a low profile. Was there any sense of panic or fear, or what was going through your mind? Before the order was actually...

MN: Well, we just figured if we kind of kept to ourselves and didn't dare go into areas where we thought was gonna be kind of dangerous, we wouldn't be affected and we wouldn't have to worry about anything. 'Course, we didn't have close neighbors, which was nice. It was all open fields there.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 11>

RP: When the, when you found out or you learned that you were gonna be excluded from the West Coast, your home, what kind of emotions did that trigger?

MN: Well, we thought, "Where are they gonna send us?" We never heard of the place, and so we thought, "Where, what's gonna happen to us?" And we thought, well, as a family we'd get separated, but they made sure, luckily we were on the north side of Los Feliz, we got to go with the valley people with my uncle and, they were all living in the valley. That was considered valley, Burbank, San Fernando. But other than that, well, Mom says, "Well, we just have to go with the flow of the crowd, you know."

RP: And how did you, how did you prepare to leave your home?

MN: To leave? Well, because we were renting the place, leasing the shop, my mother had this friend, good friend, Mr. Stone, and he had knowledge of the shop and things, and he said he would take care of the shop. And apparently my mother, with whatever, apparently whatever he made from there, he would pay the rent and everything. The house, now, we didn't own the house, so what little furniture we had, we took it over to the valley, on the ranch, and there was a, my uncle had a big room there, so we stored some of the things there. But we didn't have a lot. And then as far as packing, well, they said you can only pack what you could carry. Okay. And we had these heavy old duffel bags, heavy, they're canvas so they're heavy, so you'd put things in there, but how much can you carry? And not knowing what we were getting into, you know? They said, "Well, you have to pack, because it's very cold up there." Well, it was. We didn't have clothes, warm clothing. But we did the best we can.

RP: So what was the most difficult thing to leave behind? Or things?

MN: Our pets. Yeah. And the kitties, well, the kitties, the lady that lived in the apartments, she said, she was feeding them off and on so she would look after them. I think the dog, the dog had to, was taken over to the ranch and the man was supposed to look after him. But see, he was always tied up, and so the man apparently did the best he can. But losing my friends, not seeing any of them anymore 'cause they were on, they lived south of Los Feliz, they went to different, they were all split up, Heart Mountain, Poston. It was, it wasn't easy, you know. You miss your school friends.

RP: And your grandparents, your grandmother was ill at the time that you left.

MN: Yes.

RP: So did she stay behind, or what happened to her?

MN: They couldn't transport her because she had, she wasn't able, she was bedridden. And so the doctor, Dr. Thompson, Elmer Thompson in Burbank, he had, owned a hospital up there on Olive, and so he took it upon himself and he said, "I will take full responsibility and keep them," my grandmother and grandfather, because my grandma didn't speak English and my grandfather did. So he said, "I will take care of them." But in the meantime, I don't know if somebody reported them or what, the army came in and took them from Burbank and put 'em into some place in Temple City, which was, you know. But the people didn't know them there, and she says that my grandma was in, like, left in a hallway, not a room, and when she would ask for certain food -- she couldn't eat certain things, but she liked plain white rice -- the nurse would purposely pour milk right on, my grandma said, just purposely pour the milk over it. She couldn't eat that. So anyway, my grandfather, he wrote and he told my mother what was going on, so she, my mother, there was a Catholic priest, Father Lavery, who was with Maryknoll, he helped a lot. And she somehow got him to help her, and so she was able to go back to Santa Anita. She stayed there for weeks and weeks, trying to get, make, negotiate so that my grandma and grandpa could come up to Manzanar 'cause this hospital was just not, she was going downhill. But she said that there wasn't, they weren't helping her, they wouldn't keep her in Burbank, and so finally, I mean, she tried and tried and tried -- and see, we left, I think we went to Manzanar maybe about April or May -- well, the end of December they finally, made negotiation. My mother had to, she paid for the ambulance, private ambulance, and got my grandma and grandpa up to Manzanar. She lasted one day, that was it. But she knew she was with us. Yeah, she was already so weak. But she, she says every morning she was out there trying different... she, apparently she knew how to, say, cope with people or talk to them, but through the services of Father Lavery too, she was finally able to get them to come up. And they said, "Well, you have to have an ambulance. You can't have..." She says, "Well, I'll pay for it." Well, luckily she had some savings, so whatever she had, she put it into expenses. But yeah, she lasted one day, but she knew she was with us.

RP: And you were there with her?

MN: Yeah, when she passed away. One day, and that was it. She was barely, I mean, you could say she was barely moving. So then my grandfather, he lived with us in the barracks for a short while.

RP: Can you share with us your, well, first of all, the trip to Manzanar?

MN: The bus trip?

RP: You have some pretty vivid memories of that.

MN: [Laughs] Oh boy, yes. Oh yeah.

RP: What was that like?

MN: Well, first of all, you stand and you wait and wait and wait for the bus, which bus do you take and all that, with all your things. And then going up, there was, the bus was just jam packed with people, but they don't stop for restrooms or anything, so what happens is all of a sudden, he doesn't say anything, he stops, "Everybody get out." Well naturally, everybody's getting out to go to the bathroom. This is wide open desert, and the wind is blowing and everything, and so what happens is, being girls and ladies, you do the best you can to hide behind some kind of a bush or something, right? It was, it was quite a trip. It just seems like so long, the trip. Then we, when we got up there, we had no idea, I mean, whether you could take anything to eat or anything on the bus. You know, we were older, but the little ones, sorry for them, my uncle had, I think he had maybe four or five at the time, four little ones, and the oldest was, maybe they were two, going on three. But we didn't prepare for anything like that.

RP: Did you hear any rumors about Manzanar before you left or during the trip, about what, what might happen to you when you got there?

MN: No. Nothing. They didn't, we had no instructions, just out there in the... and we had no idea where it was.

RP: Obviously you say you weren't told what type of clothes to take.

MN: No. No, they didn't instruct, they just, all they said was, "You better take warm clothes and take boots." Well, none of us owned boots out there. [Laughs] And so, and for me, I always had trouble finding shoes that fit. I don't wear children's shoes and I wear adult shoes, but anyway. Oh well. So we took whatever we could, but we took mainly our own clothes, nothing frilly or fancy.

RP: So you grew up in a predominantly Caucasian community in this area. Kind of upper middle class?

MN: Most of them were, I, most of my friends, I mean, these, they're, the friends that I had were, the Japanese ones were, the parents were either gardeners or maybe they had a small Mama Papa store or something. But the Caucasian people, they were like, L.A.... I never really did any outside activity with them, but they were always good to us. These were people that had, lived up in the upper hills here.

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

<Begin Segment 12>

RP: So what was it like when you got to Manzanar and there's ten thousand Japanese?

MN: I couldn't believe, I could not believe so many. And they said more is coming, and I thought, "Oh, there's Japanese all over the place here. I've never... " Sure, Little Tokyo, Nisei Week, but that was nothing. And here there's Japanese all over, everywhere you go. And I thought, oh my gosh. I didn't realize there were so many, and then they said there's other camps too. Wow. I mean, it just kind of floored, floored. 'Cause I didn't have that much communication with, of so many Japanese.

RP: And so you were first assigned to Block 13, and one of the, one of the earlier hardships people talk about is the overcrowding, and I think your, your situation was like the extreme of the extreme.

MN: Yes. Oh gosh.

RP: What happened?

MN: A lot of overcrowding. Well, we went, my mother kept, she said she didn't want to get separated from my uncle's family. Well, he has all these little ones, and he must've had, I don't know, it was four or five at the time, little ones, but they're all babies yet, small. And so we got stuck with them Well, with four girls and a mom, my mother, that's just no way. And then I tell you, that barrack wasn't very big. We had just beds all over, and time-wise, my sister, she took care of, helped take care of the little ones. My aunt, she couldn't handle that, and I think she was pregnant at the time. But I didn't have to take care of any of 'em myself, but time-wise, my uncle, it got to a point where my uncle, he wanted everybody to be in bed by six o'clock. Forget it. [Laughs] That was, my mother said, "That's out of the question," even for her. So after, before we really got in a big argument and just... we decided, she said we're gonna move up. "They built some new barracks up there. We're gonna move." So we did, and oh gosh, because time-wise, I mean, he wanted everyone to be, exactly what he says. And he's supposed to be our, like a second dad, but my gosh, six o'clock with all these little ones. Oh gosh. So we moved from 13, and 13 was more in the heart, closer down near administration and everything, but no, 32 was much quieter up there. Yeah, so my grandpa, when he came, came up with Grandma -- that was the end of that first year -- he stayed with us. And then they, what I did was, they were a little bit more lenient, they opened up the barrack a little so we can go between two rooms.

RP: You had a doorway?

MN: A doorway, and our good friend -- this is, I'm sure she's the lady; her husband was the president of Blue Diamond -- she communicated a lot. She was a good customer, but she was more than customer, she was a friend. So she said, "If there's anything you need, let me know," and she'll try to get it up to us. So then, because we had Grandfather, and you know, he can't just, we had very little facilities there, electrical things, so she was able to get one of these big hot plates like, and so we were able to kind of heat water and cook for him a little bit, 'cause he couldn't eat a lot of things. We'd bring things back for him, though, from the mess hall. She, but Mrs. Vant, she helped us a lot, brought, sent things up.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 13>

RP: And you completed your senior year at Manzanar High School?

MN: Yes. First, the first, I had to ask Bo. I said, "Bo, what year did we graduate?" I called him the other day. [Laughs]

RP: Bo Sakaguchi?

MN: Bo Sakaguchi. And so he says, telling me, "We're the first graduating class," he says. He said there was no midterm, and so I says okay. And so we were the first graduating, we graduated. But because we were, we were still restricted with photographs, no photography or anything then, so we didn't have, we have this one picture -- I think maybe Shari showed you -- but we couldn't take any, we didn't have a regular album. We used to call them barristers up at Marshall, but we didn't have that. But we had, like, a folder. But it's alright. We survived.

RP: You didn't have an auditorium to graduate in either.

MN: No. [Laughs]

RP: Where did you graduate?

MN: But you know, but we managed and things worked out alright. And I met a lot of friends, and I went to, as long as the reunions were down here we had, like, just our class reunions, our block reunion, we had it for a couple, three times here, and then they decided they're gonna move to Vegas. That's when I decided no. Because of my allergies and things, I didn't go.

RP: Tell us your feelings and opinions about the quality of the school experience at Manzanar.

MN: The school experience? Well, the teacher we had was, we thought, Janet Goldberg, she was very good, very good.

RP: What was it about her that made --

MN: Showed me about, she was more than a teacher. She wanted to get close to the family, and we did. She did things with us. I understand she was, her father was a doctor or something in Long Beach at the time, single. And there was another teacher, she was alright, Hay, or something, her name was, or something like that. But Janet Goldberg, she did a lot. And then Mr. Frizzell, the music teacher, oh gosh, he just went out of his way for everyone. If there was any drama to be done, he was in there. If there's music to be done, he was, you know? And he really participated and tried to make things pleasant for us.

RP: How did, how did Manzanar High School compare with John Marshall?

MN: John Marshall?

RP: In terms of --

MN: Well, we didn't have to keep changing and changing classes or anything, but compared, I think the teachers were closer to the students at Manzanar. In other words, they wanted to help the students themselves. We had some good teachers up here too. Course, you have to move from class to class. Some were good, some were... but we, yeah, we...

RP: Janet was also involved in journalism too.

MN: Hmm?

RP: She was involved in journalism.

MN: Yes, she was involved in journalism. Very, she was very, what should I say? When she did things, she did it, like from ground up and very, very complete, everything. That was her.

RP: Now, had any of the girls, had Sumi attended college before Manzanar? Or any of the girls have aspirations to go to college, like maybe yourself?

MN: Well, we, at that time we thought, gee, going to college, that was for the men or something. [Laughs] To have to support the family and things, you know. But I went, after I came out I went on to, in between, I went on to business school and took up a little more things like shorthand and things, 'cause I wanted to do a little more. But no, we never really even thought of that. And then we used to, "Gee, college is for rich people." [Laughs] But we didn't too, we didn't even think about it 'cause we had to help at the shop, make a living.

RP: So did you make friends at Manzanar that you still have today?

MN: I've lost contact with some of them, and some of them I was seeing more regularly 'cause we were, by coincidence we were going to the same ballroom dance class, same teacher, different areas though. But I'd, Bo, and I'd see him there. But other than that -- and he's telling me some of the friends are living out in the valley. Well, I don't go out that way, so I don't... but no, most of them are, I think, either gone or, I went to one reunion and as you get older and everything you change. You look different too. But no, I haven't really contacted anyone really recently.

RP: You had this great love of dancing. Did you attend dances at Manzanar?

MN: Yes.

RP: Mess halls?

MN: Oh yeah, that was something that we always looked forward to.

RP: What was that like?

MN: It was fun. Nothing fancy, in the mess hall. They'd clear the tables. And I can't remember how often we had them, but we had the small ones in the mess halls, and that was very nice. We had, like, the Frank Sinatra music. [Laughs] In those days, that was when he was just starting out, I think. But it was, we had records, and certain, the fellows would play the records. We had fun.

RP: You also had a couple very talented vocalists in camp.

MN: Yes, in camp. Mary, Mary was very good. There was another fellow, his name was Takeshi. I don't know if you remember him, Takeshi Yamamoto. We used to call him the Frank Sinatra of Manzanar. His voice was very, very, I mean, he was good in the slower things that Frank Sinatra sang, but he was very good. I don't know, he was a San Pedro fellow, young fellow, quiet. I don't know, I've lost track of him. And I used to ask my brother-in-laws, but they seem to, they weren't too sure what happened to him.

RP: San Pedro or Terminal Island?

MN: Terminal Island.

RP: Yogore.

MN: Yeah, Terminal Island. And there was a fellow, he played, he was a concert pianist. He was very good. Now, I didn't know him at the time that we were in camp. I knew his brother for some reason, but I met him by chance at one of the dances, and we got to talking and found out that he's the brother of the person I knew. And so the musicians, they used to call them Jive Bombers. There's one fellow, I think he was the original, his name was Joe Sakai. Kind of, kind of slick hair and everything. And there was, his name was Shig Ishi, well, they used to hang out together, but they used to, part of the band. And that, when it first started it was just a few, just a, not a whole lot of them, maybe three, four of 'em. I have no idea what happened to him.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 14>

RP: Now, after you graduated you went to work in the camp.

MN: Yes.

RP: And where did you first start working?

MN: I first started at parks and recreation, with Mr. Nielson.

RP: Axel Nielson?

MN: Yes. Very, very nice fellow, Axel Nielson.

RP: And what did you do?

MN: Like secretarial work. Yes, we took care of a lot of the, apparently they'd have to sign in for certain equipment and things, so I think they were maybe about two of us girls there at the time. We took care of things like that.

RP: And was that located down in the administration area?

MN: Yes.

RP: Did you, you had to walk down there?

MN: Yes. But you know, it didn't seem that far, really. But then we used to get a ride too. [Laughs]

RP: It wasn't your husband, was it?

MN: No, it wasn't him. It was this one fellow, he used to be on the surveyors group and have a panel truck, and the trucks have these benches on the side, and so he'd come by and pick us up, take us down to work. And then way home, sometimes coming home, he'd pick us up, bring us home. That was nice when the weather was bad.

RP: Yeah. And then later on you worked for the property, evacuee property?

MN: They called that, yes, Mr. Bromley.

RP: David Bromley.

MN: David Bromley. I don't know if Shari gave you a picture of, I found a picture of him and with Mary Suzuki, and Mary Suzuki was a very good friend of mine. They lived on the same block, and her mom used to kind of make the nice clothes for me now and then. She was a very good seamstress. But Mr. Bromley was very nice.

RP: What did you do?

MN: Like records, help him with the records and everything, keeping. He would have to interview the people and talk to the people first, and then I guess certain people would come in and they want, they had things stored. And so there was this man named Mr. Uyematsu, well, that man owned buildings and things all over. I mean, he had money. But tight little, comes always in a suit and everything, but I hear he was just the most tightest person, like a Mr. Scrooge. [Laughs] But he'd come in and he'd want certain things, and he knew exactly what he wanted and Mr. Bromley would help him.

RP: So you did the paperwork that allowed that to be shipped?

MN: Yes, that's what we did. So we didn't have to handle anything, though, heavy things. We didn't any of that. Just did the paperwork for him. But he was very nice.

RP: Did you come in contact with other administration people?

MN: Let me see know...

RP: Ralph Merritt?

MN: He was very, he talked to you. I mean, he talks, whether he knew who you were, but he was very friendly, cordial to whoever approached him. And there was a lady. Now, I don't know she was, if she was a wife. There was a lady that was always, whenever we saw her... we didn't see too much of the top administrators 'cause they were way on the other side, but all in all, most of the people in the administration, they were very, they were good to us. They were.

RP: And would you, as far as the competency of those people...

MN: I think they were doing their best, trying to make things better for us. Of course, they had to be careful too, of the situation. But person, as a person to person, I mean, never gave 'em any trouble or anything. But the people I've worked with and everything, they were very good. Mr. Bromley, Nielson. He was really, he was always, and his wife would pop in now and then, Mrs. Nielson.

RP: I'm trying to remember her first name. Melba?

MN: Melba, I think. Always dressed up, real dressed up, dressed up, and she'd come in, very friendly lady. I don't know if she had a job or if she just was there because he was there.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 15>

RP: Now, your mother worked in the mess hall.

MN: My mother, yes.

RP: She was a cook.

MN: She worked as a junior cook, right. And she was, she's always, she was a good cook anyway. She did all the cooking. In fact, she used to, to try to save pennies and to make ends meet, she would every year, even at home, make a whole year's supply of strawberry jam and orange marmalade, and we'd have this cooler, ice cooler, I mean a cooler place, and she would just, every year she had to do that. She went to work as a junior cook and get up early in the morning, crack of dawn, when it's just very cold, and walk down in the snow, down to the mess hall. Bundled up, you know. She did.

RP: We haven't heard of too many women cooks in the camp.

MN: She did, and what she did was, she got along with the cook, apparently, but she had to also, some of the boys that were delivering food --

RP: Like Fred Nagai?

MN: Yeah. [Laughs] And my brother-in-law, he would, later became my brother-in-law, Bob Uragami -- he's a Terminal Island fellow -- they were on the food crew. And they would just take a sack of whatever and just throw it into the, on the floor. And from the truck, the truck was open, and I know that they would, so then my mother thought, well this is terrible, because sometimes the bags would break and things would be all over. You have to haul 'em and put 'em where they're supposed to be. So she said, the cook, he didn't know what to do, the main cook, so she says, "I'll go talk to them." And she did. She didn't go after them, but she did talk to them, had a good talking. Well, they, and she offered 'em, she says, "You treat us good, I'll treat you good too. I'll feed you." [Laughs] And so it wasn't gonna cost her anything for the food, but she made sure that they got to eat something good, so they got really, really treated well. Instead of throwing things, they brought things, put 'em where they wanted it. She said no, she wasn't afraid of them San Pedro. They later found out, after we got settled over here, "That was your mother?" And I says yes. [Laughs] "Oh." But living in the, I mean, being in the same camp, you never know where you're gonna end up later.

RP: Where you're gonna end up.

MN: It's a small world. But she worked there, then she went to, some of her -- I don't know if it was her day off or what -- she'd go to knitting class. She always liked, she used to sew. She sewed a lot of our clothes and things. But she went to knitting class, and that was her, irony of that is she is the daughter of, the daughter is now married to Frank Kageyama, the guayule...

RP: Guayule guy.

MN: That's, it was Keiko's mother that was, had the knitting classes. She made how many sweaters for us. It was cold, so she got, we ordered some flannel and so she made robes for us, my mother, and then she knitted, I think, two sweaters each for us, nice boxy sweaters. I still have the sweater that she knit for us. She did.

RP: So was a sewing machine available to...

MN: No, it wasn't available. She, I don't know if we had a sewing machine or not, brought up to us. I think we did, a little tiny one. But she did a lot of hand sewing. And the knitting, well, the yarn, she was able to get it through one of our friends that would, we'd tell her what she needed and then she would send it up to us. So she kept herself busy, 'cause this was her life. She never, she didn't like to just stay put. Even when she came back down here, worked in the fields again and then opened up a flower shop up here on Los Feliz again. But she did meet the San Pedro boys, and she said, "I'm not afraid of them." [Laughs]

RP: Did the, did the appearance of guard towers and barbed wire fence affect you at all emotionally in camp?

MN: Well, you feel kind of closed in or caged in like. We're restricted, in other words. Here, there isn't anything like it. We didn't even have fences between neighbors. But then you see the guards, and as long as we didn't bother them, I mean, they just kind of didn't say anything to us, you know?

<End Segment 15> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 16>

RP: Did you have any opportunity to go outside the fence?

MN: I think we, I think we did sneak out once. But it was parts where people were going, anyway, out there beyond those, near Shepherd's Creek or something. Anyway, there was this nice big place where the water would be coming, gushing down, and then we could find, see little trouts and things in there. But we never caught them, just the outing and we'd come back during the day. But no, we never ventured very far. I think some people did go all the way up to the foothills, but no, we didn't go that far. Just school friends, we'd go.

KP: Can I just interject a quick question? You talked about the cold weather. You were captured in a photograph by Ansel Adams. Can you tell Richard a little bit about that, that you discovered when you were up at Manzanar the last time?

MN: I know, yes, my daughter, she, yes. That was, apparently I was going the Buddhist church there -- we had a church -- and you know, I looked at it and I thought, "No." Then I thought, "Oh, this coat, I wore. This is all we had, warm." It's a green and white tweed coat that, it was the little tiny tweed and it was style at the time, and because nothing really fit me, my mother had that made for me by this lady that used to work up at Bullocks Wilshire Magnin. She was a seamstress there, so she made the clothes for me and so that's why it fit. But I said, "I recognize that coat," I told Shari. [Laughs] But I have no idea what happened to that coat, but I just loved that coat. I think I just wore it until it just wore out. But I had no idea that, when he took the picture he must've been on some high building.

RP: Hiding somewhere.

MN: Somewhere, right. And she blew it up and she said, "Mom, that is you." I said yes. And we took, I know we took, they used to have plastic galoshes that we fit over our shoes at the time, and apparently because boots didn't fit, well, this is what we did to keep our feet kind of dry.

RP: Did you also wear geta?

MN: Geta, when we went to the shower. [Laughs] Because, we'd wear the geta and then in the shower we, this is what we wore inside the showers because we didn't know who was, who, before us. But, and then mainly too, when it snowed we would wear the geta, but by the time we'd go, the snow would be packed so much inside, in between those two little things, my gosh, it would be like this [holds hands up].

RP: Be like walking around with weights on your ankles.

MN: Right. And it rolls because it's not packed.

RP: That could be kind of treacherous.

MN: But we did, we had those getas.

RP: What were your, what was your experience like with the latrines?

MN: Oh my, that was something. Open. They had, bad enough, they had these big sinks, but then when it came to the actual toilets, there's no barrier, no partition or any, just wide open. And then eventually they made little partitions, but no doors. So we'd all try to scramble to the last one. [Laughs]

RP: Do you, did you do anything to adapt to that, that humiliating situation? Or did you know other people that, for instance, folks saying that they waited 'til late at night when nobody was around?

MN: The showers, yes.

RP: Or people came in with blankets and covered other people up with a sheet or something so they...

MN: That, I'm not... but we did wait until late.

RP: To take a shower?

MN: Yes, yes. But other people had the same idea. And luckily there's just women, but these are just block people who are living in the same block.

RP: Was that the most humiliating part of camp life for you?

MN: I think, yes. Yes, very. We're not used, we weren't used to things like that. I think so. Laundry place, well, everybody does laundry. That's different. But going into your own private bathroom, that was hard. Sure, here, when we were living here, we only had one bathroom with five of us living in this house, but then it was, that's different.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 17>

RP: So Sumi worked at the hospital.

MN: She worked as a...

RP: As a lab...

MN: Lab tech, lab technician.

RP: And your other sister --

MN: Rose.

RP: Rose Etsuko.

MN: Etsuko.

RP: -- also worked there as a shift nurse?

MN: She was working as a nurse's aide.

RP: And your other sister?

MN: Hisako, no, she's the one that had the brain damage.

RP: I'm sorry.

MN: So she wasn't able to, we had to, somebody had to more or less be with her all the time. And then my mother finally, it was too hard to always somebody be with her, and we, you know how some children are very, when they find out you're a little bit not as normal as the others, they were starting to tease her and things, and then some of the young fellows, so then my mother decided, well, she, we made arrangements to have her go back to, at the time it was called Spadra, but it's called now, let's see, it's a state hospital and she was there for years, out in Pomona. What's it called now? What's the name of that place? It's right near the college.

Shari: Lanterman.

MN: Lanterman. Lanterman State Hospital.

RP: So she actually left Manzanar and was sent down there?

MN: Yes. Because she, over there she got very good care. In fact, she, we would, when we were living out here we would bring her home sometimes. But we found out that if we let her stay too long she didn't want to go back, but she was intimidated by public, people that didn't understand, and she seemed very happy there. She was there for years and years.

RP: How long was she at, with you in Manzanar before she was moved down to...

MN: Not very long. We tried. I mean, my mother wanted her to be, but it was too hard trying to keep the public from...

RP: Intimidating her.

MN: Right. Because when she got intimidated she got very angry, and we were afraid she'd be hurting someone, 'cause she was strong. And it was only when she was angry, she would pick up something and throw it, or hit someone. So before something might happen... and it wasn't her fault. Physically she's a normal, she was normal, but when you talked to her, it was hard 'cause part of her brain was paralyzed through this illness. And at that time, apparently there was nothing medically that would help her. They, doctors didn't know what happened. So she was, but she was very happy over there at Lanterman. They did, they did a wonderful job. They took care of, good care of her.

RP: Did your personality change as a result of your camp experience? Did you see any changes in how you responded to situations?

MN: I learned to speak up. [Laughs] Really, I learned to speak up. Not, I mean, if I knew I was right or if something was wrong. But other than that, no, we kind of, my mom says keep to yourself, but when you know something is wrong...

RP: So can you give us an example of a situation where you did that?

MN: Well, later, even in, well not in camp as much, we didn't get as much, but I know when we came out and things were said to us, and you know that I had to say, tell 'em what was right because I didn't feel it was right, that they had the wrong impression of us. And we had to be very careful when we went -- Glendale, we just stayed away from Glendale for a long time.

RP: Even when you came out of camp?

MN: Yes. I don't know what it was, something with Glendale that, there were rumors that we weren't very welcome there. Then later I found out there were several friends from Glendale, but I don't know what happened to them. They never went back there.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 18>

RP: Tell me about leaving Manzanar.

MN: Evening?

RP: Leaving. Did you leave as a family, or did you, did somebody come out first?

MN: Okay, my grandfather had already passed away before we were leaving Manzanar.

RP: Passed away in camp?

MN: No, he passed away, he wanted to, he wanted to come back to his own place, and so again, Father Lavery and everything, my mother got help. We were able to, and my uncle did have a car here, in storage, so we were able to arrange for, get the back seat out of the, and transport him down here. And maybe he lasted a couple days or so, about three days, but he knew he was, he came home. And so he went, he was out of camp first, and then my sister was sent to Lanterman. But we came out -- Rose, Etsuko, she came out a little earlier because at the time they said, "If you don't have a place to go, you can't go." Alright, so she was, she went to work for this Mrs. Van Rothenberg -- this is the husband of the Blue Diamond -- she went to work as their housekeeper, companion. And she went out first, and then the rest of us came out as a family, and we said, "We have a place to go, we have a place on, house on the ranch," so this is where we went, live out in the valley there. But I'm not, at the time I'm not much on gardening. I don't know a weed from a plant. [Laughs] I do now. So what I did was I went to work for, where did I go work? I think I first went to work for a doctor, and in the mornings I would do, kind of help around the house and then the afternoons I did the office work for him, helped him. 'Cause he was like a chiropractor, so he had his practice in one of his big rooms, down here on Wilshire, Wilshire and Western, big home there. And then I thought, "Well, that's not much for me." So I decided I'd go back to, I went to school for, I took business courses, and then I went to work for Department of Social Services. But I had, my assignment was downtown, so I had to take the bus from Sunland, get up at five in the morning, get the bus and then barely make it down to work, eight o'clock. That was down... but, and then another, coming home it takes another two hours on the bus. But worked, managed. Then I finally got an assignment to, into Burbank, and that was nice.

[Interruption]

RP: This is tape three of a continuing interview with Miyo Nagai. Miyo, we were just discussing some of your experiences after Manzanar, on returning to the ranch and, quote, normal life again. What kind of transition was it for you to go from Manzanar back into, quote, the real world?

MN: Well, it was a little different. A lot more cautious, you don't feel as free. But we, little by little, we didn't have any big, anyone really upsetting us or anything like that. We just kind of...

RP: You mentioned that you had a caretaker looking after the ranch, who was supposed to look after the ranch. When you returned to the ranch, what condition did you find it in?

MN: Well, he didn't do very much. Some of the furniture was missing, but how can you explain that? [Laughs] We had oak, we didn't have a lot of furniture, but we had solid oak something, and some of the things were gone. He said, "Well, I don't know." He says, "No one else came in here." But we, well, and all he did was look after the ranch, not keep it up or anything. I really don't know what that man did. But he was living on the side of the hill for a long time. Is that, is that his hot tea? Have your hot tea? [Someone hands RP a mug of tea] But the ranch was, I wasn't used to it because being, living out here in the city all the time. But she went in, Sumi, and she worked in the fields, and Rose was, Etsuko was out, right close by off of Los Feliz there in Catalina, she'd work for Mrs. Van. And then, so I decided, well, I better do something else. I mean, I was always used to, sure, I worked in a flower shop, but not on the ranch, picking flowers and things. I didn't know what to do. [Laughs] I think I was more in the way, you know? In fact, when I used to go home on weekends and go visit the family and everything, we'd have family dinner, I had to do, help with the cooking, do the cooking and the dishwashing. That was my job, not the fields. Sunday was not a holiday for us because Monday was market day, so they were picking, out there picking flowers and things. Saturday, yes, but Saturday I had to work. But it was, I managed.

RP: Did you get support from any other individuals or organizations during that time when you were reestablishing yourself? You mentioned a Mrs. Peterson and friends.

MN: Yes, she lived right in the back of, on Los, just one block north of Los Feliz. Very nice lady that, she helped a lot with, even with the showing, when you're trying to get the shop put together. When we came back to the shop, though, I think my mother decided... I know, we lived out in the valley, out in the house there, out in Sun Valley, but we had the shop here on Los Feliz again -- not the same shop, a little tiny shop -- so we would commute. But Mrs. Peterson helped us out a lot. Her husband was a carpenter or painter or something for the studios, motion picture studios.

RP: Other folks that you mentioned, Mr. Thompson, you talked of Ben Anderson.

MN: Dr. Ben, Dr. Ben Anderson, he was a family doctor, and those were the doctors that used to come out rain or shine. If we were sick, they would make house calls. So now if you, in Burbank and, in Burbank, if you see a street Thompson, this is named after Dr. Thompson.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 19>

RP: So you mentioned you got the floral shop going again.

MN: We came out and then she decided, well, she wants to not do the wholesale. We weren't used to... so then she decided she's gonna have this little tiny shop on the corner, so we decided, well okay, we'll start there again. We didn't have a big refrigerator or anything. 'Cause before the shop was huge, and we had a big walk-in refrigerator, about half of this room, that my uncle, they got together and they built it, got it all together. But this time we had a little tiny, but we managed. And so then my sister, my mother decided to open it and so I, what I did was I worked with her because she was, she had gotten married, or she worked on the farm too, but we, I'd take my mother to the market. And normally we can take the regular car, which was like a two-door small Ford, and pack things in there. Well, certain days you have to, like weekends, you have to buy a little more, and if we had special orders, so I'd have to drive the truck that we had. We had a truck which was huge, that was, I think it was called International Harvester or something, big shift. And I thought, oh gosh, no power steering or no power brakes, but anyway, I managed. I had to be very careful, though. [Laughs]

RP: And how long did the flower shop run?

MN: How long, the flower shop over here? It ran through several years. Let's see, Shari and Danny, let's see, they were at the old one. We went back to the, we went back to the first shop that we, original shop, and they were, let's see, Shari was born and Danny was born there, that's back in '53, '56. And then somebody had bought the whole, whole area. Now, there was this, the stipulation of the previous owners that either sell the whole thing or nothing, so they had to tear down everything and so we moved into this little tiny place on the opposite street, opposite corner. But that was okay. And that was after, let's see, '50, 1950, let me see now... she was still small, she's got to be, let's see, got to be about six years old or so.

And then from there, I didn't help here when they opened a shop here 'cause I had a job already. I had, from the Social Services. I did some work at home at night to keep things, extra income and everything, and so I did accounting and things at nighttime. Well, then my friend said, "Why don't you go work for the board?" She said, "There's an opening." And I said, "I can't work part time. I have to be with the children." She says, "No, there's just a few hours a week." So I decided I'd go work for the L.A. Unified, and only when, I worked when they were in school, but when it was vacation, well, then I was out. But I did help when we had weddings and things, and by then, by the time they moved here, people were not having fancy, as fancy things. However, there were some places where they had big openings where they wanted big splashy things, so we'd have to come in, Fred would have to come and help after work. [Laughs] A family thing, worked out.

RP: Yeah.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 20>

RP: How did your experience at Manzanar shape the rest of your life?

MN: You mean Manzanar? Well, I didn't think it was right, but I felt... you know, some people were very bitter about things, how they were treated and everything, but then too, I thought, well, like my mother says, you make the best of what you can. And so it wasn't fun-fun, not with the weather and everything. Oh my, the weather was something over there, dusty and everything, and cold, hot when it was hot. I'm sure you've experienced all that. But there were people that were complaining, but I thought, well, it's over, so what's there to complain about? I can't do anything about it. It wasn't fair. It wasn't really fair. We had every right not to be put in there, but if everyone else was sent there, well, you got to go with the family.

RP: Did your kids take any interest in your camp experiences?

MN: Well, they've never really said too much until fairly recently. And a lot, I mean, I had a few books on it, but they never really visualized what it was gonna be like, what it was actually like. Yes, we went skiing up there, to Mammoth, but by the time we leave in the middle of the, nighttime, Friday night, and come back, we're so tired we're not -- and they didn't have everything set up then either. We said, "Well, that's where the camp was, you know." But until recently, then all of a sudden they decided, well, they start asking us questions, but Fred has always said to me, he said that he's always, and he says that was the best years of his life, because he didn't have the responsibility of helping support the family. I can see that. I didn't have that responsibility. Of course, there's an age difference too. And he was in camp, same camp, but I never, I didn't do the things he did, but I knew a couple of his sisters. Knew his brother. [Laughs] But I mean, I've never related any... so when I did get to meet his family I thought, "Oh, same brother, same sister." And apparently, well, they wouldn't talk about me, no individual person. And I think maybe too because of the age group, that could be.

RP: So just recently you did visit Manzanar.

MN: Yes, the two, one after another, one week, one week. I think it was in March we went.

RP: Originally Fred wasn't, very reluctant about going up there.

MN: At first he said, "No, I don't want to go." So we thought okay. But I told, they wanted to go and I said, "Sure, I'll go." I was curious to see what it's gonna be like. And when we came back and told him, he wanted to go, so they said, "Okay, let's go next Friday again." [Laughs] And we got up early in the morning so we wouldn't have to drive back at night, 'cause there's no lights or anything in the desert. So he went, and I think he felt a little better too, that he saw. And he says, "I can't visualize without the barracks." I said, "But there's a model there." And he says, "I know, but the actual barracks." And I said, "Well, you're just gonna have to visualize." He, it's hard for him to visualize something that's not there. Like when we were adding onto the house, I could see the blueprints and I could visualize it. He says, "No, I can't see that." I thought, well, everyone's different. But he, I says, "That's where, see," I said, "they're honoring block fourteen," I says. [Laughs] And then he thought, "Oh." And we were telling him about the different plans. "Oh." And he wanted to go, so we took him. He was afraid of a long trip, and I said, "No, don't worry. We'll stop here and there." It was a very, it was, and both times we were very, very lucky. The weather was beautiful, we didn't get a windstorm or anything, it wasn't hot. I mean, it was very pleasant. But thanks to you people, we had a, we enjoyed, the trip was really worth going to, even going up to see the monument.

RP: How did that experience affect your kids, from your point of view?

MN: My point of view? Well, they now realize, Danny, they realize what we went through, and Danny says, "You know, that wasn't fair." He says, it makes him angry, he says, "Look at these people. What can they do?" And I says, "Danny, it's past now." He says, "Well that's not right." And I say, "That's right." It did affect them some. He's learned through, as he grew up, he used to, people used to kind of use him and I said to him, "Danny, you have to speak up." And he said, "Okay, okay." And I said, "Don't you take anything from anyone." I said, "If you're right, you speak up." He finally learned in high school. And now he says, "It's not right." You know, and he's a grown person now. But he's realized, he says, "Well that wasn't right." He said, "Look at these innocent people." And I say, "I know." But he says, "What can you do? When there's an order, there's an order."

<End Segment 20> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 21>

RP: What was your reaction to the redress in the 1980s?

MN: That, well, we were happy at least there was something we're getting. A lot of us, not myself as much as my mother, lost a lot. I mean, a lot of people just absolutely nothing. They said that they couldn't even, like Fred said, he said he, they gave away things, furniture and things, he says, and at that time we didn't have a lot of furniture either, but he says that some people just lost everything. And he says, but he says, "At least it helped some." And I said, "You bet it did." Like he bought, what did he buy? He bought a car with it. I said, "Well, I'm holding it." I said -- I'm still holding it -- "Until I get my kitchen done," I says. But I'm not gonna... my sister, Hisako, because Lanterman has been so good to her and taken care of her all the years, my mother used to send money, but we sent it over there for them.

RP: The whole check?

MN: The whole check, right, to Lanterman for taking care. Because we felt they were taking care, good care of her. And she was happy there. That's, there's so many of them, brain damaged -- these are from wealthy families -- they don't even see them. But no, they've taken care of her. So I thought, well, some people thought, "Well, how come you people get..." I says, "You know, if you realized how many people have lost everything, that isn't very much." But it would help, it helps a lot. Think of all those thousands and thousands of people that got... that's all, it adds up to a lot.

RP: Final, final question, if you can maybe share, your mom, your mother raised all you kids, created a business, spoke out, stood down the Terminal Islanders.

MN: [Laughs] Yeah.

RP: Share what you can, what you feel about her, what she made of herself.

MN: She was a strong person. She didn't say too much, but when she did... and she learned how to speak English fluently, and then when they finally said she can go and take the test, study and do it, she said, "Now?" she says, "I don't need that." [Laughs] She wasn't gonna be bothered with it. She said, "I'm just too busy working." She worked and worked and worked. She worked until she was, oh gosh, she held onto the shop until she was eighty-eight, eighty-nine. We gave a big party for her. Eighty-eight is supposed to be a fancy, a special year for the Japanese, but we noticed that she was getting, she couldn't remember things, and I was doing all the business part for her, the checks and things. And, but I noticed that there's some things that she paid cash for, and I says, "Grandma, don't do that. I'll give 'em a check. Just tell 'em to give you the bill." They knew this, she couldn't remember, so they were double, and so then we decided, well, it's time for her to switch over. And being that Sumi was here with her husband and they were doing the work, design work and everything, I only came in when they were really busy busy. So she decided, but it was hard for her to give up the shop. It was. I mean, the name, getting the name off and everything, 'cause you have to change the license and everything. But she was, she made, she made, she gave us a very comfortable living. We weren't living fancy, we didn't have new cars or anything like that, but we're a happy family, healthy. Yeah. But she made sure she did things for people, when she was able to. She gave us all, each daughter, a birthstone. Etsuko has the sapphire, and she had a garnet, and I have an opal. And it's not a little opal either, it's a very... but this is how she was able to, we didn't do a lot of fancy celebrating either, birthdays and things and exchanging, but this was her way of telling us thank you. She was a strong woman. I mean, but oh boy, if she didn't like you, just forget it. Just pass by, just don't say anything. [Laughs] That's how she was. If she likes you, oh my gosh, she would just take the shirt off of her back. This is how she, her only grandson, she just, she just doted over him.

RP: Just for the record, I don't think we mentioned the name of the florist shop. What was the name?

MN: The name of the shop? Tokio Florist. T-O-K-I-O.

RP: Did she come up with that name?

MN: You know, could be. It's been, 'cause there was no other shop by that name. There's Toyo, there's Griffith Park Flower Shop, no, she, and that's what she had up there in Los Feliz for years. Right across from the, well, right across from, it's between Hillhurst and Vermont, almost across from the original Brown Derby that used to be Willard's Chicken House.

RP: Is there anything else you'd like to add, a story that we haven't mentioned or that you think's important?

MN: Add? Let's see, well, I think, not really. We've had, experience-wise now, I mean, it was a good experience for us, really. And we've learned a lot. Hardship or no, I mean, you deal with, "Well, there's other people that are worse off than we are, really." Like my mom said, you work hard and, she says, you'll never starve. And that's true. We don't live fancy, just this is us. [Laughs]

RP: Okay, well Miyo, thank you very much for a great interview.

MN: No, thank you. Thank you very much.

RP: From Kirk and myself and the National Park Service.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.