<Begin Segment 14>

KL: Your experiences in so many different places make you kind of interesting to hear from about what you found. So then you went to Camp Ritchie.

RF: Oh, yes, Camp Ritchie. I believe that's now called Camp David, but I'm not sure. The most beautiful Fort that you could ever find, or camp, military camp. Beautiful, majestic, rolling hills, greenery everywhere, it's really a beautiful spot; a lake. And we didn't know why we were going there, but we finally discovered, they brought in some Broadway actors to teach us how to act. And we were saying, "Act? What are we going to do?" So we discovered that our role was perform in front of the military people to teach them how to, Japanese prisoners were going to respond and act. So we were, being Japanese, we were supposed to take the role of the Japanese prisoners who were captured and how they respond to their conquerors. So that was, they brought in actors to teach us how to perform on stage. And I'm not much of an actor.

KL: Probably wasn't what you envisioned when you were inducted into the army either, I would guess.

RF: So I had a hard time trying to be a tragic prisoner of war, Japanese prisoner of war, and I was just, I just could not do it. Just could not do it. So I ended up being a stage hand behind the scenes instead of in front it. Some of the guys could perform pretty well.

KL: Were the actors from Broadway the ones giving them the directions about how to behave?

RF: Oh, yeah.

KL: I wonder if they had been trained. I mean... I just thought that story was so...

RF: Well, teaching people how to act, I guess, is their business. How they knew about...

KL: How they knew about the psyche of the Japanese soldier would be interesting.

RF: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know where that came from. But that lasted only a little while, because before we even finished the conflict in Japan ended.

KL: Before you finished rehearsing even? So you never performed it?

RF: So we never had to perform anywhere. But it was a beautiful experience, it was the nicest place you'd ever be in the military compared to what a lot of the military people who went into conflict went through. We were still stateside.

KL: What did you, what do you remember hearing about the atomic bombs?

RF: Not an awful lot. You didn't hear much at all except for what was on the news. And it was alarming at first, but heard both sides of that. Ended the war a lot sooner than it would have, saving a lot more people than it would have, from that side of the propaganda. The other side of the coin was the story about the devastation. Later on, when I went to Hiroshima was when I really, when it really hit home. But at that time, being in the military and being supportive of whatever America would do, I guess I assumed that it was a necessity, was my short-term conclusion. That's about all I remember. Because my experience at Camp Ritchie was so good, I was able to hitchhike to New York City several times. Fortunately, my parents were at New York City at the time.

KL: How did, when did they leave Manzanar, under what circumstances?

RF: I don't recall what the specific date was, but they left to get employment in New York City as domestics. And they worked for a very famous person, I don't know whether you remember a famous radio commentator, his name was H.V. Kaltenborn, probably the most well-known news commentator during World War II. They were hired to work as his domestics. In fact, on one of my trips to New York City, I stayed there at the Kaltenborns' townhome in New York City.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.