Densho Digital Archive - Minoru Yamaguchi Interview (denshovh-yminoru

<Begin Segment 15>

KL: And you were saying before we started recording that you'd been to a couple of the camp sites.

MY: Yes.

KL: Could you tell us about those trips?

MY: There was a, organized by one of the travel agencies down in Orange County, and Tom Nose, my friend, the friend, told me about this bus trip, a bus trip that's coming up and he wants to make, join that bus tour. And he asked me, "You want to do it? My wife is," he said, "My wife is gonna go to Japan at that time, so I'm gonna be by myself, so if you want to join with me, we'll just make a pair." Said, "Sure, I'll do that." And with the tour guide and he's very knowledgeable about all the geography to geology to everything, and we started out here and then went to Yosemite first, and he explained all the geologies, how the, all these valley's formations, how it's done, how it happened. And then the same way all the way through, so we went to Reno, from Reno, from Utah, and then all the way to Teton, then come back down to Las Vegas and made a huge circle in two weeks, two week bus tour. I think it was something like four thousand miles or five thousand miles. But anyway --

KL: So in Wyoming --

MY: That was one of the stops.

KL: Manzanar was?

MY: Manzanar, because there was a lot of Japanese Nisei group that had the experience and been in the camp, in Manzanar or even other, I think there, the travel agency's owner, in fact, was in Heart Mountain. He spent his time in Heart Mountain. So that was one of the tour stops. And the, at that time there was, coincided with some type of dedication there, at the Heart Mountain. I think it was...

KL: Did you stop at Heart Mountain on the same trip?

MY: Yes. And then we had that dedication ceremony. There was a senator from that area -- I've forgot his name. Other dignitaries was there, and we had that dedication ceremony. I think it was something to do with soldiers who were there, I mean the boys who were there and went into army.

KL: Do you remember what year this trip was? If you don't it's okay, but I just thought we could...

MY: Let's see, that was after I retired, so that was, it'd be about 2003 or 2004, somewhere around there.

KL: And what was it like to be there with those people who had their family connections?

MY: Well, it was pretty interesting, talking back and forth and asking them questions, how things were. And they're... some of those members who had that experience didn't want to talk about much. They just didn't want to say much about their experience. I don't know why, they don't want to remember the situation or what, but they didn't say much. And I even have a friend that I play golf, and the golfing friend, in Oxnard, he grew up, he spent some time in Manzanar and I asked him about that, says, "Hey, I understand you spent, your family and mom and dad spent some time in Manzanar." And he said, "Yeah," he said, "Yeah, we did, but we were kids. All I remember is we had a lot of fun. I think my parents' situation was different. I know that." He just, he said just that. He didn't want to mention anything else. And he says, "My parents' situation was not different, but we, as the kids, had a lot of fun." That's what he told me. So I think every Japanese people who had that experience, I think the mom and dad had really hard, hardship spending some time there. I was the same way in spending my time in Japan, as a kid growing up. I had a lot of fun playing with the kids.

Of course, now, when we come to the eating stomach full of food, being a farmer as my dad was, I don't remember I was ever hungry. The food that we ate wasn't fancy or anything, but at least we always had a stomach full. We never went hungry. We ate a lot of sweet potatoes, that's for sure. Because he, his mainly produced rice, but the rice that he produced was, most of it was required to sell to the local agricultural co-op, then the government bought those crops to feed the army. That gave my dad some, I mean the farmers, not only my dad but the farmers, rice farmers, gave some cash flow. However, we had to cut down the amount that we ate, so we never ate straight steamed rice, just the rice, like today we eat nothing but rice that's nice, fluffy, sweet rice, I mean, tasty race. But those days, my mom always used maybe thirty or forty percent rice and then mixed sweet potatoes, chop up and dice sweet potatoes and mix it to get the volume so that she didn't have to use up so much rice, because the amount of rice is rationed. We only were able to eat one fifty pound bag full of rice per month or whatever, and then they just kept just the minimum amount. Then the rest went to the ag co-op. well, that gave my dad some cash income to pay for the fertilizer and to buy some other things like medicals or clothes or for us, tuition, school supplies or whatever. But we were a lot different from city people. City people were the ones that had problems. They had money, maybe, some of 'em, they had the materials, but they didn't have food, so they always had to go out somewhere to look for food, every day. So we were a lot different, and then those people had a lot of problems. Like those fishermen, of course they, they'd go out there in their little boat, they'd catch some mackerel or sardines or whatever --

KL: In Japan?

MY: In Japan. But that's all they had to eat, and then they didn't have no soy beans or rice or anything because they didn't have no farm land. So the ladies usually put those, their catch, or husband's catch, sardines or whatever, in a little basket. They will just bring it over to our area, say, "Hey, you want some fish, fresh fish?" So we'd say, "We don't have any money to, we want some, but we don't have any money to buy, buy fish from you." Then those ladies always said, "You know, you don't have to have money." Said, "Well, do you have anything to exchange our fish with your food, or rice or wheat or soy beans or buckwheat," or whatever that my dad grew. So he said, "Okay, we'll give you one kilo of buckwheat, then give me whatever," whatever he want in sardines or whatever. That's how we were able to have fish. So that was barter system that we used. We never, the money never exchanged hands, but then things. Yeah.