<Begin Segment 17>

KL: Were those patterns evident in Gilroy? Were there some groups of people who were responding as a group, or was it more individual?

AO: I think it was more individual, yeah. There were some instances of drive-by shootings, and one girl was picked up and raped.

KL: Were there -- oh, go ahead.

AO: No. It's kind of hard looking back, because it's a negative in my life, and I've kind of tried to wipe it out.

KL: I appreciate your thinking back on it, and it's an important part of the story, but it's hard even asking the questions, so I'm sure to answer them is difficult. Were there... did people know or have ideas about who the shooters were or who the rapists were?

AO: No. I don't know if they made a very strong effort to determine. And all my classes, I don't remember any real deliberate negative things coming from my classmates.

KL: Did the administrators say anything? I've heard sometimes in big city schools, like the student body would be called together and the principal would say, you know, "We're not going to have any poor treatment," or sometimes teachers ignored it entirely.

AO: No, I don't remember anything being done that way. I always had a good rapport with most of the students that I was most friendly with. And I don't remember other than Squeaky.

KL: Was your group of friends pretty multicultural?

AO: No, I had a lot of Caucasians like Catherine, Charlene, then all the choir members. There were just two Japanese in the choir, Yuko was one of them. Yeah, and some of the, like Ed Mullen was very kind and thoughtful. The people that really mattered to me treated me very well and showed respect.

KL: Ed Mullen was another student?

AO: Uh-huh. I've often wondered what happened to him, because he was, I felt, a good friend.

KL: Did you lose touch with him after you left? Did you communicate with him in camp at all?

AO: No, no, because I had heard that he moved away from Gilroy and I didn't know where he went. He was not the most healthy. There were some others, too, Joey Jasper Johnson was a fun kid, but he moved away from Gilroy. And then what's his name? He became representative to Congress, George Melius, and he was a good friend.

KL: He was a student with you?

AO: Yeah. But he died early.

KL: Those shootings that you mentioned, were they of people's homes or businesses?

AO: Yes, they drove by the homes. Lot of the Japanese kind of lived in similar places, and a lot of it was like sharecroppers, so they just went along and shot.

KL: Do you remember the families whose homes were shot?

AO: No, not all of them. One was my friend's home, Matsumoto. And there were a couple others, but I can't remember.

KL: Were any people hit?

AO: No, nobody was hit, fortunately. I think it was just not intended to kill, but just to warn.

KL: How long did that go on?

AO: There was just, I think, one incident, and there was such an uprising about it, I mean, it became big news, so I think they got scared off.

KL: Do you think that, when you said they got scared off, did people organize to try to protect homes, or did it make the town look bad?

AO: The police then took, were ready to take action, and I guess they realized that this was not good behavior.

KL: Did you see a bigger police presence?

AO: Not really because I stayed home mostly, just went to school and back. I just tried to be as out of sight as possible.

[Interruption]

KL: This is tape three of an interview with Aki Okuno on January 31, 2013. And we were talking about community, how life changed in the wake of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. I wondered what happened to the woman who was raped also in your community.

AO: Yeah, she was okay, but for a long time, she didn't come back to school right away.

KL: She was a high school student?

AO: Yeah, she was a classmate of mine. And I don't, at the time I didn't know what had happened. I had just heard that somebody had come to the house and taken her and kidnapped her, and been, and I didn't hear, but later on somebody told me that they had kidnapped her and she'd been raped and thrown back home.

KL: Who told you she had been kidnapped? Was it other students?

AO: Well, the story, "Did you hear Lucille got..." type of thing.

KL: And you said your response was to kind of lay low, keep out of sight?

AO: Yeah.

KL: Were there other steps people took to try to protect themselves?

AO: I don't know. We just didn't talk about it. Really, everybody pretty much kept their mouth shut.

KL: Did the newspapers change their tone at all? Did you guys read newspapers or subscribe?

AO: Well, no, we didn't. Gilroy had the Gilroy Dispatch, and we didn't subscribe to it. So we weren't aware of editorials or anything like that. Because my mother and father just read the Japanese newspaper that came out of San Francisco.

KL: Did you read that newspaper from San Francisco?

AO: It was in Japanese.

KL: And you spoke some Japanese, but you didn't read?

AO: Well, didn't read that much, and I wasn't that interested in reading a Japanese paper.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.