<Begin Segment 28>

KL: I wondered how... so you were in school. Did you do any activities there, were you part of a choir?

AO: No, just went to school, and then I was working in the kitchen until I graduated.

KL: Were you part of a religious community in camp?

AO: No, I was not.

KL: Was anyone in your family?

AO: No. Well... no, I guess not. I don't think there were regular Buddhist services, and if there were, I wasn't aware of it.

KL: What would you say the mood in the camp was like? Were people kind of camaraderie toward each other, or was it a really tense place?

AO: Yeah, I think everybody made a definite effort to get along, did they best they could. In other words, I guess you've heard of gaman and make the best of the situation that you can't do anything about.

KL: You said there were rumors in Gilroy after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Did rumors, were rumors a part of life in Poston?

AO: If they were, I'm not aware of it. So yes, I think I tended to just make the best of each day and enjoy myself.

KL: Did you have communication with any friends from outside of the camp?

AO: Catherine, little correspondence. I'm not that great of a letter writer, so I think I let her down. But she was kind.

KL: What did her letters mean to you?

AO: I really enjoyed... and it was a feeling of warmth. It's good to have people who were like this that would take the time. And I really appreciated her having worked on our project, because we had just started it when evacuation, and then she turned it in time to get us a good grade.

KL: Were there any kids from that high school who left during their final year? Were there twelfth graders, Japanese American twelfth graders who had to leave?

AO: There might have been, I can't remember exactly what families did move.

KL: And it's interesting you were issued a grade for that project after you left. It sounds like the school kind of finished out your semester, finished out your year administratively.

AO: Yeah. Still, I did get a grade, and I remember thinking the one grade... I got As in all my classes except PE, which kind of frosted me, because I did fine, and I was doing well before. And all the tests that we had, I passed.

KL: When you started high school in Poston it was at the start of eleventh grade then?

AO: Twelfth, my final year.

KL: Oh, okay, so you just had one more year.

AO: Yeah.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.