<Begin Segment 14>

KM: My grandmother had sent us dolls...

YI: Girls Day things.

KM: Girls Day things and Boys Day things.

KL: She sent those to Manzanar?

KM: No, before the war.

YI: We had had them, and we took them into camp, because my mother wanted to keep them.

KM: And so he had this white stallion that my grandmother had sent, and that was my brother's, and he had a samurai helmet, and they were really nicely made.

YI: In those times.

KM: And my sister and I got the royal court for Girls Day.

KL: How did you use those in Manzanar?

KM: When we were outside, my father would make us shelves, about two or three tiers. And then he would cover it with red cloth, and then he put the emperor and empress in there.

YI: It was a ceremonial thing, you know, they would be tiered.

KM: Dolls, and they had had miniature bowls and bottles, couple of nice things that my grandmother had saved.

KL: Was that unusual? I mean, most of the stories I hear are of people destroying things like Girls Day dolls and samurai stuff.

KM: They had given some to the Waters, I know the stallion went to the Waters.

YI: We couldn't take a sword. I mean, even at...

KM: No, not the sword, but they took the horse and the helmet. Looked nice.

YI: Yeah, postwar I got one for my son when he was (born), my mother and father (gave it to him), but it wasn't made near as nice, you know, this is postwar, and of course things are not well in Japan either. So you could tell the original one in comparison to something made postwar.

KL: Did you have formal...

KM: Kimonos?

KL: Well, I was gonna ask, like celebrations of Girls Day in Manzanar? Did those holidays persist?

YI: Uh-uh.

KM: I don't think so.

YI: I don't remember. We only celebrated Christmas and New Year's, no Easter, no Halloween, nothing.

KM: We did Easter after camp.

KL: But in camp?

YI: No, we did not have... I remember the Christian families in Independence and those places came and gave us little boxes of candy, and somebody dressed up like Santa, and so we had Christmas candy and an orange or something, do you remember? And that was, and we sang Christmas carols.

KL: You had a Christmas memory that you wrote about.

KM: I got a book of paper dolls?

YI: Oh, from the family?

KM: Coloring book. And you know, children donated to the "poor unfortunate kids in camp." And I tell my mother, "I don't want this, somebody colored in here." "Shh, just say thank you."

YI: It was a used book.

KL: Were the people there, the donors were there or whatever?

KM: No, I don't know if they were there or not... but I never had used, that was...

KL: Did your family exchange family gifts in the camp?

YI: There was no money for gifts.

KM: We exchanged things we made in school.

YI: Oh, I don't remember that. But you know, when you're there, you're a child, this is fun. There was nothing traumatic, nothing to make you unhappy.

KM: Yeah, the kid who colored my book. [Laughs]

YI: Yeah, I just remember it being a fun time. You know that flagpole that sits behind your building in there in Manzanar? We used to roller skate, you know how close we lived, and somebody had skates. But we only had one, because you had to share with whoever had the other one. So you're only going on one skate like a skateboard. And if you're lucky, somebody would give you theirs for a few minutes. And it's funny where that ticket place is, I couldn't see it. I couldn't even hardly reach it when I was there, and now I came back and I walked out there and I looked at it, it's still the original wood, that ticket booth where the window is, I couldn't believe that was the same window. It was kind of nostalgic to see that.

KL: What are your memories of the auditorium building? What were you looking for tickets for?

YI: Movies, we went to see movies.

KM: Yeah, and I remember they had a special program on FDR done.

KL: What was the program?

KM: It was a tribute to Roosevelt, and everybody was welcome to come and join the tribute they had for the man.

KL: Did you go?

KM: Yeah, because we were right there, you know, we just walked over.

YI: For us, that was another place to be, because it was so close, we could just walk.

KM: Then we went to the movies in...

KL: You guys were little, but do you have a feel for how Roosevelt was received in Manzanar, among the Manzanar population?

KM: It was just that he was a good man, but nothing political that I remember. Our parents were apolitical.

YI: Yeah, and I think they chose that rather than to be one side or the other, do you know what I mean? They seemed like they never talked about it, like it didn't exist. And so it made it comfortable for us because we didn't know any better as children. And only after we came out of camp, then you felt the prejudice, or I did, like I said, lining up to go to class and other minorities, really, picking on us.

KM: I never felt picked on.

YI: At Betsy Ross? Lining up to go into class?

KM: Lining up to go into class was the normal way you went to class.

YI: No, but being pushed to the back of the line? You don't remember.

KM: I guess I was pushier.

YI: Well you were bigger than I was. I think because she was bigger than I was, too, she could handle it better. But I just, I didn't care if they were gonna push me back, they were gonna do it. I can't fight.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.