<Begin Segment 19>

KL: Who else do you... you've mentioned Mr. Iwamasa. Who else do you have strong memories of from Block 8?

YI: Friends. The Takeshitas (from Block 9).

KM: Yamamotos?

YI: Yamasakis.

KM: Yamasakis. They had a lot of kids.

YI: And then the Sumis, but they were not our friend-friends. I mean, I knew them, but...

KM: They were Mom's friends.

YI: Missus was probably my mom's friend, but we didn't see the... we knew who they were, but we weren't real close friends.

KL: Well, they moved to Block 8 from Block 9.

YI: Uh-huh, with the Terminal Island people.

KL: What distinguished Block 8? I mean, if you had to define Block 8 or say what was unique about it or what characterized it, how would you do that?

KM: I don't think there was anything in particular. They had the fish market, they had a general store.

KL: Tell us your memories of those places, what they looked like, what they smelled like, who was there.

KM: They sold M&Ms. I liked M&Ms. And then they had the Nabisco cookie with the marshmallow on it. I'm very food-oriented. [Laughs] They had, they sold Cokes and ice creams there. Like I said, the fish market was there. You could buy your family, if they had money, different kinds of Japanese food. I wish we had more beef.

YI: We did have mochi in camp, because I choked on it. That's my good memory of New Year's Day at the Tayenakas. And I remember my dad having to pull it out of my...

KM: Throat.

YI: Yeah, but I don't know where they made it at. I don't remember them doing...

KM: They made it in the mess hall.

YI: Oh, at the mess hall? And I know that we did have it. That's why I say I remember them celebrating New Year's, 'cause my father would go from house to house with his friend. And so we must have had some foods, Japanese ceremonial foods that you have on New Year's day. But I just remember that when I went -- what you did was they put it in a soup, it's called ozoni, yeah, and they put the mochi in there. Makes it very soft, and if you didn't chew it real good, you could choke on it.

KM: Because it wouldn't break up into pieces.

YI: Very gummy, but it was good.

KL: So people continued that tradition on New Year's in Manzanar? Was that every year?

YI: Uh-huh, we still do it. I'm trying to give it up, but nobody wants to give it up. It's a lot of cooking.

KM: Well, we cut back.

KL: Were the Tayenakas neighbors?

YI: Uh-huh, across the way. But I don't where my dad... where did he know him from? Before the war?

KM: Tayenaka, I'm trying to put the face...

YI: they lived across, not same side that we were on, I remember it was across on the other side.

KM: But not... between barracks.

YI: Yeah, right.

KM: Wasn't he the one who played tennis?

YI: I don't remember.

KM: They played a lot of mahjong, too.

KL: The adults in your area?

KM: Yeah. I guess they had...

YI: Had to kill time, you know, things to do. And go, you know what go is? They played a lot of go.

KL: We've said, another ranger and I have said that we should set up... it's very infrequent that there's a rainy day at Manzanar, but that we should set up a go board and just kind of learn it and have visitors play it or teach us or whatever.

YI: Contribute, yeah. And Hana, the cards, you know.

KL: I don't know Hana. Tell me about that.

YI: Oh, I don't know, because I was a kid, but I liked the cards. They were pretty flowers, hana is "flower," and they had flowers on them.

KM: You matched them.

YI: I don't know how they played.

KM: We used to play.

YI: We did?

KM: Yeah. We learned all the games that --

YI: Marbles, yeah, we got really good at marbles.

KL: Oh, girls played?

YI: Well, you had to if you had a brother. And what else did we do?

KM: We played all those Kick the Can and Hide and Go Seek, that kind of stuff.

KL: You said your mother was a friend of the Sumis?

YI: I think so. Well, I don't know from where in the camp that she would know them. And then the Iidas, that's where they met Terminal Island people. They were kind of, yeah, rough at first, I guess. That was their reputation. And so I don't know, they were just regular people to us. Yeah, I mean, I didn't see anything as a kid. Anyway, that was the fun times.

KM: Terrible to say that about a wartime.

YI: But as a child, because we don't have any political issues...

KL: It sounds like your parents were a real stable force.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.