<Begin Segment 23>

KL: Would you tell us about the telegrams that you were showing me earlier that you received in camp?

YI: Oh, from my grandmother? Well, the first one was, she wrote it, my grandmother in Hiroshima? It's from Tokyo. But she lived in Hiroshima, and wanting to know if we were okay, and not to worry about her, she was okay. And then that was through the Red Cross. And we didn't get it right away, somehow it got misdirected. And then the second she replied because my mother had replied to her that we were okay. And in that second one she says that she was glad to hear that everybody was all right. So that was kind of nice to have, for us to have it in the book. I didn't even know about it, did you?

KM: Yeah, because I saw... I had all the documents.

YI: Oh, you had it? She didn't share. [Laughs]

KM: I did, she doesn't remember.

KL: Do you have any memories of the atomic bombs, news of the atomic bombs being dropped?

KM: No, it wasn't... we were that innocent. But once the deed was done, then we knew what it was. But the enormity, the magnitude of the bomb was really hard to comprehend, even as a kid.

YI: Well, even, because my mother's from Hiroshima, you know what I mean? So there was family, there was... I think, some grave sites, I don't know, affected by that.

KL: Do you remember anything about her reaction to the news of those bombs?

KM: No, but I'm sure it was very hard. Because her family was from there. And her aunt, Yamamoto Bachan, she had lost a daughter, but that was not known until later. And then I learned about it when I went to visit her in Japan in the '70s and she told me then. (She told me that I was like her daughter. That she had come back.) But they all survived.

KL: Your family members?

KM: Uh-huh. I guess where their home was, they didn't come down with any cancers or anything like that. But they had members who died, because in a city that size, you're bound to lose some people. And then went to the memorial and saw the thousand cranes, they show you in the museum what it was like, nothing would grow there for a hundred years. And it did grow, came back.

KL: What was that visit like for you, as someone from the United States who has Japanese ancestry also?

KM: It was sad to know that this kind of thing could be created and dropped. But you know, I looked at it from the United States' point of view. But as a wartime thing, it was just enormously bad. Everybody survived anyway, but it would be difficult if you lived there and this happened to you and your family. What could you think? But that's the way the war went, and everybody did the best they could to survive and not hate too much. But I could see where you would be angry and resent such a terrible deed.

YI: The other side is the people that survived Pearl Harbor, you know, you could say the same thing, that how many people, how many lives. So you know, retaliation, that's what it was.

KM: So it was just really sad, like going to Anne Frank house. It was only one girl, but it affected so many people, one evil man, one evil people. But that was my reaction, was golly, so enormous, affecting everybody, my family.

KL: That was, of course, the end of the war. Is there anything you guys wanted to add about Manzanar, or any questions you had about Manzanar before we move to leaving?

[Interruption]

KL: We were talking about the Miyatake portraits, and it sounds like you guys don't have a memory really of Toyo Miyatake?

KM: All I know is we took a lot of family portraits.

YI: Yeah. I think a lot of Block 8 people did take that same shot in front of the mountain, with the mountain in the back.

KL: And you said that was when you had trouble getting your shoelaces tied. Are there any other memories of that portrait shoot or that photography session?

YI: No. I think I didn't have my belt, either, if you look close. Maybe Baachan found it, I don't know.

KM: She always dressed us alike.

YI: Yeah, she wanted us to -- they were different colors, but they were the same pattern, the clothes. If she made clothes, she made 'em the same. But she did knit.

KL: You mentioned sewing classes from Mrs. Ninomiya?

KM: Knitting classes.

KL: Oh, knitting, okay.

KM: I guess my mother thought I would calm down if I could knit. [Laughs] Didn't quite turn out that way.

KL: What are your memories of Mrs. Ninomiya?

KM: She was a nice lady, older lady, and I was telling Sylvia, I think her two daughters were nuns... no, they were the Catholic family, big Catholic family, but I don't think the daughters were nuns. There were nuns in camp.

KL: Do you have memories of the nuns?

KM: No, because I didn't have any interaction, they just were there. I don't know if they were teaching or doing God's work, or what they were doing.

YI: Did they have a Catholic church, too?

KM: They must have. They had Maryknolls, who were missionary-type.

KL: Did you have anything you wanted to bring up about Manzanar that I didn't ask about before we leave that topic?

YI: The hozuki, the little tomatillos.

KL: Oh, yeah, yeah.

YI: I forgot.

KL: Yeah, please do tell about those.

[Interruption]

YI: Well, first of all, this man would come every day about three o'clock after school, and he had this burlap sack. And all of us would line up, and he would hand us one of these... they were not this large. And you take the skin off, and through this little hole here where the stem is, you take a toothpick. Of course, you massaged it 'til it was really soft, and you take a toothpick, without breaking the rim, and you take every one of those seeds out. Now, this is like a two-hour job, and parents loved it because the kids were so good for two hours. Anyway, with a toothpick you labored to take those out, and then when it's hollow, the ones we had were very small, of course, because I'm a small kids, and they were round, totally round. And you would put them in your mouth like this without the seed, and you only have the skin. And you suck air in, and then you press down on it, and it makes a noise like you're passing gas. And it was the thrill of doing all this work. And every night you would set it in a jar of water to preserve so you could use it the next day, because god forbid you've have to go through that two-hour job again. So my mother would have glasses full of these things floating around at night. But it was one of the things that I remember doing in camp.

KL: We need that in the exhibit room, I think. [Laughs]

YI: Yeah, it was fun. Kazy doesn't remember as vividly as I do, but...

KM: It wasn't as much fun.

YI: That man was really... you know, you could see him coming for a long ways, because you're waiting, and everything's open in camp. So it was fun.

KL: Did he make other stops, other deliveries?

YI: I'm sure he did. Because if you ask any of the kids... well, I don't know if they remember, but this was the highlight of the day.

KL: Did he come to your barrack? Where did he drop them off?

YI: No, he came to a central point and then everybody would line up and get theirs. And it has a good feeling to me to go to the market and see this skin, this thing here. I just like looking at it. And now, of course, these are called tomatillos, and everybody has, I guess, their own version.

KL: How would you spell hozuki?

YI: H-O-Z-U-K-I, hozuki?

KM: It would be hodzuki, H-O-D-Z?

YI: No, hozuki. H-O-Z-U-K-I, hozuki. Because you know when you ask people from Japan and they were kids and they did this? They would remember it. I remember Mrs. Matsumoto, Larry's mom, she said, "Oh, we did that, too." So it wasn't like it was just in camp.

KL: So you would preserve them in water.

YI: In water, because otherwise it would get like this. They didn't last forever because eventually that little rim part would break. And if it broke, you didn't get that sound.

KM: No, because the air would leak out.

YI: I think my mother demonstrated it first, she's the one that taught us how to do it.

KM: Yeah, like there's a game using the glass wafers, and we had to draw a line and then click it, and then the one you clicked away, you'd pick it up. Kind of like jacks. And then what other games?

YI: I don't have my list, I can't remember. But this was one of the fun ones, for sure.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.