<Begin Segment 26>

KM: What school did you enroll in?

YI: Betsy Ross. It's not there anymore.

KL: You've mentioned, I don't know how much of it has been recorded formally, so would you tell us your memories of going to school at Betsy Ross right after internment?

YI: Well, aside from being pushed to the back of the line, I have good memories. I don't remember anything where... in fact, I still see my classmates, we get together, from Betsy Ross, third grade. Yeah, in fact, every year we get together in February, a lot of the classmates that we went to grammar school at Betsy Ross, and then we went all the way through high school together.

KL: And you think that early animosity, the being pushed to the back of the line was in response to World War II and the prejudice?

YI: Yeah, and I think the minority kids had somebody else worse than they were, so they could push me into the back. I felt that was their reason. I didn't sound like it was so much the prejudice, I think it was just finally they could be ahead of me, somebody else would be behind them. That's the way I felt, because they were just... aside from using the bad word, call me.

KL: Did they call you...

YI: Yeah, they called me a "Jap." And that was okay, that was their way of getting what they wanted, but I felt like I made up for it in class, because I was ahead of them, so it was okay.

KL: When did that dynamic shift to be more friendly?

YI: Oh, I just think after you prove yourself in class, and they could see that I wasn't gonna kill them, and I was not the enemy. And all through school, I didn't have any other problems like that. I mean, I went to junior high in Palms.

KM: You went directly into Palms?

YI: I went to Palms. Kazy went to...

KM: Venice, which was a six-year school. We went from seventh to senior. That was a very large campus.

KL: Venice?

KM: Uh-huh. And then they changed it over to, where you were in eighth grade, ninth grade on, was high school.

KL: Did you, in the '50s, or junior high or high school or even college, did you have any thoughts or interactions, intentions around people's different responses to that so-called "loyalty questionnaire?"

KM: We didn't even know about it for a while.

YI: Yeah, we didn't know about it until...

KM: It felt like we were just left out of the loop.

YI: Even the shooting in Manzanar itself, it was just by word of mouth. We never really knew because we're kids...

KM: Unaware kids.

YI: We just knew there was a shooting and somebody did get killed.

KL: Are you talking about during the Manzanar riot in December of '42?

YI: Uh-huh.

KL: Do you remember groups of people going by your barracks, one night that was wilder or anything?

KM: No.

YI: I don't think we were involved. I mean, our block. I don't remember anybody...

KL: When did you become aware that being in Manzanar was a big difference between your experience and people who did not have Japanese ancestry's experience? Was that sort of a gradual thing, or was there a time in college or some time when you realized this was really different?

YI: You know, I had so much fun that I don't recall any... you know what I mean?

KM: Hardship.

YI: Hardship or bad feelings or anything. I mean, my dad did a good job. [Laughs] He wanted us to accept what it was, in Japanese you say, "Shikata ga nai." It means, "it can't be helped, it is what it is." So that was kind of the way... and like my mother said, we were safer to be inside. I know they do the pilgrimage and all those things, but as a child, I don't have any bad feelings of any kind. Yeah, it just isn't there. So I mean, I know it was hard on my parents, I know my father lost everything. But we weren't the only ones.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.