<Begin Segment 30>

KL: We're back in, I think this is tape number four at this point with the Miyoshi sisters here in 2013. And when we stopped the tape we were talking a little bit about some different camps, and you have a Tule Lake connection possibly, too. Have you talked with other people? I just wanted to continue along those lines a little bit of comparing the different ten WRA camps. Did you have close friends who were in places other than Heart Mountain or Manzanar?

KM: Yeah, my friend Haru, they went there.

KL: To Tule Lake?

KM: To Tule Lake. If I recall, she didn't have anything good to say in particular. But then it's really way out in the countryside.

YI: They all were.

KM: We drove past it in one of our vacations.

KL: What about in modern days or even in any of the years after World War II? Tule Lake is different. Was that ever a part of your consciousness, a difference about Tule Lake?

KM: I knew about it, but I couldn't tell you anything in particular, discussing it.

YI: Originally it was a regular camp, and then they made it a camp for those that chose to go back to Japan. So my (mother's cousin) chose to go back, so he went to Tule Lake, the family.

KM: That and there was that other camp in Texas.

YI: Crystal City? Well, when they went back to Japan, the hardship was far greater than what we were having. At least we had food and something over our head. And my dad being who he was was sending food, I mean, sugar.

KM: He told them not to go.

YI: Yeah, and clothing and stuff like that, and they said that they really appreciated it because they couldn't have survived without some of the help my dad gave them. But we didn't have a lot, you know.

KL: Did they stay in Japan?

YI: They did. They came back eventually.

KM: Keiko was about twenty-something.

YI: But it was difficult for them because they chose to go back and...

KM: My father helped his brothers in Japan, sending food and clothing.

YI: In fact, there's a letter, one of the letters where the brother wrote and said the same thing, they could not have survived without the help, the food. I mean, we didn't have it easy either, my mother was struggling to feed all of us, and here's my dad sending...

KM: "Here's our food, you eat it."

KL: That would make me tense.

YI: That's my dad, that's the way he was.

KM: We weren't starving like these people were, actually not having enough food.

YI: I think we kind of, I don't know, we just kind of grew up, Kazy and I...

KM: Fat, dumb and happy.

YI: Yes, we can't complain. We try to think about...

KM: What is real life?

YI: ...what is hardship? I mean, it was hard, but we didn't know it was hard. You know what I mean? Everybody was struggling at the same time.

KM: There were other people who were well-off, too.

YI: Yeah, I'm sure there were, but for the most part, the people that we knew postwar were struggling the same way we were. So I didn't feel like we were any less or any more than anybody else that went through the camps. I'm sure that... well, Nancy, the Nishis always had, I mean, they didn't want for anything.

KM: She had braces when nobody had braces.

YI: But God gave us straight teeth, you see. Because my mother said we had a full head of hair and teeth, because we couldn't afford anything else, so this was it.

KL: When did your dad's cousin return to the United States?

KM: It was my mother's cousins. They returned in the... Keiko is fifty? Sixty? They came back when she was twenty.

YI: Fifteen?

KM: Fifty.

YI: No, I'm thinking how old was she when she came.

KL: Oh, I meant after, I'm sorry, I meant after the war. You said that that family returned to the United States.

YI: Japan, yeah, and they came back, but I can't remember, was she still high school?

KM: Yeah, she may have been in her senior year or something. She didn't go to high school much longer.

KL: Was that in the 1950s?

KM: No, no, '70s. How old is Frank?

YI: Your brother?

KM: He's four years my junior.

YI: He's two years younger than I am, and I'm going to be seventy-five --

KL: He was born in 1940, so...

KM: She was about the same age is he is.

YI: No, but we're trying to figure out when they came, though, came back. But they're doing real well now.

KL: You said it was difficult for them when they came back.

YI: Yeah, because they had no place to live and they had to, you know, get someplace to live.

KM: This is here or Japan?

YI: Here. And then remember they lived under that house over on Grandview, underneath?

KM: Where the Hiroshiges lived?

YI: No. No, by where the lumberyard is. Anyway, and she was, they had to both work really hard and make it, and they did really well.

KM: He got a good gardening route.

KL: What was her name, your mother's cousin?

KM: He was Sadamu Ueki.

YI: U-E-K-I.

KM: And his wife is Harue.

KL: So it was hard because they had to establish themselves?

YI: Right.

KM: It was hard when they went back to Japan, like have enough food. But he got a job with the Australian army, then he was able to eat. But when they first went back, it was very difficult.

KL: How do you see their kind of responses to their part of Japanese American removal? Are they pretty different than yours?

KM: They must have been, because they answered the question "no-no" on the...

YI: Questionnaire. That was their choice, you know. He felt that he was gonna...

KM: It's like buying confederate war bonds.

YI: I think it's something he regret later. I've never heard him say those words, but because of what he had to put his children and his wife through...

KM: Some people remained embittered until they died.

KL: Well, and I just have heard from people who have those Tule Lake connections that it was difficult, it was difficult even here in the United States.

YI: After they came back?

KL: ...within many communities, within the broader community or smaller Japanese American communities, too, it can be difficult.

YI: I think it was. It was difficult for everybody to some respect. It wasn't always the same degree, but somewhere along the way, I don't think anybody could say they left camp and it was easy. It just wasn't. Even people that had money and a place to go, they still had to reestablish themselves.

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.