Densho Digital Archive - George H. Morishita Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

<Begin Segment 19>

KL: That's another, I mean, when you say he was young, that's another question I have even about something as innocuous as a baby, or one person's told me about a barking dog. How were those families, how was that family's relationship with their next door neighbors? Do you think the noise... maybe you don't know, I guess you weren't...

GM: Well, one thing I noticed in our block, and I condemn the government for that, this woman was Nisei but she was married to a Caucasian guy, and he was in the military, and they sent her to camp. I don't know how long they lived in our camp, they weren't there that long. She had two daughters, the younger one was blond, I remember that. And the younger one might have been my age or maybe a year younger, but I used to get angry at them, not to their face, but the mother would try to... and all the Japanese, either they didn't except her, or she just felt bad, she just used to go to mess hall by herself and eat and come back and all that. And I'm sure she was American-born. But I used to hear the daughter sometimes running out of the room, yelling at her, calling her a "Jap," you know. Because maybe she was trying to discipline them and they were blaming her maybe because we were in camp. They might have been living in Massachusetts or something like that, the father was sent overseas, you know. But I understand he was a naval officer or something. And at that time I used to get mad at the girls, calling their mother a "Jap" and all that. But then when I got older I thought, "Damn, that's our government, sending people like..." and then later on when I heard, because I asked the older people all the time, and somebody said that her in-laws, when they found out about her predicament, gave me an arrangement to have her and her daughters live with the in-laws. I don't know where.

KL: Did her daughters have friends in the camp?

GM: I don't recall that at all. They probably were not living in a Japanese neighborhood, you know what I mean, her husband --

KL: But I mean in Block 5, do you feel like the daughters had a social circle, or were they by themselves, too?

GM: I doubt it. I'm not sure if they were there very long. And some older guy I overheard saying that her in-laws, when they found out her predicament, they made arrangement to have her live there. I don't know where that was, could have been Oklahoma, anywhere.

KL: Do you recall their family name by chance?

GM: No, I don't.

KL: You mentioned that that was kind of a division that was even heightened. Were there other factions or groups or identities in camp that were really at odds with each other, maybe even more so after being forced off the West Coast?

GM: Yeah, maybe the older people, like I said, the San Pedro people, they kind of ran the camp. But then things were going on with the older people, I wouldn't know too much, except when I heard something if they talk within my hearing. Or I would ask sometimes, like this lady with her two children, daughters, when they were gone within a short time, I don't know how long, and all of a sudden they moved out. But they were there long enough for me to get kind of upset hearing the daughters yelling at their mother, and then yelling the word, "Jap," "You Jap," and all that. And it wasn't too long, years later, when I thought about it, I said, "The poor kids," geez. Like this one girl, she was blond, and then being put in there.

KL: Yeah, identity's confusing enough as a teenager.

GM: Yeah. Can you imagine what she was going through?