<Begin Segment 1>

KL: Just by way of introduction, this is tape one of an interview with George Morishita. I'm Kristen Luetkemeier for the Manzanar oral history project, John Kepford is working the camera, Patricia Biggs, also of the National Park Service, is taking notes, and both of them may chime in at points with questions. Today is August the 6th, 2013, and we're here in the Fremont Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas as part of the Manzanar reunion this year. And before we get started, I just want to formally ask George, do we have your permission to -- I know we sort of talked you into this -- but you're here, we do have your permission to make this conversation happen and record it and make it available to the public?

GM: Yes, of course.

KL: Thank you. I really appreciate your being here. We're going to start off talking some about your parents, and I wondered if you would just sort of briefly introduce us to them, first starting with your mom.

GM: Her name was Toshiyo, her maiden name was Kooro, K-O-O-R-O. I think she was born in 1897, and my dad brought her here just before the 1924 cut off of Japanese immigration.

KL: Where was she from?

GM: Hiroshima, a small village... well, both my parents were from the same village.

KL: Do you know its name?

GM: My father's name?

KL: The name of the village?

GM: Well, it used to be called Miyano, M-I-Y-A-N-O, and the old location was Hiura-mura, H-I-U-R-A, Hiura-mura, but they probably changed it since then. And I think it was Asa-gun, A-S-A G-U-N, and then Hiroshima-ken. I could be wrong, I might have missed something in between. But I know they changed the... the Miyano is still there, but something else.

LK: What did people do who lived in that village? What was it like for work or for sustenance?

GM: You know, when I was in the army in 1952 and I was stationed in Japan, fortunately, I was up in Sendai, the Tohoku area in northern Japan, but I had an older sister who was born in, lived and died in Japan, and I visited her in '52. And at that time, I think, there was only about twenty-five homes. Well, let's see. By that time, I don't think, there weren't too many young people in the village anymore. They were in town working and all that. I did go back in 1967 because in '62, my mother retired. She was a barber, and they supposedly went back to Japan for a two-year visit. By 1967, I realized my dad was extending his stay, and he was going back to his roots. Because he came here in 1906, he served in the Japanese army against the Russians in 1904-'05, I believe.

LK: Did he tell you anything about what that was like?

GM: No, my father didn't tell me anything about... actually, that's a funny story. Because as a kid, boys like to brag about their father was a soldier and all that. And one time when I was fourteen, I got it out of my mom finally, and just as she said, "Yes, he was in the army," my father stepped into the house, and he heard enough, and I could see that he didn't appreciate it. And my mother tried to cover it up and said, "Oh, Papa, I was just telling Georgie that you were so lucky, you got drafted, and the day you got drafted, the war ended." And I thought, "Oh, boy." But when I saw him in Japan in '67 when he was dying, he was telling me all kinds of war stories. That he was real lucky that he lived. And another thing was when the Korean War broke out, he didn't tell me he was in the army, but he tried three, four times telling me, "George, why don't you write to the President and see if you can't get a deferment. Say that you're my only son." And I finally shut him up when I said, "Papa, look. I tell my buddies, 'You want to be in the club, you got to pay your dues.' And if being in the army is part of my dues, okay." So he never said anything until he took a trip to Japan for some reason, and one day I was working at Farmer John's Packing House, I think, and my mom comes to my room and said, "George, this letter's addressed to you." Papa, it was in his room, he never opened it. [Laughs] I remember I yelled, "Mama, I'm supposed to be in the army." It was my draft notice; he hid it.

KL: Do you know what the reason for his resistance was?

GM: Well, no, he was afraid to lose me, I guess. But he didn't tell me at that time he was in the army and he knows what it's like. He told me that years later. But he was trying to see if I can get a deferment, and when I said there's no way, he didn't open the letter, but probably knew what it was. He just kept it. So I ran downtown. I realized years later on that if you're not really trying to get away from the army, they're not going to come after you. And I ran downtown L.A. telling this lady, and I told her the truth, and she said, "Well, when do you want to come in? Do you want to come in Monday?" And I go, "Gosh, everybody gets thirty-day notice." [Laughs] "Can I come in such and such a time?" She said, "Okay." And then I went back to see her and I said, "There's something going on. Can I take another week?" So I went in about two weeks later, after I was supposed to be inducted.

KL: What year was that?

GM: That was in '52, March.

KL: You said your dad told you, toward the end of his life, stories about his war... what kind of memories did he have?

GM: Well, he was telling me... well, he recalls, he said something like, one thing he said was whenever they learned and whenever they saw a Russian airplane flying over, they were spotter planes, he said, "We knew that in about twenty minutes we're going to get bombarded," or something like that. And then another he was saying was he said, "Gee, guys were getting killed left and right of me." He said, "God was with me, I didn't get hit at all." But he was in his... he passed away that year. And I thought, "I'll be darned." But when I was growing up, he once... I guess he was scared being in the United States.

KL: So he was drafted into the military in Japan?

GM: I'm not sure. Because I knew my mom told me he lived as an only son, something like he probably didn't have to go in, but he did. Probably had ideas of getting... I think my mom told me that, how he was able to come here was the money that, mustering out pay or whatever they gave to some of the veterans.

KL: Did you say he was the only son? What do you know about the family he grew up in?

GM: Well, I do know that his parents were quite young, and his father died when he was only about two years old. And his mother, was partly still a teenager, wanted to go back to her village. And back then, the tradition was, or the custom was a young bride or mother like that could take a daughter back where she came from, but not a son. And I found out that Native American, some of the tribes here have some kind of a custom like that, too, 'cause I met a Native American Indian in New Mexico. But anyway...

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 2>

KL: Do you know your paternal grandparents' names?

GM: Yeah, Kooro. I think my father and mother were actually related. And then I was told that his mother couldn't take him, so he was supposed to be raised by his father's family, but there was a Morishita couple in the village, and they could have been relatives, too, distant relatives, so they raised him. And when he was fourteen, I think -- well, when I came back from the army, I said, "Papa," I was just kidding, I said, "Papa, I like Kooro. I think I want to change my name." He just about hit me. And that's when he told me, he said, "Look, I only knew Morishita when I was fourteen. My father was dying, and he told me that if you want to use Kooro, that's okay with me." Then he said, "But George, that's all I know, is Morishita." I said, "I was just kidding you."

KL: Was Morishita his father's name or the family...

GM: Adoptive father.

KL: Adoptive father.

GM: Yeah. Who died when my father was fourteen, and so my father told me, when I came out of the army, that his father, adoptive father, told him that, "If you wish to use Kooro, that's okay."

KL: Did he have contact with his mother, do you know, very much?

GM: Well, he just told me that, when I went to see him in '67, that the few times they talked, he did say that he felt fortunate he had two mothers and all that kind of stuff. But I didn't know he had half brothers and sisters, he never talked about it. And when I was in... the village was out in the boonies, and I still remember my sisters said, "Oh, George, you're coming from Los Angeles." I said, "No, no, no, this is great." But after about three days, all I heard was the river and the frogs, and I said, "Neesan, don't we have any relatives in the city?" 'Cause she told me there were some people in the country. And she said, "Well, Papa." And I go, "Papa? What are you talking about?" And I had two aunts and an uncle and a cousin that were my age.

KL: They were Kooros?

GM: No, they were not Kooros. Because his mother remarried, his natural mother.

KL: And Mr. Morishita just raised your father?

GM: Yeah, Mr. and Mr. Morishita, they had no children of their own, and they raised my father. They just had him.

KL: Do you know their first names, by chance?

GM: No.

KL: What was your father's full name?

GM: Buichi. But I know in Japan when I was over there, a lady that was his age said, "You know, your dad used to go by Takeichi." I guess the Chinese character, you could read it either way. But he said, "I guess after he went to the United States, he changed it to Buichi." But we always knew it was Takeichi.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 3>

KL: What do you know about, same kind of questions for your mother's family, the family that she grew up in? Did she have siblings?

GM: Oh, yeah. She told me that she was the fourteenth generation in that village, that home. And I remember when I came out of the army, I said, "Mama, I know you told me that your mother told you a lot of things, and you used to tell me that when you were a little kids, two of the youngest of the family, all the girls anyway." And she used to tell me she used to look forward to the, when her mother used to take her to her home. And they would leave early in the morning and get there just before it gets dark, and it was supposed to be quite a home. And, in fact, my nephew who was in the marines, years later said, "George, did you ever go visit Grandma's mother's home?" "No." "Wow," he said, "that guy had a parade ground reviewing his troops and all that." But anyway...

KL: Did you say she was one of fourteen children or she was the fourteenth generation?

GM: No, she was the fourteenth generation there. I remember kidding her one time, I said, "Mama, did your mom ever tell you where her people came from before they moved to Miyano?" And she said, "Well, they were on the losing end of a battle." And I thought, I wonder if that was the beginning of the Tokugawa era. And she said, "They were from further west." You know, there's that Japanese-Korean thing. And I said, "You know what? We could be Koreans." I said, "Really?" Am I talking too much?

KL: No, no, you're doing great. You're doing great. This home of your grandparents, was it around Miyano also that she would go to?

GM: No. I'm not sure where it was, further inland. And my nephew said he went. My mom just told me when she was a young girl, she and her mother used to leave in the morning and get there just before sunset. And then she remembers her at the foyer of her grandfather's home with these big jars full of candy. So naturally to her, that was quite a thing.

KL: That's good hospitality for a little kid coming to visit.

GM: You know, Japan was pretty poor. Because I know my mom, yeah, she used to tell me, when my father was here, he didn't bring her right away.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 4>

KL: When did your father come to the United States?

GM: Originally the first time, 1906. He was a lot older than my mother.

KL: Do you know what drew him to this country?

GM: I'm sure like most people, you know, whether they came from Europe or the U.S., the young guys wanted to, for a better life and all that. I think so.

KL: Do you know where he came when he came in?

GM: Well, I just know that when he brought my mom, I understand he took her first to Seattle, but she complained about the weather. And he told her, "Well, there's a place much warmer," and then he brought her down to Los Angeles. Well, he apparently had traveled all along the coast, because he was here quite a while.

KL: When did he bring your mom?

GM: 1924. But they already had two children by that time.

KL: So was he traveling back and forth some?

GM: Yeah. My understanding is when he finally rushed back, I'm sure he was not the only guy that probably knew that they were clamping down here. But when he went back to pick up his family, my oldest brother who died when he was about fifteen, but he was not healthy as a child. And my mother was telling me that the older people said, "You can't take Hiroshi" -- his name was Hiroshi, my oldest brother. "You can't take him, he'll never make it." So not that my mother told me, but I used to tell my friends, I said, "Come on. Immigrants are more loyal Americans than naturally born people here. We take things for granted." And I said, I'm sure that my mom and dad must have thought the U.S. would probably allow them to bring them later on, but I said, it never happened. But anyway --

KL: Who did Hiroshi stay with in Japan?

GM: He and my sister went across to, I think, lived in my mother's home -- it was right across the road -- until a certain age maybe. Because my father built this home in 1924. There was only one road through the Miyano, it's along the riverbank, side of the river. And the Kooro home was on the hillside. And then my father built his home toward the river. And I think my sister and brother might have been living there as soon as they got old enough.

KL: In the meantime, did they have adults who were living with them?

GM: No, I don't think so. Because I do know that when I went to Japan in the army, I was the... yeah, I feel like I was kind of the only one of the siblings that grew up here, born and raised here, that saw my sister as an adult, even though I was only twenty. But I remember when I first saw her and we went to the place to have lunch, and she was all excited, and she said, "How was it to grow up with your sisters and all that?" And I said, "Think fast, George," and I said, "Oh, it was terrible. We fought all the time." And she goes, "Oh, urayamashi," meaning she envied us. I go, "Oh, my god," you know. And then she was showing a picture of her grammar school kids. And at that time, some of the family still were not able to afford a uniform. You know, the Japanese kids all wear uniform, and she was wearing a kimono. I go, "Oh, Neesan, that's a beautiful kimono." She goes, "I didn't want to wear a kimono, but I can't ask my uncle and aunt." And even fighting, she said, "I couldn't fight with my cousin," because they were, she felt obligated like that. I thought, "Oh, my god." I remember that.

KL: What was her name, your sister?

GM: Aiko, A-I-K-O. And she wanted to come here so bad.

KL: Did she have contact with your parents in person ever? Were they able to...

GM: No. Well, my dad went back, and yeah, that was another thing. My mother took us... let's see, Jean, Tosh, Susie and me, and then my mother was pregnant at that time with my youngest sister, this was in 1934. And she took all of us to Japan, and I met my grandmother, her mother. And my oldest sister was there, so we were there for almost a year I understand, then we came back home in '35. And my younger sister was born in '35 and she was probably about five months old or something like that, I was told.

KL: Was she born in Japan?

GM: Yeah. [Laughs]

KL: I wondered.

GM: Yeah. And Reiko, as she got older, she would always remember me. And when the Japanese, in 1942 -- and I was one of the dumb kids, I was ten years old, and I guess I was reading the paper and I said, "Mom," I used to pester her, "we have to go register to go to camp." Now, I mean, I had no idea. So I still remember one day we go down there in the afternoon, and there was two lines, one for aliens and one for citizens. And my two older sisters and I, and my youngest sister Reiko, who was about six years old, and I still remember we told her, "You can't be in line with us, you're not a citizen. We didn't know she was. She didn't know until she was a senior in high school. Reiko told me that when she was going to school, she transferred a lot, and all the different schools, and she would put "place of birth" Los Angeles. And then when she finally was a senior and transferred to Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights, she thought, "What the heck?" and so she wrote "Hiroshima." And the principal called her in, and she got so scared, and he said, "No, no, no, I'm just curious because you had Los Angeles all this time, and now all of a sudden you put Hiroshima." So she says she rushed down to the hall of records to see about becoming a citizen, and that's when she found out, "Well, you are a citizen. Your mother was pregnant in the U.S."

KL: So she was a U.S. citizen by birth?

GM: She was a natural-born, yeah. Because my mother was pregnant before she went to Japan. And we didn't know this. But Reiko...

KL: The WRA didn't know either. They had her down as alien in the records.

GM: No, I don't know if that was on the record or not. But I just remember, and my sister died, Reiko died, he brought that up. And I said, "Reiko," she said, "Yeah, you're the one that told." I said, "Reiko, I was only ten years old, and there was Susie and Tosh." I'm sure Tosh was probably the one that was just trying to be funny. And I remember poor little Reiko, she was so frightened, and we said, "No, you got to go over there." But years later, she blamed me. [Laughs] That was funny.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 5>

KL: You said -- let's back up a little bit. You said your parents came into Seattle and your mom didn't like it, it was too cold. What happened?

GM: Yeah. My understanding is that she complained, and then my mom told me, "Oh, Reiko..." see, when I was in the army, Reiko was the youngest one, the only one at home with them, and my mom shared a lot of stories with her. But anyway, so it could have been Reiko that told me that story, that my mother complained that it was kind of cold and all that. And my dad told her, well, there's a warmer place the he knows of, and brought her to Los Angeles.

KL: Do you think your dad had lived in Los Angeles before?

GM: I believe so, yeah. He ended up as a cook. Not a fancy cook, but I think some other things first. No, go on.

KL: What I was going to ask was if you had a feel for, between he first came here in 1906, and then he returned to bring your mother in 1924. Do you have any sense for how often he traveled back and forth, or where he was during those years?

GM: No.

KL: Do you know when they were actually married?

GM: I just know my mom told me he was married before. Because like I said, my mom was about fourteen years younger than him, he was born in 1883 and she was 1897. But she once told me that he had been married before. But I don't know too much about in between, because she didn't share too much, like I said. My father didn't want her to.

KL: Do you know when Hiroshi was born?

GM: Hiroshi? You know, I always wish I had asked my older sister Tosh and Jean, who had been sent to Japan as a two-year-old. And then when we went over there in '34, she came back with us. Well, let's see. I was born in '31, and Jean was the oldest here, and I think she --

KL: Actually, maybe this is a good time, if you would go through all your siblings kind of in birth order and just tell us their names so we have it straight. You can start with Hiroshi.

GM: Okay, well, Hiroshi was the oldest. And if I go backwards...

KL: Okay, that's fine. Yeah, however it works.

GM: Reiko, the youngest, was in 1935.

KL: Would you spell her name?

GM: R-E-I-K-O, Reiko. And then I was born in '31, then I had a sister, Susie, born in, she was two years older than me so she was twenty-nine. And then there was Tosh, who was three years older than Susie. And then there was Jean, I think she was only one or two years older than Tosh. All of us were born in the U.S. And then Aiko may have been three, four years older than Jean. And then her older brother might have been a few years older than her. I'm not sure. Because I saw a picture of them when they were younger, and she looked like eight years old and he might have been thirteen or something like that.

KL: So you said...

GM: But he died about, well, by the time my mom took us back in '34, he was already, died. So I'm not sure, I always tell people I thought he died about '32 or something like that, '33.

KL: How did that affect your parents or your family?

GM: You know, I don't remember that. I just know that my oldest sister, the one in Japan, she wasn't... I understand she's not unique. She was pretty bitter toward my mom. But I remember that when I was in the army, she said, "You know, when you guys were leaving, you know what Mama said? She just tapped me on my head and said, 'Be a good girl now.'" I said, "Neesan, you have no idea. Mom is, it must have killed her. but she was just that kind of..." I said, I tried to tell her, said, "You know what?" And I told my friends later, I said, I remember when I was, my friends brought me to the airport and my mom, and I was getting ready to go overseas, and my mom got an awful cough when I gave her a hug. And I laughed and I told my buddies, "Hey, my mom cried for the first time." When I was coming out again, a few of the guys that were out of the army brought my mom to LAX to pick me up. And the second time in my life I gave her hug, she coughs, and I said, "Number two, the second time she cried," you know. So I wasn't wrong when I tried to tell my sister that Mom was just that way, I'm sure. But no, she never... I mean, she wanted to come here, I know that. She really wanted to come here. I felt kind of bad in a way because I was a dumb kid.

And when I was over there, one of my aunts, my father's half sister that I didn't know about, and she was pretty progressive for, she was about same age as my mom. And one day she said, "Take your sister to America." I said, "Auntie, she's married." "Oh, the men, good for nothing, they took us to war, look what happened." [Laughs] Well, I finally took her to the American embassy and consulate in Kobe, I think it was. And I remember this guy was showing the priorities. He said, "Priority one," I forgot if it was married to an American or parents are American. And priority two, number two would be one or the other. And then she would fit the third priority. And he gave the understanding that if she's on the waiting list and anybody priority one or two applies, the would bump her. So I said, "Neesan, there's no chance you're going to be able to go." And I come back, I meet a guy my age, except he was an officer, and my wife and his wife are friends, and I met this guy. And we're talking, and when he heard that, he said, "George, you know if you really wanted to bring her, you could have brought her." And that kind of stuck in my head, I go, maybe he's got a point. Because I didn't really... and then when she died, that kind of hit me because my kid sister's, Reiko's in... because my sister was still in her thirties when she died. And she said some of the relatives wrote to Mama saying that there was no medical reason why she died, according to the doctor. In other words, she just didn't want to live anymore and went oh boy, great.

KL: I think people who are modern immigrants recognize things about that story, too.

GM: It's my age.

KL: Was Jean born in Japan?

GM: No. Jean and all the rest of us were born here. Reiko, like I said, my mom was pregnant with her before we went back to Japan. Jean and all of us were American-born citizens.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 6>

KL: What was your name at birth?

GM: Hideyuki, H-I-D-E-Y-U-K-I. And I look back and I think, boy, Papa sure had big hopes. He took that name from... just before the first Tokugawa shogun, I think his name was Ieyasu, and he was still young. And there was this guy who was the head guy, was that Toyotomi Hideyoshi? Something like that. And because he didn't come from the right family, he could not become a shogun, but he's the one that went into Korea and tried to take Korea and all that. My father took the first part of his name, Hide, and the "yuki," I used to tell people, yuki is snow, but also yuki is to move forward, if you write the Chinese character. So I said, man, he had big hopes for me, poor guy. [Laughs] But there was a funny thing about that. In the '30s, I remember the second grade, I raised my hand because I told the teacher my name is Hideyuki. She kept me after school because she told me my name has to be "Hidey-yuki" because of the way it's spelled, honest to god. And years later, I was telling this friend of mine, well, this couple, my wife and I became friends. And the wife, my friend's wife was a schoolteacher, and she got all upset. She's Caucasian and she says, "George, that's terrible." Back then, those times were different. I said, look, during the Cold War time, you didn't see any Polish guy walking around saying, "I'm Polish." I said, I understand during the war, when I came out of camp, at L.A., I went to Central junior high for one semester before they closed it, that's downtown L.A. with the board of education...

KL: What's its name, Century?

GM: It was Central junior high. I think they closed that in '46. Anyway, I met Chinese guys for the first time. One time me and this Chinese kid became... and we would compare notes and we would laugh because I told him, gee, my mom told me one time when she find out I went to Chinatown with this friend of mine, she said, "Oh, no, the Chinese like to get Japanese boys and they cut their throat," and this and that. And this guy started laughing and said, "My mom told me the very same story about don't go down to Japanese town."

KL: That was in junior high school?

GM: Yeah. He said, "George, damn you, just because of you, any time I went downtown, Broadway, I had to put this badge on, 'I'm Chinese.'" And I said, "That's because you joined the wrong side, buddy." [Laughs] We were just junior high school kids. And that's when we were saying, darn it, we're so similar. But because of war that was going on with Japan and China, they became like we have been, real aggressive and this and that.

KL: Were your parents keeping track of news from Japan during the '30s?

GM: You know, I'm really not sure. If they did, they didn't share it with us.

KL: I was curious if you knew anything about their thinking about changes in Japan and increasing the military zone, just what was going on.

GM: Well, you know, my father was typical immigrant. I used to tell my friends, looking back, just like here, back in those days, most of the women stayed home and the guys would go out to work and things, went in the army or whatever, and they got a little bit more worldly, so to speak. And the older generation women in America, they were more [inaudible]. And I said, I have a feeling my dad had no thoughts in his mind that Japan had any chance. I mean, he didn't even think that. But my mom, I still remember, she was a barber, and most of her customer were Mexicans on the other side of the river. And I still remember more than once I heard my mom arguing with a customer, "No, Japan's going to win." "Japan couldn't win, no way Japan could win," this and that. I look back laughing, but my father never said a thing. I figured he knew better. Just like... well, you guys know this. When Commodore Perry opened the doors and all that, and they started to become Westernized, they sent the young future admirals to Annapolis, and then future generals to Germany. And I understand Yamamoto, the head of the Pearl Harbor attack, historically, he knew there was no way. But he had told the War Department, "The first six months, I just tear up the Pacific," that's all he said. Whereas the generals that were in Germany, they had no idea, and they were, I think the army was more accountable. That's my understanding, history-wise.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 7>

KL: Tell us about that neighborhood that you grew up. You mentioned your mom was a barber and she had Mexican customers. What neighborhood in L.A. did you grow up in?

GM: Well, they call that flats. When I was a kid, it was Tortilla Flats, and a little before me it was Russian Flats. It was real interesting. My daughter lives in San Francisco, and her boyfriend, well, they're just like husband and wife, but his great grandfather homesteaded a county north, the Napa, Sonoma area, and he had about three thousand acres and all that. I think the family still has it. And the first time I went there after my first wife died, Thanksgiving I went up there, and one of my Pa's uncle through marriage grew up in L.A., Boyle Heights. And when I came there, he says, "Hey, George," and he was a lot older than me, he's in his nineties now. He said, "Maya tells me that you were from East Boyle Heights." I said, "Well, no, actually, I was born down in Flats," and he got all excited. He said, "My god, I haven't heard that since I lived there. That was a rough Russian neighborhood." I said, "Yeah, there was about ten, fifteen percent Russians when I was growing up there, but it was Mexicans." And then when me and my wife moved to Tucson in '68, we had met this couple, my younger sister-in-law's first boss, who was an engineer for Southern Cal Edison, Mr. Lummis. I don't know if you've ever driven the Pasadena freeway, or what they call the Pasadena...

KL: I don't know either, that's kind of sad. I'm always just following my GPS when I'm down there.

GM: One of these, before I stop off, there's a historical site, historical house, Lummis House, and that's this Mr. Lummis's family. But anyway, they came to Tucson because he had ties in Tucson, too. And then called me and my wife and kids down to the hotel and went out to eat. And one day we're talking and Mr. Lummis says, "I was born near Fifth and Central." I said, "Good god." And he goes, "Hey, George, that was a nice neighborhood then," because he was forty years older than me. Then his wife tells me, "I was born on Utah off of First." I said, "No, no, there's no way you could have been born there." She went, "Well, why not?" I said, "I was born on First off of Utah. There was no white people there." "Well, we moved out when the foreigners started coming in." I said, "Oh, you mean the Mexicans?" And she said, "Mexicans? There were no Mexicans." I go, "Eastern Europeans like Russians? They used to wear those peasant clothes and all that?" She goes, "Yeah, they were from Eastern Europe," it had changed that much. By the '30s it was mostly Mexicans.

KL: Did people mix very much socially?

GM: I don't recall that. But I don't recall any trouble, because I know, I hear this even to this day sometimes, Roosevelt High School, that's where I graduated from. Back then there was... when I went there, there were still a lot of Caucasians or Jewish people, Russian people, and then mostly Mexicans. And then there were some Asians, Japanese and probably Chinese, and then blacks. But everybody that I talked to that went there, they say, "That was a great school." There was never any racial kind of problem stuff like that there.

KL: You know, there's a teacher at Roosevelt High School now who brings a group of students every year to Manzanar. So I'm, that's another thing I'm excited about, having this recorded actually, because they, those students, they met a former student from Roosevelt who had also been at Manzanar, and it was like they had seen Michael Jackson or something, they were just in awe. What was your elementary school's name?

GM: Utah grade school. Yeah, it's still there, I think. In fact, in recent years I took a drive through, I said, "Oh, it had nice housing around there."

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 8>

KL: Who were your friends there? Who'd you hang out with?

GM: Mostly Mexicans, yeah. Because I remember not too many years ago, I reconnected with a friend of mine that I used to hang out with after the war down in Japanese town. And I lived in Tucson at that time and he said, "We'll come eat at a restaurant in Monterey Park." I had no idea where he lived, I understand he lived in the valley. So we got there, and a couple older guys, a little older, came in and they knew him. And one of the guys says, "Hey, Mitchambo," and I went, good god, I haven't hear that. I knew Mits from before the war, I met him at Japanese school just before the war. And the older guy said, "Well, we grew up together in Japanese town before the war." He said, "Where are you from?" I said, "I was born on the other side of the river." "That was Mexican town." I said, "Yeah." [Laughs]

KL: Do you know why your parents settled in that neighborhood? Was that unusual? Were there other Japanese Americans?

GM: No, in fact when I was growing up, I think there was less Japanese than before. There were some, probably more Japanese families, and they moved out as they got a little better off financially, I guess. Yeah, I think so.

KL: Did you learn Spanish growing up at all?

GM: Well, I never thought about it because I'm not good at language, but I definitely must have understood Spanish. Because after the war, I lived in Sawtelle or West L.A. for a couple of weeks, and I met a guy that I knew I met in Manzanar in junior high school. I said, "Ray, do you know how to get to L.A. downtown?" He said, "Yeah, why?" Said, "Let's go see a movie this weekend." So went on the streetcar or whatever it was, and this Mexican guy, couple years older than us, and he kept getting behind us and speaking Spanish. And I expressed confusion and my friend said, "How would you understand him? He's speaking Spanish." I never thought of telling my friends in camp I spoke, I understood Spanish. And I couldn't understand what he was saying until he said the word, it's Mexican slang to say you want to fight, kiere catos, and not all Mexicans could understand that. And he says, "kiere catos," I said, "No." Then in English he goes, "Hey, you're a nice kid?" I said, "Yes, I am." "Okay, boy." Then when he got off the streetcar, my friend says, "See? I told you to." I say, "Yeah, I'm sure." And then one time at the YMCA, our club was down there swimming, and I heard this -- they used to call me Fi-chan. Because, see, the Japanese, if your name is Hideo, they'll say Hi-chan, Masao, Ma-chan, or something like that. And I guess my family used to call me Hi-chan. And when I probably first ventured out, I don't know how old, I must have said my name is Hi-chan. That's the only way I figured out years later. But they used to call me Fi-chan, and in Mexican or Spanish, that's "bottle top." [Laughs] But anyway, when we were teenagers, down at the YMCA, I heard a guy yelling, "Fi-chan," my friends aren't there, they don't know what's going on. And a Mexican guy swimming across the swimming pool, "Hey, Fi-chan," he's a little older and he comes up and he says, "Hey, Fi-chan from Flats, right?" I go, "Yeah." He said, "Don't you remember me?"

KL: And that was after the war?

GM: Oh, yeah, this was about '47, '48. And my friends didn't know what was going on, and I never thought to explain, "Oh, I lived on the other side of the..." It was after the war, I took some of my friends down by the railroad tracks off the First Street Bridge, and a train was coming behind us, "Hey, let's hop on." And one of my friends, I saw his legs swinging underneath, and I said, "You guys never did this before?" He said, "No, of course not." Because I remember when we lived in Tucson, every year we used to come to Los Angeles to visit family. And one time that Santa Ana freeway was packed, and I told my kids who were still in grammar school, "Oh, I'm going to give you a little tour of my neighborhood." And we got off of Indiana Street, and I said, "People don't know this, but east of me, East L.A., that's unincorporated. To my left is the District of L.A., that's Boyle Heights." I said, "You heard of Hollywood?" "Yeah." "Well, that's the District of L.A., it's not a city." Then all of a sudden I said, "Oh, this is Flats where I was born." And then my son, who was about twelve then, he went, "Gee, Dad, what a dump." [Laughs] I said, "Wait a minute. You see those trains? We used to hop on those things."

KL: How far did you ride 'em?

GM: Not very far, we were too young. Just to get a kick of getting on, and then we hop off or something like that. No, we were too young to... and then I tell them, "Do you know I almost drowned in the L.A. River?" They can't believe it, I said, "Yes, I did, almost."

KL: What happened?

GM: Well, it was unpaved then, yet, it wasn't paved. And all the kids were swimming around, and I was with my friend, and I slipped into a little deeper water. It was probably only about four feet or five feet. And I almost strangled my friend trying to save me, then probably a young teenager came behind me and kept pushing. And I tell people that water was dirty. I'd come up for air, I see stuff floating. [Laughs]

KL: Who were your teachers in that school, at Utah Street elementary school? Were they Mexican?

GM: Oh, no, they were Caucasians back then, yeah.

KL: Was there one that you remembered?

GM: I just remember two names. I had a second grade teacher named Mrs. Bean, B-E-A-N, and a fifth grade teacher named Mrs. Parker. That's all I remember.

KL: Why do you think you remember them?

GM: I don't know. Being maybe... I don't know if I got kept back, I got behind one semester, I know, because I remember we had a spelling test, and I cheated. I wrote down here...

KL: That's very big of you to acknowledge. [Laughs]

GM: Probably wrote "cat," "mouse" and all that. And you know, when you're that young, I'm not very bright. And I guess she was calling out the names, and I went, you know. And finally I'm waiting, waiting, waiting, and she's right there. I remember the next semester, one of my friends, Gilbert, "How come I'm in eighth grade," or something like that, "and you're still in...?" Well, you know. Maybe that's why I remember.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

GM: And I think when I was in the fifth grade, I wanted a bike so bad. And my mom took me to a friend's hotel down Wall Street, you know, Wino Junction today, and that hotel there, and I still remember this lady who happened to be one of my sister's piano teacher. She's a Nisei lady, too, and she was telling me, "This one old man, he was a drunk, he stayed here one night, and some kid must have sold this to him, stole the bike and sold it to him. It's probably a stolen bike, so if a police stops you, you found it, okay?" I said, oh, I wanted it so bad, "Of course, of course." And then I painted it, and I didn't realize, I just painted the whole thing black. And then the war started already, so I must have been ten. And I went to the Hollenbeck police station on First Street to get a license. And I remember the cop told me, "Come back Wednesday." And my mom would always ask me if I left the neighborhood, "Where did you go?" When I came home, I said, "I went to the police station. I have to go back Wednesday." She said, "You don't have to go back." And she was trying to explain to me that where we were going, you don't need that. She meant going to the camp. I said, see, I grew up thinking you keep a promise, some older people know, you never break a promise and all, you never stool on your friends and all that. And so I went back there with my young friend. And I'll never forget, this guy scrapes off where the ID number, he goes out in the hallway, whole bunch of clothes in plainclothes come in, I'm ready to faint. [Laughs] They're going through the motions, "Yeah, wow," and all that. And I'm petrified, and then this one plainclothesman, older cop, takes me and my friend into a, like an elevator shaft, but there's no elevator. A bench on one side where two people sit, he sat there, and we're here, and my friend started crying, so then he let him go. And I remember, mainly that's what I remember. This woman that gave me the police... I told the truth. I didn't say I found it. And I remember she was talking to the police sergeant or whatever, explaining, so that was okay. And then when I went back to school, Mrs. Parker said, "Where were you?" And I still remember just blurting out, "Police station," and she looked kind of shocked. So I didn't have a bike.

KL: How long did you have it? Not very long?

GM: I can't remember, but it was great. It was great while I had it.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 10>

KL: Do you have any other memories from before the war started of your life in Flats? Like were you guys part of any community organizations or sports or church or anything?

GM: Well, some of the things I still ask people, I said, you know, they play games like jacks and all that. And I said there was two games that I don't recall anybody remembering, and it must have come from northern Mexico. Because years later, when I moved to Tucson, I met a guy, he was a Mormon, his ancestors were Mormons, and he was telling me that his grandfather, when the Mormon church said polygamy was out, he was one of the few that went to Mexico and all that. So this guy told me he used to go visit his grandfather, and that's when I found out about the Russians in my neighborhood, where they went. He said some of them settled in Mexico so that their children don't become so modernized and all that. Then he told me about... oh my god, I lost track.

KL: His ancestry was Mormon, and there was some connection to...

GM: Yeah, I'm sorry.

KL: No, that's all right.

Off camera: It was about games from Mexico.

GM: Oh, okay. But anyway, yeah, that's right, he's the one that informed me of that also. He said during Pancho Villa's time, a lot of the Mexicans from Sonora -- that's the border state -- wanted to get away from all that turmoil, so they came here. So that's probably why, I look back, all my friends' parents spoke only Spanish. So whenever I... and since my mom was a barber, she wouldn't allow me to bring my friends there, because the barber shop was in front of the living quarters, storefronts. So I used to hang out at all of my friends' houses, and only Spanish we spoke. But anyway, there was two games where we played with bottle tops, milk bottles, and they had the paper cover, and then you soften it up and throw that one down, and if you cover it, it's yours and all that. And then another one was with apricot seeds. And we dry it up, and you could get that from the stores and everything like that. And like jacks, except you have so many shooters and all that. And I said I've never seen anybody play that except for them. And then I also found out that... what do you call those Mexican open food mart?

KL: Like a bodega or something?

GM: Then when you see movies of Mexican towns and that store, vegetable stands, and all kind of... yeah, something like that. Well, anyway, I look back and I told people, I said, you know, I didn't realize it, but there was one in Flats before my time. And when I was a kid sometime in the '30s, well, they cleaned it up eventually, but it was abandoned, and we used to go there sometime just to play and all that. It was only when I saw a movie one time, years later, could have been John Wayne in Mexico, and I go, "I'll be darned, there was one of those things in Flats." But it must have been in the '20s and early '30s, and they abandoned it. Yeah, I remember that.

KL: Were you guys part of a religious community at all?

GM: You mean...

KL: Did you go to a church or a temple?

GM: Oh, well, my family was Buddhist. So yeah, I used to attend church. And for a while in Boyle Heights, Higashi Hongwanji, I think they call it, Mott and First. And then I found, and then, just before the war started, somewhere around there, I ended up in this Hongwanji down First Street. And years later, when I think my younger sister again told me, "Do you know why you transferred?" Because I used to really look forward to praying and you go up and put the ashes in the... you get to show off whatever.

KL: Not as fun as jumping on the train. [Laughs]

GM: Yeah, I was just a kid, yeah. But she said the Boyle Heights church, temple, he had a disagreement with the monk there. I go, "I'll be darned, Papa was hardheaded." So then I ended up down there.

KL: That surprised you, huh?

GM: Then I didn't go to church during the camp days, I know. But after the war, for a while, my father, on Saturday night, I said, "Papa, can I go down there?" "You gonna go to church tomorrow?" and I would say okay. And I used to drive my friends, and that was in the '40s, long hair, noisemaking shoes and all that. And finally my friends wouldn't go with my anymore. And then I finally told my dad -- and I have to give him credit, he was much more broadminded than me. I said, "Papa," I said, "you know, I go to the church, I listen to the bonsan, I mean, the priest, and he talks for about twenty minutes and he leaves." Then they start having a meeting, because they were only young adults, and I'm only fourteen, and I didn't want to go with the kids. And so I said, "Papa, then I'm sitting there for a half hour, and you taught me it'd be rude to walk out." I said, "I don't have to go to church and believe in God, do I?" and this and that. I said, "I'll follow in His ways." And I said, "Okay, can I have dollar?" [Laughs] And one of my sisters caught me and she says, "George, you pull that again," because I was hitting her, too, for a dollar. She said, "I'm gonna tell Papa not to give you a dollar, and I'm not gonna give you any more." I was trying to double dip.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 11>

KL: Did you guys have different roles in your family? You said you had hit your older sister up for money. Would you just kind of go through your family and talk about how people related to each other? Like was your sister the practical one, were you the... that's not a very well-worded question. Like what was your father's role in your family? What responsibilities did he have, or what was his personality toward the family?

GM: Well, he ruled...

KL: We're good.

GM: Oh, okay.

KL: He ruled the family?

GM: Yeah. Most Japanese homes were that way, although I think my mom was probably... I was telling my friends when we were younger, I said, "I still remember my father getting my mother mad." This was before the war, and my mom was throwing dishes at him across the room, and my father was ducking and laughing. I still remember that, I was a little kid, and she must have thrown more than one dish at him. I've never seen that before. They talk about Japanese wives being obedient.

KL: Yeah, she sounds like she had some of her own ideas with those discussions with the customers.

GM: Well, I found out she was the youngest in her family, and yeah, I laugh about two experience I had when I was in Japan. My oldest sister one day, when I was in the army, that is, she was busy so she said, "Oh, Mrs. So and so lives in an old house right next to the [inaudible] house. When I took my son and nephew, fifteen years later it was gone. But anyway, this lady had gone to the U.S. with her husband, and they settled in Washington, they had a family. And back in the '20s, I guess, we influenza that killed a lot of people, I guess, worldwide or something, and the whole family was wiped out and she went back to Japan. One of the things that was great was that when I came home, I was telling my mom, I said, "Mama, you used to get mad at Papa for using those old Hiroshima words that even young Hiroshima people don't understand." And I said, "When I was in the army in Japan, I used to carry a pad, wooden pencil, pen, and I speak to the people, and I said, 'Wait a minute, what was that word you just said?'" and I'd write it down. I said, "When I went to see this lady, I forgot her name now, she said, 'Oh, I'm just going to go get some firewood up in the mountain.' I said, 'I'll go with you,' so we spent about thirty-five minutes together." And I said, "Mama, I understood everything she said." And my mom had a nasty word for her. I said, "Mama, you're just jealous." See, what it was was this lady was a lot older than my mom. My mom must have been a teenager when this lady came back from the U.S. So naturally young men in the village and the surrounding villages want to hear stories about the U.S., and their dream is to come here. So they would come to visit this lady to talk to her and all that. And my mom being a teenager, probably resented her. And I laughed at her and I said, "Mama, you were just jealous." [Laughs]

KL: Did your folks learn English?

GM: My father did. My mom, actually, because my mom, we lived in the Flats area, she spoke Spanish. Because after the war, she opened up a barber shop on the west side of the river. I don't know if there was a White King Soap Company. Hewitt Street, there's a Maryknoll church there on Hewitt Street, we had the hotel there on that street. And I remember one of the early customers, I just happened to be coming home from school or something, and there was a Caucasian guy, he was not a Spanish-speaking person. My mom started to speak Spanish to him, I said, "Mama, he doesn't understand Spanish." And she goes... I said, "We speak English here." And the guy started to laugh, I said, "We were on the other side of the river."

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 12>

KL: So this is tape two, we're continuing on with an interview with George Morishita. And John had a question about how far Miyano was from Hiroshima.

GM: I thought I heard fifteen kilometers or something like that, or fifteen miles. But since the Japanese used kilos, that's what I heard.

KL: When we left off on the first tape, we were talking about your parents' sort of roles within the family. And I was wondering if you would talk, just say a sentence or two about each of the siblings that you grew up with, sort of what people's personalities were like.

GM: Well, the oldest one, Jean, she didn't live with us too long. She was two years old, so I wasn't born yet. And I understand that she was sent to Japan. I heard different stories, but there was the First Street Streetcar running in front of our place, and she used to be playing out on the tracks, and the conductor would bring her and sometimes even tell my mom. So I remember as a kid going out to... my mom had a little rail across the hallway from the bedroom to the front. So anyway, I don't know if that was the reason they sent her there, and then when we came back to the U.S. in '35, by '40 and '41, she moved to San Diego to live with her future husband. And so she didn't live with us that long, just from '45 to about '40... about five, six years. And then she's the one that was raised in Japan, she was sent there when she was about...

KL: Jean?

GM: Yeah, Jean. That's the oldest sister that was raised here.

KL: Oh, I guess I thought that she died early, in 1932?

GM: No.

[Interruption]

KL: Thanks, we're back, and you were going to set me straight on...

GM: Yeah, my oldest brother, I believe he died when I was about two years old, that's what I understand, so that'd be about '33, '34. And my oldest sister in Japan died when she was about thirty-two, but that was in the mid-'50s, I think.

KL: But Jean was sent to Japan?

GM: Jean was sent to Japan when she was about two years old, and then came back with us when my mom took, like I said, two of my older sisters and myself, and my mom was pregnant at that time with my youngest sister. She took us back to Japan in '34, and when we returned, I believe we came back in the latter part of '35, she brought my sister Jean back. But by 1940, Jean moved to San Diego to live with the Iwatas, that's her married name. So I didn't know her too well growing up, although she used to complain, like my oldest sister, that she used to have to babysit us. I remember some good stories with her, though. Like I remember one time in Hollenbeck Park, there's a Hollenbeck Park in Boyle Heights, and I forgot, on Third Street, there used to be a drugstore on this corner. And remember those ice cream sticks, on the end of the stick, something, a prize, you'd get another ice cream. And it was five of us, Jean, Tosh, Susie, me and Reiko, and we're at the park. And with five cents, we ended up with five ice creams. And the last time Jean went in there to get another ice cream, the proprietor, this old Jewish man, I guess, old Russian man, he got mad and he picked it. And that one was blank. [Laughs] So we all could have ate one apiece, but we had to, each bar we got, five of us shared it. But we ended up with five. I'll never forget that. It was funny. We used to talk about that when we got older. But like I said, she moved to San Diego. Then Tosh, she was about five years older than me. And the thing I remember he was that I think she had pretty deadly whooping cough back in the late '20s or something like that, because years later, I realized why she was a baby, so to speak, she didn't have to do house chores and all that. Because my sister Susie, the one right below her, used to have to do a lot of the housework and all that. And then I realized a lot of parents, when they have a child that almost died, they just... because I had a good friend that way, who was, when he was two years old, he almost died of poisoning. He grew up in Needles, California, by the Colorado River, and his mother was telling me that the doctor told the parents that there's no way that he could save the kid. And the father just drove him all the way to L.A. to see a doctor. So when I was growing up, his younger brother became my brother-in-law, who had to do everything. And I thought about, okay, my family, Susie had to do everything, and Tosh was kind of like a real social animal, having fun and all that. Yeah, Tosh was the one that in camp one day, she came home and started yelling at me and my father said, "Why are you getting so mad at..." they didn't call me George then. She said, "Papa, do you know that he thinks that the older guys like to talk to him? Do you know what they call him? Tosh's Mexican kid brother. He talks like a Mexican; he don't talk like Japanese." I was only eleven years old, and I was confused. Yeah, because when I was in the army in Korea one time, the new kid on the block, we were coming out of the mess hall. He looks like you, not like me, but he goes, "Hey, George, you've got an accent." I go, "Come on, look at me." He goes, "No. Spanish?" And when it comes to my other friends, said, "No, you don't sound like a Mexican."

KL: L.A. roots.

GM: But there is a certain, I picked it up, it's interesting, twice in my life. At L.A. City College I met this kid, he was my next door neighbor before the war. He was a little younger than me, and we spent about a half hour talking on the lawn at City College. I went home, and I had just taken a course in voice and diction, and we had to, teacher had us record two minutes and then he would critique us. And when he came to me, he would say, "Well, so-and-so's from Mexico, we got to work on this, so-and-so's from German." And he came to me and the whole class laughed. He said, "George is of Japanese extraction, we got to start from scratch." And then he explained why, and I go, "He's right." He said, the Japanese, it's vulgar to open up your mouth and all this and that, and they don't even hold hands in public. That was back then in the '50s. And then I remember him saying, "You could speak Japanese and understand each other without hardly opening up your mouth." And I said, "He's right." Then my thing was to open my mouth. And it took about I don't know how many weeks before I finally... and the whole class clapped and my jaws were hurting.

[Interruption]

Off camera: Yeah, George, I was wondering, you said that you seem to have picked up a lot of influence from your Mexican friends in L.A. how about your brothers and sisters? Were they also, like, friends with a lot of the Mexicans in the neighborhood, or did they pick up any Spanish? And why were you different?

GM: Well, maybe because boys would go out and play more. Back then, girls were, I don't know... I really don't know. Like I said, my sister, she got very upset with me, and so apparently I used to just play with them all the time, and she may have known some Mexicans. But back in those days, a lot of people stuck to their own ethnic groups and all that socially and all that. Because I don't recall when I was younger seeing any older Japanese guys or gals with other ethnic people. So I don't know if that had anything to do with it. Because I used to spend a lot of time at my friend's, it was funny that way. Like I said, I used to go for those walks in the morning, I remember my friend in Manzanar called me a liar. I still remember, I would try to get someone to go with me, and I did get one of my friends to go with me, but I recall I used to crawl through the front window and walk past their parents' bedroom and they would naturally open their eyes, and then I'd go to my friend's room and he was with his brother sleeping and I'd wake him up. And I don't know how many times he went with me, and he finally told me he didn't want to go with me anymore. And years later I thought, "We don't want to see Fi-chan coming through that window anymore." [Laughs]

KL: That was in L.A. or in Manzanar?

GM: This was in L.A. when we were little kids.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 13>

KL: Let's move then into the, let's get more toward the Manzanar time. I wondered what your memories of December 7, 1942, were, when Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

GM: Oh, you mean that camp riot? '41?

KL: Before, '41. I'm sorry, I said '42? I'm tired. Thank you.

GM: I just remember I went to see a movie in Flats. There used to be a theater down there that was only a nickel for a kid, so I would go there. But anyway, I still remember coming out, and apparently it had already happened. And people, adults outside were talking. And I remember I heard the word "Japan had bombed" and all that, we're at war. And I remember I was a little puzzled, I wasn't too sure. But I didn't feel... I mean, I felt uneasy, as a ten-year-old kid coming out of the... no one said anything to me, but I just heard these Mexican adults speaking about what happened. So it must have been the late afternoon.

KL: Did you think it was real?

GM: No, I had no idea.

KL: What happened when you went home? Did other people know?

GM: I do remember my father... see, my brother-in-law in Japan was, he was a naval officer in the Japanese navy. And sometime in 1940, I tell people I used to tell him that he came from San Francisco, and after they unloaded all the stuff that he brought, his orders was to buy oil, and we had an embargo, and he was stuck in San Francisco, I forgot how many days before he got the order, "Just buy rocks," get the ships to buoyancy and all that. While he was there, he wanted to meet his only brother-in-law, and I was sick, so I couldn't go see him. But I remember two sailors, one's a Japanese man, he must have been a Japanese, from the embassy or something, he had a suit on, he came to visit with my mom and dad. And then two sailors came, Japanese sailors, and they brought pictures of two Japanese warships, and they were my pride. I had 'em in the bedroom, and right after Pearl Harbor, I come home from school, they were gone. My father burned everything in the backyard, and I still remember I went back there and I found a burnt .38 pistol. And I brought it out, I said, "Papa," and he just about freaked out. He just burned everything, including my pictures of those, they were Japanese ships, naturally.

KL: Do you remember other items that he burned besides the pistol and the...

GM: No, it was just probably burnt photos and pictures and all that, I'm sure.

KL: That happened while you were at school, you said?

GM: Yeah, because when I came home, I just saw that pile in the far back of the room, backyard, and smoldering. So he must have done that early in the day.

KL: How was his demeanor that day?

GM: I don't remember hardly anything. He never said anything. I just know that when I read again we had to go register, in our case, I tell people...

KL: Where did you read that? Was it a sign or a letter?

GM: No, it must have been in the Adelaide Times or the Examiner or whatever paper my mom used to get for their customers, because my parents didn't read...

KL: They didn't really read the papers?

GM: I don't think my mom did. But I remember it was an English paper, and I was pestering them. And we went down to register, and I remember it came out late, late in the afternoon. Next morning, we were ready to get on the train, so that afternoon and evening, my mom and dad were selling things on the sidewalk and all that. And then in camp, there was at least a few times I got used to it, I knew it was coming. My mom would be sitting there looking a little bit depressed, and I said, "I knew it was going to come, it's all your fault." Then we had to rush and go to camp so fast, you know. Because I had pestered them and said, "You got to go register," and all that. And they just had to fill the train, I guess, and it was just timing. And not everybody has to go through that. In years later I used to laugh about it, but I used to tell my friends, "I remember my mom, it was coming, and we were all sitting there, Papa and me," and then she started to think about... I remember that was kind of funny.

KL: How did you respond to that?

GM: Well, anyway, they wouldn't punish me or anything like that, but my father would never say anything like that, but my mom would say it. And I just, well, you know... yeah, my mom, she was quite a disciplinarian with me. I used to tell my friends, "Hey, you guys think the only son ahead of me, you're nuts." [Laughs]

KL: What was her mood like that evening of packing?

GM: You know, I just know that they were rushing, rushing, and I kind of vaguely remember the people walking by, trying to... "give me a nickel for it, Mama," and something like that, she said, "No, no, twenty-five cents or whatever." And then she was getting rid of some of the [inaudible]. But, to my surprise, she was later, somebody must have made arrangements because her barber equipment was brought to Manzanar sometime late. And for I don't know how many times, I caught it sometimes where a representative from the camp barbershop would try to come and encourage her to come down there and work with them, and probably was saying, "What for? I could do it right here." And my dad put a wire with a partition, and part of it was her barbershop so we don't interfere with her customers. She had one of the chairs there.

KL: Wow. I want to hear more about that, but not quite yet. But I want to hear those details. That's really...

GM: Yeah, I should have wrote that into her.

KL: Yeah, you know, we're working on exhibits for the two barracks buildings right now, and so people's descriptions of what their apartments were like are really of interest to us right now as we plan that. So you guys had, who were the people who came to the sale? Were they neighbors?

GM: Oh, you mean before the war?

KL: Yeah, they were selling your items.

GM: It was just people that lived there, I guess. Mostly men, it was the Mexican men. Like I say, when I was growing up there, it was predominately Mexicans, there were Russians living there, but they kept to themselves. Because I had a friend in school, John... I can't remember the last name. And years later, I found out from my kid sister that this guy's younger sister was my sister's good friend in school. But neither one of us ever played with them after school. The Russian people wouldn't allow their kids to go out and play, at least when I was growing up. Now the Mexican population was the majority, and at one time, maybe twenty years before my time, the Russians. And before that it was just regular Anglos.

KL: You said you registered on a Wednesday, your mom registered... did your mom register the family?

GM: No, we all went. We all had to go, everybody had to go. But I just remember leaving, and then the very next morning...

KL: Did you pack things, or did your parents do all the arrangements?

GM: No, I don't remember doing any of those things.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 14>

KL: Where did you gather on Thursday? Tell us what that was like?

GM: I can hardly... I just remember the L.A. River, the railroad tracks by First Street Bridge, near there. But I do remember... well, we were just kids. Because I remember my kid sister, she wants to learn about the valley, Death Valley and all that, and I remember, I told her years later, I said, "You were so scared to go to camp, and I tried to comfort you by telling you that, 'Death Valley, because of the mountain ranges are so far apart and there's a lot of time for the sun to beam down. But Owens Valley, the mountains are closer.'" I still kind of remember making that story up.

KL: Were you making it up?

GM: Oh, of course. I had no idea, but I was a good storyteller, I guess.

KL: Was it Reiko who was scared?

GM: Yeah. She was only six years old at that time, I was about ten.

KL: But that's interesting that she knew something about where you were going, the geography.

GM: Well, yeah, because Reiko, academically, she was only two years behind me before the war. And then in camp, she told me later on that the teacher said, "You can't be in the third grade," so they put her back a little bit.

KL: Was it a building or anything that you gathered at, or it was a parking lot? You said it was the First Street Bridge railroad tracks where you departed for Manzanar?

GM: No, we just were taken... because we lived real close to the railroad. If you know L.A., the bridge, First Street Bridge, and then you go over there, and then we were only past, I think it's Mission Road and Henderson, I'm not sure.

KL: How did you get to Manzanar?

GM: On the train.

KL: So you just walked to the station?

GM: As far as I know. I think this Mexican man, Rodriguez, they had a moving van. I mean, I didn't know at that time, but after the war, I used to drive down First. I never stopped, I should have stopped there. And Rodriguez Moving, you know, that family was one of the families I used to spend a lot of time with. But I remember him using his truck and taking us, because I remember I had a toy that I said, "Give this to Richard," I don't know what it was, a baseball bat or something. I remember that.

KL: Was Richard a Rodriguez?

GM: Yeah. And I saw Richard one time when I was a teenager, but I thought I'd better not embarrass him. He was pachuco-like, and I was at the, one of the, International Institute on Boyle Avenue where they have dances and all that kind of stuff. I was there one day after school, and I saw Richard for the first time, I was about sixteen. But he looked like, he had a hat on, a topcoat, and he was with all the Mexican guys. I thought I might embarrass him if I said, "Hey, Richard." But I recognized him. Because he was about my age, or maybe just a year older than me, and I used to hang out with him and his friends, brothers.

Off camera: So I'm curious, because a lot of people have said they didn't know where they were going when they got on the train. But you knew you were going to Manzanar?

GM: No, I didn't know I was going to Manzanar, but I just knew that we were going someplace.

Off camera: So the story you told Reiko was after you got there, you knew you were in the Owens Valley.

GM: No, it was before we went, I remember one day she was so scared, because I guess in class she learned about Death Valley and all that. And I still remember, she was so scared, and she said, "We're going to die," and all that, "from the sun and all that."

KL: Did you think you were going to Death Valley?

GM: No, that's what she thought, she was going to a valley. I guess we must have, maybe we heard we were going to a valley, or maybe one of the older sisters may have mentioned it.

KL: Or that it was a desert.

GM: Something like that. And I still remember she was saying we're gonna die because of Death Valley or something like that. And I said, "No, no, Death Valley is special. The mountains are further apart, and that's why they call it Death Valley," and all that.

Off camera: That was sweet of you to reassure her.

GM: But she only remembers the things like, you know, I said, "You got to go with the aliens."

KL: Yeah, right. Were there people gathered there to see you off? Did Mr. Rodriguez stick around?

GM: You know, I don't remember none of that, because...

KL: What about the train ride itself? What do you recall of that? Had you been on a train before?

GM: I don't recall. I might have been, maybe in Japan or something like that. But I don't remember too much. I just remember when we went through a tunnel, like a dummy, I thought, "Oh, my god, I got to get air." And I went to the crack of the window, took all that, inhaled all that exhaust. That I remember.

KL: Do you remember any of the passing scenes or anything?

GM: No, I don't remember anything.

KL: Was the train full, or was there lots of space?

GM: I don't think I roamed around, I don't remember doing that. I just know, next thing we know, we're at Manzanar, and then...

KL: Do you recall getting from the train station to Manzanar, how that happened?

GM: I can't remember too well, but I just remember those mattresses, kind of round, stuffed like that, and then army cots like. And at that time I was telling people... it wasn't permanent, but there were potholes on the floor. And then later on, I remember the workers came in and got the end of the tin can, covered the holes up, and before they put the linoleum, then they put plasterboard on the side and on the ceiling.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 15>

KL: When did you guys arrive in Manzanar?

GM: April 2nd, '42.

KL: What are your early memories of the camp? Like if you stood outside the barracks and looked around...

GM: It was real dusty. But the Sierra Nevadas were, you know, it was quite a spectacular... living there all the time, I couldn't live where there's no mountains. The west side of our country has mountains everywhere. I always look forward to that. When I moved here, I was telling my friend in Tucson, I said, "Hey, Bob, how high is Mt. Linden?" I know it's only nine thousand one hundred something feet. And he's into those kind of things. And I go, "Hey, there's a Mt. Charleston over here that's almost twelve thousand."

KL: Was that the first time you had really been around mountains was in Manzanar?

GM: Well, in L.A. there was, I guess, the San Gabriel Mountains, but I don't remember that too much. But yeah, I don't know if I ever mentioned, but there was one thing that I told... the first time I was going to Manzanar, I thought I'd call the Pacific Citizen and get some information. And they connected me to one of the assistant editors, and she told me what to do and all that. Then I told her something. I said, "You know, one time me and at least two of my friends, we went toward the Alabama Hills rather than the Sierra Nevadas, and we came across two rows of burnt vehicles." And I said... my friend Eddie, who was a little bit more grown up than me, and he figured, okay, that must have been owned by the Japanese that volunteered to start building the barracks and all that. So when I mentioned this, she said, remember you had the head of the Park Service there? Was it Frank?

Off camera: Frank Hayes.

GM: Yeah, something like that. And she said, "Oh, gee, you know, Frank so and so would be really interested in that." I said, "Oh, come on, come on." Think about it. L.A. took the water away from Owens Valley way back in the early 1900s, so there was a lot of bad feelings toward the government and L.A. The dumb guys, they should have donated that to the valley people and said, "Hey, look, this belonged to the dam, Jackson or whatever, you guys could have it." But no, out of anger, they just burnt it like a fool. So trust me, they probably buried it. So when I came to Manzanar that year, and the community center was not finished yet, and it was Frank I saw, and I wanted to ask if I could walk with my daughter and niece and see if I could find more [inaudible]. And then I told him who I was, and he goes, "Oh, yeah, they told me about it, and I met one of the guys that lived here before the war, rancher in Manzanar." Manzanar was a community before, it was an apple orchard, I guess. And he said, "Yeah, this guy said that they buried it," I said, "Well, that's what I was telling so and so." But that was kind of, I thought...

KL: Were you aware of that background between Los Angeles and the Owens Valley when you were a kid at Manzanar?

GM: No, not when I was a kid. But as I got older and I thought, "What a dumb thing, that they did burn it."

KL: Where were those cars?

GM: Not far from Manzanar, going toward the Alabama Hills. We couldn't see it from camp, I don't know how many miles out there. But it was closer to camp than Alabama Hills, if I recall. But there was two rows, they were all burnt, I remember that.

KL: When was that, that trip?

GM: That would have been about... probably about '44. I don't know if it was early '45. Because Eddie and I and they were two years older than me. And I remember we went up to the top of the Alabama Hills, and I still remember not a plant on that hill, just all lava rocks. Got to the top, and on the other side was a shack like they do silver mining or something. And right on this one rock was, with cement thing, warning, private property and all that. And there was gonna be jail term or fine. And we said, oh, my god, you know. And so the three of us started going down the hill, and that was my most fantastic... I said, you see these movies where guys fly, and birds and all that? It was great. I aimed for open space, and I'm leaping like a deer, you know. And one of my friends, Shuichi, stumbled, and I just was able to look back find where, he was way back. I said, but I'll never forget what a wonderful feeling that was, just flying down like that. I don't know how high the mountains are, couple of thousand feet? Are they even a thousand feet above the valley there?

KL: Yeah, I don't know. I would guess they're a couple hundred.

GM: Oh, okay.

KL: Several hundred, that close, but I don't know where you were either.

GM: Then we went to this ranch, there was an abandoned house there, and I still remember there were some horses there. And I was dumb guy, I got on top of the rail, and I had my friends spook the horses and I was trying to hop on them. Years later, I thought, "Yeah, sure, I would have got killed." But the horses were smarter than me, and every time they came by me, they'd veer away.

KL: "We don't want that guy on us."

GM: They just veer away from me, I remember that. Nobody was there.

KL: Was that the same trip, or did you go a couple times?

GM: Yeah, the same trip that time. We came across this abandoned ranch, because I saw the nails were triangular, and someone said, "Oh, yeah, that's the way they used to make nails back in the old days."

KL: Who were the guys you were with?

GM: Well, two of them I remember, Eddie Uyeda, he passed away some years ago from cancer. And the other guy was Shuichi, S-H-U-I-C-H-I, Watanabe, W-A-T-A-N-A-B-A, nabe, N-A-B-E. Those are the only two, I remember the three of us went up there, and I don't know if there were any more guys below, or if it was just the three of us. But Eddie was the leader. He was more smarter than me, mature, you know. I kind of remember, that was the first and only time I remember ever going toward the Alabama Hills. Most of the time guys would go... we used go to that Shepherd's Creek for swimming.

KL: When you went to the Alabama Hills, you said it was probably in '44 or '45.

GM: Somewhere around there.

KL: Did you get permission?

GM: Oh, no, we just went underneath the barbed wire fence. Because the thing was, we did go out with a pass sometimes, but I kind of remember, if we wanted to get lunch made or something like that, the mess hall, then there was the one gate facing the Sierra Nevadas, would that be on the west side of the valley? And you had to come back there by a certain time. So that restricted where we want to go and when we had to come back. So most of the time, we just used to go underneath the fence.

KL: Was there a sense of danger as part of that, or were you worried?

GM: Well, there was no more soldiers around, no guards. Because I remember we went up to one of the towers.

KL: You did?

GM: Yeah, but it was abandoned at that time. When I first moved there, they had sentries, naturally. I don't know how long they walked. And the guard towers, like Block 5 was at the end of the camp, and there was Bairs Creek there. And they used to have picnics, some of the people there. And I still remember one night, I was running back to my apartment to get something, and these guards were having a good time with me. They had the spotlight on me and I was darting from one bush to another, I was scared, hiding. And then later on as I got older, I said, "They probably had a ball." [Laughs]

KL: Did they say anything to you?

GM: No, I couldn't... they spotted me. And I was playing along. I wasn't playing with them, I was trying to hide from them. But then when i got a little older, I thought, "Oh, those guys had a good time."

KL: How did you think, what were your thoughts about them? If you saw them, how did you react?

GM: But I know... I was telling my friend, I said, "I still remember, I do remember the guards walking on the road, they were pretty young. And one time, one of the adults, the older Nisei guy, complaining to his friends, "Goddamn government, sending these young kids, probably scared as hell, and they probably shoot," you know. He said something, some crack about, "They're not even mature yet," or something like that. And he said, "The government's sending these guys like that here." I still remember one of the older guys making that comment.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 16>

KL: There actually was a shooting pretty early in Manzanar. So you have recollections of that?

GM: Yeah, that, I was telling one of my friends, too, that I think the father was an artisan, he used to cave, make things out of these wood, driftwoods and all that. And his son supposedly went underneath the barbed wire to get some material for his father, that's what I understood. No, that wasn't it?

KL: Well, that could be the same story.

GM: He went out to get some wood and all that, this was not that riot kind of thing.

KL: No, this was early.

Off camera: No, no, it was, according to Hikoji Takeuchi, they didn't have the fence up yet, and his father had passed away two years earlier. So it might be another story that I'm not familiar with, though.

KL: When do you remember hearing that story?

GM: I didn't realize it was two years... yeah. But I just remember hearing something about a guy getting, he was a teenager or something. Was that right, a teenager?

KL: Yeah, the guy who was shot was a young man.

GM: And the story I heard was he went beyond the fence to get some driftwood or something like that for his father. That could have been a made up story.

Off camera: Well, it's interesting because there's enough, I mean, that is pretty close to accurate, but it's just changed a little bit. So it's probably the same incident.

GM: But the guy wasn't trying to run away or anything like that?

Off camera: No. He was trying to get lumber to make his mother some furniture.

GM: Oh, okay.

Off camera: But the important part of that is that your memory of it is based on something. So your memory is actually important.

Off camera: Yes, yes.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 17>

KL: So you, it sounds like you do have some memories of the riot.

GM: Little bit of the riot. I just know there was a moving going, outdoor movie party. The riot was down by the gate area, Block 1, right? We lived in Block 5 over here. Somewhere over here must have been where they were showing the movie. And we kids were heading toward it, and I just remember people just running diagonally from our path. And then later we heard about, I don't know if it was after we came out of the movie or what, we heard what happened. I didn't know the story as a kid, naturally. It wasn't until years later I read what happened and all that.

KL: Where was the movie that you saw?

GM: I can't remember that.

KL: Was it outside, or was in the rec hall?

GM: Oh, it might have been in one of the barracks, yeah. I know that sometimes they had movies. Like early on, I remember the San Pedro people, they kind of dominated.

KL: What was your take on that?

GM: I was too young, but I find it funny... well, my own experience was that one time there was a movie down in Block 8 or somewhere, and they had a stack of hay, and they had a shade in front, but it was still light yet. And my friend Eddie this guy that led me up in the Alabama Hills, he and I were up on top and we started wrestling with some of the other kids. And we were having fun, and we were trying to get more guys to help us. And the kids are running, and we're yelling, "Come on, come on," and they were all pulling us off. And later I found out they were all San Pedro kids. [Laughs] They all knew each other. But so I myself, I know the older people like my sister Tosh, she graduated from Manzanar High and Bainbridge, Block 3, those people, I understand some of them were moved out of there for their own safety and all that. And Tosh told me years later that she remembers one time New Year's, Christmas, they had a party at the mess hall, Block 3, and tablecloth, candles, and all that. And two or three of the San Pedro guys, they were drunk, supposedly drunk. And they got one of the Bainbridge guys tied on to one of the pillars, and then they proceeded to belt whip them and they knocked over the tables with the tablecloth and all that. I thought, oh, no wonder, after the war, and I was a teenager, and never was involved. How many times guys from L.A. used to go to Long Beach because a lot of the San Pedro people settled over there, and they used to go after certain ones that maybe...

KL: Oh, really?

GM: Yeah. I never was, I just never happened to go. I had friends that, when we were still young, they didn't get involved, but they were down there and that happened.

KL: Did you have friends from Bainbridge Island from Block 3?

GM: No, I don't think I knew anybody from Block 3. My sister did, but because she was a teenager.

KL: Where were your friends from?

GM: Block 5 mostly. It's only when I went to junior high school that I met kids from other blocks.

KL: How would you describe Block 5? It seems like some of the blocks have identities. What defined Block 5?

GM: Gee, I don't know. Well, as a kid we used to criticize the mess hall, and the lousy food and all that. And I remember they punched the numbers of people coming in to eat, and Eddie again, he's the leader, we come there and we would start saying, "It's going to be [inaudible]," you know, one of the dishes. "No, it's buta dofu." "No, we had that yesterday." And then the man would get mad at us. And then we used to go to other blocks, Block 11 and all that, to get pastry. Then one time we found out from the head cook's son, who was a little younger, told us that on some Saturdays, all of the mess hall workers, they gathered in the mess hall and they'd make pastries and they'd take it home. And they found out, and that's why we never got them.

KL: Did you ever see the pastries?

GM: Not in that... I don't know when, it might have been a short period of time when this guys was in the mess hall. So we were probably a little older then by that time, I was about twelve, thirteen.

KL: What were the good mess halls? Where would you go?

GM: Well, we used to go to Block 11 and 12 for pastries and all that. But I'm sure the older guys did more of that kind of thing, but we kind of stuck to our own block.

KL: You said that you were in Block 5. What was your address in Block 5?

GM: 5-11-3.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 18>

KL: And when you arrived at Manzanar, what did the inside of your barrack look like?

GM: I'm trying to remember, well, it was bare. Like I said, there was no linoleum yet, no plasterboard. So just like they showed on some movies and all that, and I tell people, "It wasn't always like that."

KL: How did it change? Like maybe if we were to look like it again in a month, what did it look like?

GM: Well, it was more than a month. But on the inside, like I said, they put linoleum, put plasterboard, ceiling, too. And on the outside, the older men used to water, water, water, I remember that because of the dust. And then they were given seeds, and whoever wanted to, they'd grow grass between the barracks. So some of the places had lawn in between.

KL: Did you guys have one?

GM: Yeah, we had lawn, and then they built basketball courts. I remember Block 5 because it was on such a slope, our basketball court was not below the men's bathroom, but on the side of Building 1. I remember we were very unique in that way.

KL: So you said it was alongside Building 1?

GM: Yeah, that was the manager's... whatever they called that.

KL: The block manager?

GM: The block manager.

KL: Were you ever in the block manager's office?

GM: Just to go in there to get sporting, basketball or something like that.

KL: The block manager had sports goods that you could check out?

GM: I had a funny experience, I don't know when that was. But we had a block leader that must have been what Japanese older people would call a dog, inu, maybe informing or something. Because I remember there was, in one of the barracks facing Block 1, Building 1, I guess that would be Building 7 or something like that, there was an elderly couple with a middle-aged son.

KL: It was sort of like here was Building 1 and it was this building?

GM: Yeah.

KL: Okay, so that would be 8.

GM: Oh, 8? But anyway, there was this older couple, and they were my friends and I's and Eddie again, he was the leader of the group at that time, there might have been a half a dozen of us. And this couple was trying to make a garden, vegetable garden. So Eddie, we went to the block leader's office and got shovels and rakes and all that. And I still remember when we were returning, before we returned the tools, the elderly couple, I'm not sure if they offered money, 'cause I remember Eddie was saying, "No, no, no." So they gave us some candy and all that. When we went back and returned the tools, the block manager said something that's not very nice, like, "Did you guys get some money?" all that kind of stuff. And I remember we all showed... we didn't say anything. It was not nice what he said. And some time later, Eddie, my friend, who was tough, I found years later he became a golden glove boxer in Chicago. I still remember one time I was sitting someplace on the brass, and Eddie intercepted this block leader right in the middle and challenged him. And the man was...

KL: How old was Eddie at that point?

GM: Oh, he must have... I don't know. When the war ended he was fifteen, he might have been fourteen then or something like that. And I still remember he challenged that man, and the man was just laughing, "Eddie, Eddie, I'm not scared of you," and all that. But of course... but some time after that...

KL: Was there a specific incident that that was over? Do you know if Eddie had a specific complaint?

GM: Well, I was just wondering because of that time when he made that crack at us when we helped that old man. But the interesting things was I didn't think about it. It might have been earlier than when he was fourteen. Because one day, the bad block leader lived in the barrack next to ours, I think end of Building 4, the last apartment. And a military van came and about six GIs popped out with their rifles, and I thought, "Oh my god, they're arresting this guy." And then I found out from some older guys that they came for his protection, and that was the block leader. So then years later I said, okay, my little peabrain, you know, chances are he was reporting on any activities.

KL: Did he leave the camp ever?

GM: I don't know, I never saw him again.

KL: What was his name?

GM: I don't remember that. I don't remember that, but I just remember that happening, where Eddie challenged this man. Like I say, Eddie was a little brighter than me, and he was more cognizant of what's going on, I would think. But that man was not... because he was nice to us otherwise. I remember he took us to the creek one time for a picnic and all that. But that one incident when we helped that older.. and we were doing, thought that we did a good deed, like Boy Scouts to the rescue or something, and this guy gives us a crack about, "You guys get some money for that?" and didn't say it in a nice way.

KL: Did those people, you said you planted a garden for those neighbors?

GM: Yeah, we just cultivated it for them, this elderly couple. They were older because their son must have been in his fifties, and that son had a psychiatric problem I remember.

KL: Was he in the barrack with them?

GM: Yeah, he lived with them. And some older guys told us that that man, his wife cheated on him before the war or something. But I remember he used to scare people, I mean, he never threatened anybody, but he'd be talking to himself, answering himself. So we kids used to... I know at least once I ended up in the shower, and he's the only one with me, washing.

KL: Did you stay?

GM: No, I just hurried up and... I mean, he don't do anything, he's laughing and talking. But you know, when you're a little kid, that kind of scares you.

KL: Yeah, we actually... I haven't heard a lot about how mental illness fit into the camp, so I'd be interested to hear any of your recollections.

GM: Yeah, I don't know if that was because... but I heard from some older guys that his wife, that was before the war. Because he didn't have a wife when he was in camp.

KL: How did adults in Block 5 interact with him? Did they avoid him also?

GM: I never seen him with anybody else, he would always be by himself. I know he used to, we could hear him yelling at his parents sometimes inside the apartment. I don't know if he ever did anything physical against them.

KL: Was it just the three of them?

GM: Yeah, just the three of them. And they were an elderly couple, I remember that.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<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?

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

<Begin Segment 20>

KL: You started to tell us earlier about your mom setting up the barber shop inside your house, or inside your apartment. Eventually, once that barber cubicle was there, would you kind of walk us through, if we walked in the front door or your apartment, kind of go around and tell us what we'd see?

GM: Yeah. Originally they had each barrack broken into four equal apartments. I think they used those plaster boards, I forgot, one per person, I'm not sure. So the door came in closer to one end of the apartment, it's more rectangular shape. And so my dad just put a wire across, and then put sheets there. So maybe a third of the apartment became a barber area. And that's right, the stove was on that side too. So when, in the evening, when we cooked something on the stove, in the wintertime especially, kids would do that, potatoes or whatever, it would be on the side where the barber shop was. So she just had one chair, and then they brought this one mirror. I remember she had a mirror there, and my dad put a cooler. Lot of people put a swamp cooler, I guess you call it that, and then he had that built there.

KL: Where was that installed? Was it in the wall or the ceiling?

GM: No, in the wall. I guess they cut a hole in there, and they just had a fan there, gunnysack, whatever. But I remember we had that.

KL: Did he have a hose or anything? Was there a dripline or did he have to wet it or somebody would have to...

GM: No, I think, I'm not sure if he had a hose to it, you had to pour something there periodically. Because there was only one faucet in every barrack, and it was on the end, Apartment 3. I don't recall him having something brought back there. I think he must have had it where my mom or I had to pour water. I don't remember doing that.

Off camera: Did he cut a hole in the wall, or did he use a window?

GM: Oh, you know, I'm just wondering, maybe it was a window. Although I know that my father did, a lot of other people did it, they cut a hole in the wall and made a small door on the other side. We had one, because I remember I used to go out there sometime.

Off camera: And that was on the living part of your apartment, not the barber shop?

GM: Yeah. No, I think it was, would be toward the barber shop, because it was all on one end. I think my father, I'm pretty sure my father had that door before the barber shop. [Laughs]

Off camera: Okay.

GM: Yeah.

KL: Do you have a sense for why he cut the extra door?

GM: Well, somebody else, somebody started it, and I guess he wanted to.

KL: It would be helpful for the customers, they could just come and go.

GM: Oh no, no, the door was not... it was just about that big. Because I used to have to sit there and look out. The back end of the men's bathroom was there, and the women's, and at night, I used to wait 'til I see somebody go into the men's room, then I'd go, because I'd be scared.

KL: You wanted someone in there with you?

GM: Yeah, I wanted somebody in there. Because my friend Eddie who lived in the apartment number 1, the son of a gun, one night I'll never forget. We took a shower together, and he finished fast, and he ran out before I was ready. And he was on his porch now, so I could see him through the window, and he's saying, "Oh, George, there's a boogeyman," trying to scare me. And I'm begging, "Please, Eddie, no, no." And then I still remember I finally... he said, "Okay, George, I'm going in now." And I dashed, and I got right to the door when my sister Susie was there, and she went, "George, your hair was straight up." [Laughs] You know, you're kids, you get scared of those kinds of things, I sure was.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 21>

KL: You guys, I think it was you and Mas were telling me about a haunted house that you set up.

GM: No, what we did was, again, one of the barracks for a while next to the mess hall was empty, they stored linoleum, I mean, that tarpaper, rows of tarpaper. So we broke underneath some of the boards, and apparently they didn't put the linoleum yet, and we put rolls of this tarpaper thing, and we covered it and made it dark, and we used to play ghost in there. And the last time we did that, Eddie or I or one of the older guys would play the boogeyman, and we'd send the little younger guys though there, and one of the older guys would scare them. So one day after we were playing and we were standing, might have been about ten of us, laughing away. And three of us, including me, saw the same thing, smoke-like, and it came in and went right into this thing. It didn't bounce off like smoke would bounce off. And we, all three of us went, "Oh," and we described what we saw, identical things. So then Eddie said we'd better go, and we let the little kids out first, and we went out in the basement floor, we never went back in there. But I saw this coming in and two of my friends saw it at the same time, and we described it. Because Eddie said whoever it was that didn't see it, said, "Describe it," it was the same thing. I believe in ghosts now.

KL: That was a Block 5 building?

GM: Yeah. The building next to the mess hall. For a while it was empty with just a... yeah, I'm not sure if that was the rec. hall.

KL: Was it across the central aisle from it, or was it...

GM: I thought it was right next to it.

KL: So one of the barracks.

GM: Apartment, building 14? Yeah, I thought. So it could have been early on, because eventually we had people living in there, I'm not sure. But we had all these tarpaper rolls in there.

KL: Were there any other legends or ghost stories or anything that circulated around Manzanar about the place?

GM: Not that I can remember.

KL: Did you guys have any ideas or any knowledge of people who had lived at Manzanar before it was a camp? Did you ever talk about who...

GM: You know, I didn't know. I found that out later, yeah, later.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 22>

KL: This is tape number 3, we're continuing an interview with George Morishita, and we were talking about rivalries between provinces, Japan provinces between you and Eddie.

GM: Rather than the states here. Yeah, and then one day I think I must have been about thirteen. That's the last time we did that, and he just said, "George, you know we're Americans." And I said, "Yeah, I know," and that was it.

KL: Tell us what you were...

GM: Before that, he used to knock Hiroshima, you know, and I used to knock Osaka, "Oh, stupid Osaka," and this and this and that. And whatever I heard the older people say about... you know, like Okies and all that kind of stuff and then whatever word they used, I guess Osaka, I would throw it out, and he did the same thing until we were about fourteen or thirteen, I think, I was at least thirteen. He just one day said, "Hey, George, you know we're Americans." And I said, "Yeah, I know," and we stopped talking that way. [Laughs]

KL: Where was Eddie from, where did he grow up?

GM: Well, he was born in Idaho, but he grew up in Gardena, I understand. His family moved to Gardena. And he's the one that called me a liar earlier on when he said, "There's no horses in L.A."

KL: We were talking, too, off the tape about the block manager's apartment, and you were saying, would you describe -- and you can have this back -- but would you describe what the block manager's office space was like, how big it was?

GM: If I remember, it was the whole building. There might have been a partition in the back, and I thought that's where they kept storage things and all that. We never went... when I went in, it was just one door. This door at the front, and I know he had a desk in there where he sat, and I'm not sure if he had two desks for assistant or whatever. And they had two shovels, and also sports, basketballs and stuff like that.

KL: Was that in the back room?

GM: I'm not sure if that was in the front or in the back now. But when I saw this right here, it said Apartment 1, 2, 3, 4, like all the others, I got a little puzzled, and Block 5 wasn't like that, at least not to my memory.

KL: What else was in the block leader's offices? A desk and supplies?

GM: Yeah, I just went in there to pick up whatever.

KL: Did you say there was a ping pong table set up?

GM: I thought there was a... you know, I could be wrong, I could be wrong. He might not have tolerated it. They might have had that somewhere else.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 23>

GM: Because I know that in our block, one of the buildings was a grammar school about three classes, third, fifth and sixth or something like that. And I'm not sure if that was, what building that was, Building 5, Building 6, or something like that. I think the whole building was a school.

KL: Is that where you attended school?

GM: Yeah, fifth and sixth grade I went to that school in our block. And because it was a grammar school, none of our apples ever turned red, they were all picked green. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but Eddie and I and I think one other guy, we were going to see a movie again, and I think we walked to Block 29 or somewhere, and we came across, between two barracks, apple trees with red apples and we went crazy, and knocking them down and picking them. And there was two or three kids standing on the road looking at us, and we thought, "What's wrong with them?" Finally a man came out of one of the apartments with a broom just yelling at us, and my friends just dropped and ran. And I was begging him, and he was pounding the heck out of me, and I didn't get no apples. We ended up laughing about it later, you know, stupid, we should have known. But we never saw red apples in our block. Yeah, that was funny.

KL: What were the classrooms like? Would you describe them inside the grammar school?

GM: Well, it was just like one of the apartments, and then the teacher had the desk in the front. I don't remember if we had a table for two people, or was it one of those school desks that had the arm thing, I don't know if it was that fancy. We didn't stand up or anything like that, we had seats and all that. I don't remember too well.

KL: How did it compare to your schools in the flats, or to Utah Street School?

GM: I just remember when I was in junior high school near the end of the war, this one... I think he had visual impairment, but he was a special, he was not a regular teacher. I talked to some of the guys and they remembered him. I think his name was Mr. Greene. But he pounded into us one day. "You guys are the dumbest people, kids I ever had. I don't know what's going to happy to you when you go back to Los Angeles. I'd be so embarrassed to be associated with you. You've got to study," and all that. Then I come out of camp and go, "That son of a gun." But I remember he was really pounded it into us, "You guys are dumb. I can't believe how stupid... I'd be so embarrassed if I had..." you know.

KL: What was your reaction?

GM: Well, I mean, I didn't get mad or anything like that, I thought, "Oh, my god, gee." How do I know? I couldn't compare. Then when I came out of camp, I was okay.

KL: Do you remember any other teachers?

GM: No. I think I was mentioning I got kicked out of class because...

KL: I wanted you to tell that story. I don't know if it's the same one, but I heard one last year.

Off camera: You started to talk about it this morning.

GM: Yeah, in the seventh grade, his older brother and I became friends with Nakajo. But in seventh grade, and his younger brother and I were the same age, and like my friend Eddie in Block 5, Mas was a little bit more mature than me and all that. And one day he gets my attention, and he starts making faces and I started laughing. And then he kept doing that, "George, George, George," and after a while...

KL: What kind of faces?

GM: Oh, like a goldfish with his mouth. Finally the teacher called both of us out, and I started to protest, "Oh, please," I was pleading, I mean, this never happened. And then Mas says, I still remember, he said, "George, we better go, she's pretty upset." And I'm going...

KL: Was it Mas who made the faces or his brother?

GM: Oh, yeah, he was the one that said, "George," he got my attention, and I looked at him, and she's lecturing, you know. And he starts making these funny faces, and I started laughing. They kept it up. And so she finally broke in and said, "Out."

Off camera: George, just to clarify, Mas's younger brother was also know as Mas, so you're talking about the younger Mas, right?

GM: Yeah. That's the first half of their name.

Off camera: Right.

GM: Masatsugi, Masahiro or something like that. Yeah, because when I first met Mas here, when he mentioned his last name, Nakajo, that's very unusual. So I thought, oh, my goodness. Then I said, last year I met the same, they were from Block 4, I said, "Hey, I met Roy Murakami. And then he goes, "Oh, yeah, he passed away." Then he said, "My kid brother was his friend," and I go, "Oh, I was your kid brother's friend, too."

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

<Begin Segment 24>

KL: We're gonna hire you as a ranger. That was a brilliant transition, because I wanted to ask you about judo also at Manzanar.

GM: What's that?

KL: Roy Murakami whose father ran the judo dojo, yeah?

GM: Yeah. Thoughts about him?

KL: Yeah, you were involved in judo, right?

GM: Yeah, I took it when I was a kid, and I was mentioning it, I don't know if I said this. One day our Block 5 guys were coming back from near the gate, and Block 4, near Block 4 I think it was, there was a weather little box, I guess, thermometer, barometer and all that, and had a little box covering that. And for some reason we started throwing rocks at it from a distance, and then we were laughing as we got... all of a sudden we finally smashed it down. And Mr. Murakami, Sensei Murakami, and apparently I was ditching judo for a while, and he comes, and I was the only one from my group that was taking judo. My friend Eddie took kendo, yeah. And then he goes, "Morishita-kun," he goes... he didn't say, "What are you doing?" or anything like that, he says, "Oh, I see you're healthy, you're not sick anymore. So we're going to see you at the dojo Monday?" I go, "Yes, sir." So I go in and he whispers to a brown belt guy, and for the next, seemed like ten minutes anyway, I'm flipping all over. [Laughs] The sensei told him to, "Just flip him all over," and I still remember that. I know that Roy Murakami's son became a judo expert. And I only got into the newspaper when I was in Tucson where he was teaching the L.A. police department or something like that, or the North Hollywood police.

KL: There was a connection, yeah.

GM: Something like that.

KL: What else do you remember about Seigo Murakami, Murakami-sensei? What was he like, or did you have any other...

GM: I just remember he was one of the nice, he was not scary or anything like that. I know there was one...

KL: Tashima-sensei, I wanted to ask about him, too.

GM: When I was little, he scared the heck out of me.

KL: Tashima-sensei?

GM: Because one winter, the dojo, they opened the doors, and we were freezing. And he came up with this one boy that was a little younger than me, and he said, he was shaking, he was so cold. He said, "Are you cold?" He said, "Yes." Wham. Wow, and the guy falls down and gets up again, "You're a coward or weakling, are you cold?" And so he says, "No." Wham, "Don't lie." So god, I hope he... but when I became a little older, by thirteen I think I dropped out. But he was pretty nice. And he was telling us, "You have to work at it."

KL: Tashima was nicer?

GM: Yeah, I thought so. But the first time, he scared the heck out of me.

KL: What was his relationship with Murakami-sensei?

GM: That I don't really know. I don't know who was the head instructor. I just know that Murakami-sensei, I remember him, Tashima, and I think there might have been more than two, but those were the two I remember. I'm trying to think... that's the only thing I can remember.

KL: How'd you start taking judo?

GM: I must have been about eleven years old and my father first took me to the kendo place. And I'll be honest, I saw this one armament, and I thought, wow, that's nice, black one and all that. And the instructor, he proceeded to show me a pretty junky one. And so I told my father, "I don't think I want to do kendo, I think I want to do judo." And then my mom, son of a gun, she wouldn't buy me a judo gi at first, she made it. Well, heck, it didn't take long for the guys to rip it off, and I come home and it's all shredded, so she finally broke down.

KL: Did she have a sewing machine?

GM: I'm not sure. Yeah, I don't remember, but maybe we did. Maybe that was another thing that they brought, she was allowed to bring in, I'm not sure. I'm not sure if she did it with him or something like that, but it didn't last very long." And then finally gave me the money to buy a regular...

Off camera: Where did you buy them?

GM: I can't remember, it must have been from the dojo instructor. But I remember one thing, near the end, you know, they had the white belt, and then you wore green, and then you go purple. And I went as far as the purple belt, and then one day when I knew internment was coming, and I looked at ever purple belt guy and said, "Oh, my god, I can't beat none of them." So there was a guy in Block 6, Shiro or something, I forgot his last name. But he was about twenty-one years old. Anyway, he wasn't tall. And I told him, I said, "I have to..." so he had a good time. I would go with him to the dojo every day, and he would just do his best, practice his throws and all that, but it kind of straightened me out. And when the tournament came, I felt so good because I'm not sure if I beat somebody, but there was one guy that could just beat me with one hand if he wanted to. We were good friends, I got to know him. I held him to a tie, and I thought, wow, you know, whatever they call it, time runs out and neither one... I mean, he was doing most of the aggressing, but I was able to hold them off. And I thought, okay, it paid off, that Shiro built me up for that tournament. And I think after that I quit.

KL: Do you remember, was there... so I've heard the philosophy of judo, that it's, well, people have ideas about philosophies of judo. Was there any instruction about sort of a philosophy of judo?

GM: Well, it was to build your physical strength, mental and all that, because that's one thing about Tashima-sensei I was impressed with. One day and adult guy came, I'm not sure if he was brown belt, he might have been. And he did a, some kind of move that, I forgot the expression they used. And Tashima-sensei saw that and he, in front of the whole dojo, he just screamed at this guy for using that hold in front of kids. He didn't want no kids to learn those kind of things. It was a deadly move, I guess, you could kill somebody or something like that, or break somebody's bone. I just remember the expression that he used, like I forgot the rod they used, yakyu or something like that. But he just yelled at this guy. And this man must have been in his mid-twenties or older and I thought wow, you know. This is why, years later when I was in Phoenix and at a workshop, and me and this guy, we were going for a walk after dinner, he said, "Hey, karate." I said, "Karate? I'll be darned." And we went in there, I said, "That ain't karate." He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "They're kicking the heck out of each other. You're not supposed to do that." And I said I understand that you're supposed to be able to kill somebody, but not touch him. You lose point if you touch them, that's what I was told when I was a kid. And you had to learn to be so skillful that you could stop yourself before you hit him in a tournament. But the referee could tell by the...

KL: In terms of judo or in terms of karate?

GM: This was karate, yeah. And then I remembered that, and these guys were banging each other up and all that. And then I thought about this Tashima-sensei getting mad at this man for... because we just learned certain throws, you know.

KL: Was that man a visitor to Manzanar or did he live there?

GM: He must have lived there, yeah. He was a Japanese guy, Nisei guy, but he was brown belt. I remember he was a brown belt. I'm just guessing his age, twenty or thirty.

KL: Do you remember any tournaments with Caucasian visitors to Manzanar?

GM: I just remember early on this Caucasian boy came, he might have been one of the... you know. And he hadn't learned yet how to fall. And he started off with two senseis or somebody holding that belt, and he'd fly over it. And the first he landed, boom, like I would when you take a dive in the water, belly flop or something like that. And then there was naturally laughter and all that, and then one of the guys showed him how to do it. Yeah, I remember that. But that was the only time I remember.

KL: Do you remember any... we don't have very much documentation at all about the kendo teaching space. Do you have a visual memory of what looked like in there?

GM: Vaguely. It was, the firebreak was east of Block 11, was that it? Am I correct there, or further... no, maybe further north, I'm not sure.

KL: It's a little bit west of the judo...

GM: There was the huge trees, when I went there to visit Manzanar I was looking for those trees and it was all gone. But there was just that one area where, I don't know what kind of trees they were, very large trees, and that's where they had the kendo thing.

KL: Was it in a barrack?

GM: No, it was open. And the thing, it was not like the judo, it was a covered one, if I remember. I thought it was... well, it could have been, maybe not Block 11, a little further, I'm not sure. There's nothing?

KL: There's not a lot of documentation about it. If I find somebody who went in there, I always ask, "What did it look like?" "What do you remember?"

GM: Yeah, I just know one guy that took everybody, this friend Eddie, he took kendo, I remember.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 25>

KL: What other places do you remember in Manzanar? Where else did you spend your time?

GM: Well, the Shepherd's Creek we used to go swimming. I remember a lot of people did that. There was a dam that the farmers and the ranchers used to use that water, and I still remember more than once when I was there, a pickup truck comes and two rangers would come, they don't say anything, no one, none of the people were sitting, and we're all nude. So people coming, we'd all hide behind bushes and all that. Even the older guys were, nobody had trunks. And we were the younger ones, and these ranchers would come, they would quietly come and park their pickup truck and move the board for the water, maybe they needed some more water and the guys would block it so the water would get deeper. Normally it would drop down to maybe three feet or something like that, and then by shutting that it would rise up maybe a foot or two. But I laughed when I saw a picture of Manzanar where... what's the photographer? Toyo Miyatake? And I was telling my friends, "That's, like most pictures of war scenes and all that, I understand in the Civil War, those photographers got dead bodies." I said, "They had the picture of these, about five kids on the dam at Shepherd's Creek, and Toyo took a picture of them," I said, "they all had trunks." [Laughs] I said, "Nobody had trunks." Because I remember one time we saw some dust in the distance, and at the last minute we realized there's a pickup truck coming. So all the guys including we kids ran behind bushes. And this guy, this Japanese guy and two gals, they came, they had trunks on, they parked the pickup trucks in about five minutes and they swam in the water all by themselves. And then when I got older I said, "That son of a gun should have at least said, 'Hey, thanks, you guys.'" He knew. [Laughs] Because I was hiding behind a bush and I could see older guys in their twenties and whatever they were. And nobody said anything, and these three people had the water all to themselves. And then they went back in the pickup truck and took off.

KL: Did people usually get a pass to go to Shepherd's Creek?

GM: I guess you could there, because it was, you know, on the west side of the camp, and that's where the gate was. And we used to walk up, how far north? Three miles, four miles, five miles. How far is Shepherd's Creek from...

KL: Couple miles.

GM: Okay, maybe not that far then. And so we probably might have gone by pass there. Because I remember we all would be walking back. I just used to leave when the older guys were leaving.

KL: Was that gate staffed, was there a person...

GM: There was something, yeah. I forgot what color that little card was, you'd get it at the manager's office or something, block manager's office. I don't think we had that, I'm not sure.

KL: Do you remember a replacement for the first block manager? You said you never really saw him again after the army.

GM: No, I don't remember. I guess I was too young for that.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 26>

KL: I got carried away, we sort of lost track of the description of the inside of your apartment. You told us about the barber shop part, but what was the rest of it like?

GM: Well, after my father made that barbershop part, they squeezed in that, so we had about six of us. [Laughs] The beds were pretty close together. But then at some point, as many of the people started moving out, my father was one of them that Building 10, next building, we were able to use one of the... it was just to sleep, and my dad and I used to sleep there. I don't know if this was just one season or the last half a year or something. It was the wintertime I remember, because I laugh when I think about it, every night I would say, "I'm so cold," and he had that extra blanket rolled up like in the army days, and he'd always tell me, "What are you going to do when it really gets cold?" And I used to tell, I told my mom after that, "I don't want to sleep with Papa anymore," because spring came, and that extra blanket was never... [laughs]. I'll never forget that.

KL: So you think it was, like, right across from...

GM: Yeah, that building was right, the next building, Building 10, and it could have been apartment 3 as well. And it faced us. But I remember when my sister, she was in Gila or Poston, Arizona, and I don't know how she arranged it...

KL: Is that Jean?

GM: Yeah, Jean came to visit us with her two boys. Because her first son was born in 1940 and then Dave was born at Santa Anita Racetrack in 1942. And so must have been '44 or something like that, because we had that extra apartment, and then they stayed there. I don't know how many days she was able to visit.

KL: You said she was in Poston?

GM: They were in Poston, they also were in Gila.

KL: What did she tell you about Santa Anita, Poston, Gila and having a baby at Santa Anita?

GM: Yeah, well, my nephew was born there. Of course, she doesn't remember that. But he recently told me that he went on a tour there. But my sister, all I know is that when we moved to, when she found out that my wife and I and kids were going to go to Tucson, she said -- Jean was outspoken, and she just said, "I can't believe anybody would live in that damn desert," it was so hot, I guess. And I said... of course, she came to visit us years later. When we first told them we were moving Arizona, she just... because she lived in Poston and Gila, and she was a young adult, so the impression is different from young kids.

KL: Do you know anything about her pregnancy and delivering her child in Santa Anita?

GM: Not to me. She might have told my younger sister. But she was not alone, I'm sure there was others back then. Because experiences were shared by a lot of other people. Just like -- this is a little different, but my wife came from Peru, I think you guys knew about the Peruvian Japanese that were brought here. And I remember she was ten years old when she came, 1944, and she says she remembers in New Orleans they segregated all the ladies. And they were made to undress, get nude, and they got DDT. And she was saying the remembers some of the women were pregnant, some of the women were having their menstrual period, and women just don't feel comfortable being nude in front of everybody else.

KL: Or having DDT sprayed on them.

GM: Yeah. But she remembers that, she was telling me that. People here didn't experience that, but our country didn't think nothing about Latin America.

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

<Begin Segment 27>

KL: Do you have memories in Manzanar of the so-called "loyalty questionnaire" that was distributed in 1943?

GM: I just heard the older people, little bit about talking about it. I know my mom, if she had her way, we would have ended up in Tule Lake. I think she put "no-no," that she would not, you know, whatever the questions were, bear arms against Japan or to protect the government. And my father definitely didn't go along with that.

KL: Did they discuss it and share...

GM: I don't remember that.

KL: ...answers?

GM: I guess I was too young for them to... I just knew a little bit about it, but I didn't understand that, what it all meant, 'til years later. Because when I moved to Arizona in '68, my brother-in-law, one of my brother-in-law suggested I subscribe to the Pacific Citizen. Said, "You know, keep in touch and all that." And that's how I, like the Manzanar reunion, like I said, I called the Pacific Citizen and they connected me with this young lady. But no, I didn't know a lot of those things as a kid.

KL: When did your mom, did she ever change her mind about Japan's ability or likelihood of winning the war?

GM: Oh, yeah. She never said that to me, I just remember, after Pearl Harbor, her arguing with one of the customers.

KL: What about by 1943? Do you think she thought Japan was winning or did she follow events?

GM: Yeah, I don't know. As I got older I just thought, okay, that's typical housewife. I mean even here, you look back, and when we were kids, most American women, I don't care if they were white, black, whatever, they stayed home and raised the kids and all that, and they didn't get a chance to meet other people. Because I know when I was a young adult, and I was pretty outspoken, and I knocked on my country, I knocked on my ancestors, Japan. When I was in Japan I used to say, I used to tell my friends years later, I said, "Yeah, it's a good thing it was in 1952, because I used to yell at the cops and all that because I saw how they treated the poor people and all that. I used to tell the Japanese, they talk about the U.S., I said, about the black situation, "You guys could teach the... I tell my friends, non-Japanese friends, you guys could teach them how to discriminate. You guys have been doing it for centuries to your own people," I mean, ethnic, same ethnic. But I'm getting, drifting off, I'm sorry.

KL: No, it's all relevant, to my mind, everything you were saying. Do you guys have questions about Manzanar?

Off camera: Actually, I had a question about your father's work in camp. You said that he was a cook?

GM: He was a cook, yeah.

Off camera: Before camp, was he a cook at camp, too?

GM: Yeah. All my life I just remember him as being a cook until after the war, he and my mom bought an old hotel, little hotel down in Japanese town on the edge of it, on Hewitt Street. Yeah, I remember that. And then, but until then he was a cook.

Off camera: Do you remember him changing in any way after he came to camp? His attitude or his relationship with your mother?

GM: No, no, I never did. Like I say, I think he's been in this country long enough. And I look back, I used to tell people, I say, you know, we talk about when you become an adult you realize your father was pretty smart. I said, "I mean it." I said I was the opposite. I said I was more outspoken than some of you guys. I remember when I was a teenager at the hotel, I'd be living in one of the rooms, and my father would be standing outside in the hallway, we would be yelling, and my mother would come and say, "You guys are embarrassing me." And I would yell back, "Well, tell Papa to go away," you know. Yeah, I was pretty bad. But he never struck me and all that. And then about the religion and other things. And I used to tell people, "You know, when I was a kid, I was pretty bad that way. I used to tell my father, 'Gee, Papa, you should go down to the pool hall and see some of those old guys. They're pretty hip.'" And then by the time I came out of the army I realized, man, he was so much above those guys, he was really, really ahead, pretty progressive and broad minded and all that. He just didn't say much. Yeah, I remember that. I used to really be bad.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 28>

KL: That brings up a really good question that Patricia wanted me to ask, which was you participated in Buddhist life before the camp, but you said you did not in Manzanar. What was the change...

GM: I don't know. I just remember going to one service in camp. My parents never insisted, although they both were very religious, especially Father. But after the war, my father had me go to church for a while to give me my dollar and all that. But then...

KL: Did they go to any meetings in Manzanar?

GM: You know, I don't remember that. I don't remember that.

KL: Did you guys have an altar in your home?

GM: A butsudan? Yeah. My father was, used to do it. In fact, when I was younger I used to imitate him, you know, that chant. Still, my friends, "You want to hear the Buddha thing?" [Laughs]

KL: Did that, how did he respond to that?

GM: No, not to him, but I used to tell my friends. I said, I could do that in Hindu, whatever language they use, and I'd imitate my father.

Off camera: Did you understand what those words meant?

GM: No, not at all, of course not. Just like my wife was a Catholic, and you couldn't understand the Latin, same thing.

KL: Did you guys have an altar in Manzanar in that apartment?

GM: You know, I don't remember that. We might have, I'm not sure. Knowing my father, we probably did. In fact, when I was in Japan to visit him, he had this Buddhist, what did he call it, a bible or something? And he told me before he died, he said, "George I told this police detective that I was going to give this to him, but I want you to have it." And I told him, "No, Papa," and all that, and then I remember he said, "George, you know that the United States is predominately Christian, so that I just want you to compare, that's all, before you choose." And so I said, "Papa, trust me, if I ever come to that point where I feel I need to belong to a church, I will compare. So in the meantime, don't deny this police officer that you said you will give it to," and he said okay. I said, "I promise you." See, I go to Catholic church, but I'm not a Catholic. I mean, I don't go to mass, but I used to tell my wife, "I go to church more than you do," and she's a Catholic. I'd be driving around in Vegas, I think I've gone about three times, I found a Catholic church. I'll go there when there's nobody in there, do my prayer, make an offertory and then leave. Because I don't know any, because my first wife was Catholic. My children were baptized but I don't think they go to church anymore. Anyway, I'm sorry.

KL: Oh, no, no, that's great.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 29>

KL: I'm trying to think, because I want to ask more about Manzanar, but I want to hear about your marriage, too, and your wife. But I kind of lost track of the discussion about Tule Lake. You said your parents discussed the "loyalty question" and ended up staying, but you wrote, I think, or told me on the phone that you had a friend who went to Tule Lake in your block?

GM: There was one, yeah, there were some people from Block 5 that went to Tule Lake. I've never seen them again, but I still remember February '44? I'm not sure, it was wintertime, I remember. And this one two and a half ton truck or whatever you call it came to our block and maybe about a dozen people got on there. And then the friends were yelling, "Banzai, banzai," you know. I still remember that. And one of my very good friends, his family went to Manzanar, I mean, to Tule Lake. Now I did meet a guy that his father chose to go back to Japan, and Kaz's older brother was an adult, so he didn't go back. But Kaz was my age, so when the war ended he was fourteen, a minor, so he went back to Japan with his dad. And then not until he was eighteen did he come back. I remember that. He was really... he came back, by the time I met him he was okay, but he said he was so bitter against the Japanese because he got in a fight every day because he's an American, and he would fight every day. He said, "I vowed I would come back here," he grew up by the time he came back. Then I met him again in the army, I met him in high school for a while, and in the army he was a translator and I used to use him to write things for me and all that.

KL: Who was the friend from Block 5 who went to Tule Lake? What was his name?

GM: Last name was Nakamura.

KL: How did he feel about going, do you know? Did you guys talk about it?

GM: No, no. He was a little older than me, but I know his family, he was one of the younger, he had older brothers and sisters. But I think he was a little older than me, so I don't remember, I just remember as he was leaving, I was very close to him. And I think it was '44, I'm not sure exactly.

KL: How did you respond to the trucks pulling up and the banzai shouts?

GM: It's a natural thing, I guess. I can't remember any emotions and all that, just, I'm going to miss him.

KL: Did you keep in touch with him at all, did you guys write?

GM: No, lost contact, no. Unfortunately, I'm bad that way. As I look back, I broke friendships with people all my lifetime.

Off camera: The friend Kaz you mentioned, you met him after the war, many years later?

GM: Oh, this guy that went back to Japan? I met him briefly at Roosevelt High School, I think, when he first came. I think I met him then. And then when I was in northern Japan, I ran into him. He was in a special, he was an interpreter, translator, and I happened to be working the courts and boards where they have court martials and all that. So I used them...

Off camera: What's his last name?

GM: Sakamoto.

Off camera: And is Kaz K-A-Z?

GM: K-A-Z, and then U-O would be the full name. But I, like I said, in Japan, I used to be tough. Like one time, we weren't... anytime a GI would damage a Japanese property and all that, we want to find out. And I'm not the CID or whatever you call it, so I wanted to get some information, and I asked Kaz, "Please call the police station and introduce yourself, identify who I am, and we want a copy of it." We're not the CID or something like that. So anyway, I go down and pick it up, and then a few weeks later there was another occasion for me to ask for that. I go down there, and the desk sergeant said, "Oh, they're all in the meeting in the conference room." Okay. I open the door and there's a bunch of cops having a meeting. And one of the guys, not the chief, but he's a little bit to his right, yells, "That's him." I found out that they were looking for that report, they gave me the wrong one. And he said, "That's him," and I just turned around, because I spoke Japanese by then, and I just told the police chief, "You ought to fire this stupid guy." I said, "I had this interpreter call specifically because I don't speak Japanese that well," and da, da, da. And he's the son of a gun, that stupid... and then I turned to English naturally, "You son of a..." and that was bad. I look back at that, I couldn't think of it. [Laughs] He probably thought, "He's a GI?"

KL: Before I ask about the end of the war, are there other things you guys wanted to hear about Manzanar, events, places, people?

Off camera: I don't think we asked about your experience with leaving camp? Did we touch on that?

KL: No, not yet. What do you recall of...

GM: Coming out?

KL: Well, before that even. You guys were in camp when the war ended, is that correct?

GM: I think so, yeah.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 30>

KL: What do you remember about the atomic bombs being deployed or the Japanese surrender?

GM: I just remember in my own mind, because I found out that... and I don't know if it was right after it happened, and I don't know if they were getting correspondence and all that. But I found out that one of my cousins, eighteen year old gal, was the only one of the relatives that died because sued to work in a bank, and she reported to work that morning. And so then for a while I resented Truman. I thought, "That son of a gun." That's the only thought that came to my mind about that. But as far as I know, I don't remember hearing that. I was just excited about getting out of camp.

KL: Tell us about that.

GM: Yeah, well, I remember near the end, as the families moved out and they never came back, and I heard my mom and dad talking about his going into L.A. to check out where we might move to. So I was telling some of my friends that were still in the block, "I want to go to L.A. with my dad, and I'll come back and tell you guys what L.A.'s like." And so for some days I kept telling my mom and dad, "I can't miss school." That was a lie, but, "I can't miss school." So they let me come out with them. He brings me to Japanese town, I got so scared, I'd never seen the kind of people I saw, the black people. I never saw that. And then the blacks that were living there we probably poor people, and the language they were using, I was really... anyway, so then he takes me to Sawtelle, to total strangers, and I find out that the man was one of my mother's barber customer in camp. The wife loved my presence, she was real sweet and had a seven-year-old boy. He adored me, 'cause, you know, big brother and all that. And I was there for two weeks. And I never went back to camp. [Laughs]

KL: You stayed with those people in Sawtelle?

GM: For two weeks only, and that was the only place that in my life I was called "Jap" twice. And then the first day of... that was a Friday when my dad brought me there, Friday or Saturday, and the woman said Monday school starts, I went, "Oh, my god." So she was explaining to me how to get there, "But just ask the bus driver just to play safe." And I remember the bus driver opens the door, and I said, "Does this stop and such and such a place?" and he goes, "No." And an elderly man with white hair yells from the back of the bus, "Young man, you and your father get in. If the bus driver doesn't know his way, I'll tell you." And so I gave the bus driver a dirty look and put the money. And I forgot if I even thanked that old man. I saw him riding in the back.

KL: Was he Caucasian?

GM: Oh, yeah, he was Caucasian. And then we get walking to school with my dad, and a young kid up on the second or third floor yells, "Jap." And I cussed at him and I go, my god, what am I doing? And then I met this guy --

KL: How'd your dad react?

GM: Nothing. He never said anything. He didn't even say to me, "Shut up," or anything like that, he just said, and I started cussing back. And then I thought, oh my god, I better be careful.

KL: Was the kid in a house?

GM: No, he was in the school.

KL: In school?

GM: He was a blond.

KL: Was it at Roosevelt?

GM: No, this was at West L.A., Sawtelle. Emerson... no, I forgot the name of the school, it was a junior high school. And then after I met this guy from camp whose family came from that area, I guess, Ray Ito or something, I found out he died. I never seen him again after that. But anyway, one day he and I are walking, and two older students, they might have been high school kids, they yell, "Jap." And I cussed, and my friend got scared, he said, "George, George." He's the same guy that said, "Don't..." that guy's speaking Spanish on the streetcar, and he says, "they're going to come and beat us up." I said, "Nah, they just want to hear themselves say it to a live person, 'Jap.'" They've been saying this in the movies. I was right, because these guys were older, they were probably seventeen, eighteen years old, and they probably thought, "That dumb kid." But that's the only time...

KL: What did you say? You said they cussed them out. I mean, you don't have to use words, but I mean, did you tell them who you were or did you just say mean things to them?

GM: Oh, no, I don't say I'm an American, I just said, "You dumb son of a," you know, whatever. So I had a little chip on my shoulder. I used to wonder, how come Japanese want to live in this town? I go to Long Beach, my brother-in-law and my father took me to Long Beach, and my brother-in-law was in the 442nd. And so there was housing for military people...

KL: Who was he married to, your brother-in-law?

GM: My oldest sister Jean, here. So I left there, and I didn't realize it, but most of my neighbors not from California. The first day of school this kid, Bill Hendrickson, I don't know how I remember the name, he taps my back, and I had a little chip on my shoulder, he goes, "Hey, your first day of school?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Me too. Why don't you follow me?" Then he introduced me to a guy named Howard Pitts from western Pennsylvania, a blond, good-looking guy. And we became... and then they were not from L.A., they didn't grow up with that, "Jap, Jap, Jap," Chinese and all that. And then one day at the bus stop, this young blond girl was being called an Okie. And kids were teasing her and I thought, "I'll join, too." And then she must have detected a different accent, and she turns around and she goes, "Where are you from?" "California." "You damn prune picker." [Laughs] My friend Bill says, "Sorry George, that's what we called you Californians." But I used to tell people when I got older, you know, she could have said, "You damn Jap." But the first thing she said, "You damn prune picker." [Laughs] Big difference from back east, and they didn't get exposed to this kind of thing.

KL: And it's interesting, it's an agricultural thing, too.

GM: Yeah. I never heard the word Okie. I was really impressed as I got older because...

KL: Was that in Long Beach?

GM: Yeah, that was in Long Beach. Because I met two people in Long Beach, that girl and a classmate, he was from Oklahoma. And he told me a story about during the dust bowl, his family came from Oklahoma, and near the border, I don't know if it was Arizona, it was kind of slow, and this black guy in a Cadillac behind starting cursing his father, "You damn Okie," and all that. And I got mad at this father. And he goes, "George," he says, "considering how we treated them for all these years." And then years later, I thought, boy, talk about this guy being so matured. He was my age, about fourteen years old. And then years later I looked back and I thought, I had to admire Okies from my two experience in Long Beach. Yeah, really. But I thought that was something that really impressed me.

One thing in L.A., I went to the little store to get candy right after the war, it was a black lady, and she forgot to remove some of the coupons. During the war they had ration tickets, and she had ration tickets on some of the products. And I was telling some friends, I said, "I know it's not gonna mean anything to you," I said, "I was hurt." I was hurt because I wasn't able to participate as an American, you know. And I said I remember that kind of stung me when I was fourteen. Said, wow.

KL: Did you get used to, you said it was scary to go to Little Tokyo to see all the black people you had never seen anyone before. Did you get used to...

GM: Oh, yeah, because I lived in Long Beach for a half a year and I'm with all these Caucasian guys from back east and all that. Then one day my brother-in-law said, "George, get your things ready," and he took me to L.A., parks the car, and he said, "I'll be back." And I see a dumpy neighborhood, and I knew my mom and dad had bought a hotel. Then I saw the barber shop spool, that thing, it was not put up yet and it was leaning against the building. I went, oh my god, that was their place. I go in there and I walked into the bathroom, I said, this hasn't been used for a long time, it's just rusty and all that. And it was a real tough neighborhood. So by the time I was a young teenager, I remember when I worked for a Chevrolet dealer at Seventh and Central, I was eighteen. And the salesman said, "I can't understand this guy, he doesn't even have sideview mirrors. And I said, "Why don't you let me check out his home?" I go down Forty-fourth and Central and then see a shack in the back, one room, one family, and the next day I tell the guy, "Hey, he can't even buy a bike." And I thought, I wouldn't go down there. But see, because of what I saw on Hewitt Street...

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

<Begin Segment 31>

KL: Where did you live when you were in Long Beach?

GM: Place called Truman Boyd Manor, it's about four miles, I guess, away from the downtown. There was about two or three housing developments that were reserved for veterans, one member of the household had to be a veteran of World War II. And there wasn't even a junior high school at that time, but they were building it when I was leaving. I was only there one semester.

KL: Who was there in the house with you?

GM: Well, I was living with my oldest sister and her family, she had her husband...

KL: What was her husband's name?

GM: Ben, or Benson, B-E-N-S-O-N. He was from San Diego originally.

KL: And say his last name again?

GM: Iwata, I-W-A-T-A.

KL: And where was the motel that your folks bought?

GM: The hotel was on Hewitt Street, 127 South Hewitt Street. There was a white, there was a Maryknoll church down there on, I think, Third and Hewitt, it's only about a block away, block and a half away.

KL: Tell us more about it. You said it hadn't been used in a while.

GM: What?

KL: Tell us more about the hotel. You said it hadn't been used for a while when you first saw it. How did that develop?

GM: Oh, it was... I found out after I came out after the army, I thought, gee, I knew we painted the upstairs and all that, and I found that the hotel was built in 1883. There was a piece of plank in the front, the top, and it had 1883 on there. But when I moved there, it was probably still half African American. And as they moved out, my parents put in Japanese.

KL: Who were your mom's clients?

GM: Well, they were Japanese, single guys, working guys. Because I used to talk to some... I used to like to talk to all the people. Because I remember this one guy used to tell me about World War II and all that. But little by little it became Japanese and some single Caucasian men. It's just a little hotel. But I saw things that... I mean, I remember there was this one, one of the gals in that family, she had a scar on her, one of her eyes. And I was told, I said, "How did she get that?" And said, "Well, you know how she cusses all the time?" I said, "Yeah, I know." Said, "One time her mother, mom didn't want to kill her, so she just cut her." Well, no. Because I used to be sweeping the hallway all the time, and one day, these two sisters had the back room, and the older sister that had the scar, boyfriend came. He came, and I stopped, and he was yelling at her that her mother had complained she cussed and all that. And she promised him she would never cuss again and all that, he said, "Okay, because if you do..." and all that. So he said, "I'm gonna go now," and he just naturally went against the wall, and I'm standing there. And then she says that, using some cuss words, and he bring out his belt, and he passed the whip, wham, wham. When I used to go into... I used to hang out on First Street for a little while at the pool hall and all that, we were just kids, and we were the youngest group. And a few times she'd be walking, and she'd go, "Where are you going, George?" I said, "I'm going to go shoot pool." And I knew that the people on the streetcar would be, "Wow, look at that. A young Japanese kid with a tough-looking..." she was about six feet, at least six feet, you know, maybe more. And always wore a topcoat and had a scar. And there was one couple that he was a bookkeeper, his wife was really nice and cute, real fat, and every now and then she'd be dragging her husband and this old man drunk, dragging them back. And one day they move out and asked one of the black guys, "Hey, whatever happened to," I forgot their name. I said, "He slashed her throat, he caught her with some guy." Said, "Where?" "First and Alameda." I said, "Right there on First and Alameda."

KL: Did your parents, did they feel like they needed to protect themselves or you guys from the people, or were they kind of separate?

GM: They didn't bother. No, this was just the lifestyle, I guess. Because I remember I used to come home from the pool hall, and in one of the empty storefronts, there would be a guy standing there, he's gonna mug somebody, I guess. I was just a kid, so I had to pull my... "Hey, who's got a knife? Who's got a knife?" And then I used to walk across the street and all that. And finally one day I thought, they're not after me, they're after these older people. So I'd be walking in front, and I was so tempted to say, "Boo." [Laughs] Of course, I... but at first I was walking across the street. And then there was two young Japanese, I used to see them sometimes, I don't know, on TV or something, wrestling and all that. I forgot, a guy named Tojo or something. Anyway, they started walking, some of these older people, because next to us was a church, Buddhist church or something like that, or Shinto, I don't know what. But I used to see sometimes these two guys walking.

KL: Were they wrestlers even then?

GM: They were wrestlers, at least one of them was, or something like that. But they were kind of big. And they knew some kind of martial arts or wrestling, and I just heard they were... but they started walking, some of these old people, because of the mugging.

KL: Did you live in that hotel then through high school?

GM: Yeah.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 32>

KL: What was Roosevelt High School like?

GM: It was a good school. But, see, I went to Belmont High School first for about a year and a half, and then I transferred over there. And I didn't have good memories of that school.

KL: Of Belmont?

GM: No, Roosevelt?

KL: Of Roosevelt? Why not, or what were your memories?

GM: Well, no, no, you don't have to record it.

KL: Okay, if you don't...

GM: But I got caught smoking. And my two friends ran, and I said, "Hey, what's wrong with you guys?" And the vice principal comes and says, "Caught you smoking, young man, follow me." I said okay, and I walked... I'd been there only two months, and one of the gals working in the office there, I knew her, she said, "George, what happened?" So I told her, she goes, "You haven't done anything before." I said, "No." I go in there, and there's a reform school called Jackson in East L.A. There was one called Reese in the south side, it was mostly blacks. And this guy says, "You're going to Jackson." Oh, my hair just went, I said, "What?" And then he started telling me that, "Six months ago, I got fed up with all the smoking, and I made announcement. The next kid I catch is going Jackson, I don't care what they did." And I said, "I wasn't here then." And it was funny, I started almost lecturing him. I said, "You're not going to lose face and all that, no one knows me." And then he finally said, "Well, you're a nice kid." I thought, "Oh, thank god." He goes, "I'll send you to Fort Hill," that was another correctional school downtown. And here I transferred from Belmont High School on the west side, and I take the bus and I run into some guys I knew. "Hey, I thought you transferred to Roosevelt High." Said, "Yeah, I'm just going to the eye clinic on Neil Street.

KL: So you did go to Fort Hill?

GM: Yeah. And then I didn't belong there. The first day of school, the principal reads my article, and, "What are you in here for, kid?" And I'm cocky, I'm only sixteen, I said, "Don't you understand what you read?" He said, "Young man, we don't put up with that kind of talk here." Then I told him, and he goes, "My god." So I got on my hands and knees, and that's when I started losing faith with the system. He said, "I'm sorry, I can't do nothing." And he sends me to this class, and you remember the old movie star Alan Ladd? Well, this guy was a bigger Alan Ladd, and he's sitting here at the desk, and I'm real dejected, and he goes, same thing, except a little stronger. "What the hell are you in here for, kid?" I said, "You don't understand English either?" Wham, and he sees that I'm just a lamb, I'm not a tough guy. And he goes, "What?" And I get on my hands and knees, I figured, okay, maybe he can do something. He said, "I'm sorry, kid, I can't do nothing about it." And I thought, "What?" And then he said, "Sit on that far chair there." Because that class, everybody faces one way, including the teacher, so you can't see him. And I said, "What do you want me to do?" "I don't give a damn what you do," honest to god. And you're supposed to be there six weeks, I'm excited, waiting to see, have a powwow. And six week comes, nothing happens. And I go to the principal and he goes, "George, two more weeks and school lets out. If I send you back to Roosevelt, you're not going to pass." I said, "Trust me, I will." He said, "No, no, I don't want that on my conscience. You weren't supposed to be assigned -- " I said, "I know I'm the last guy that should be here, and I'm going to be here an extra two weeks?" He goes, "I'm sorry, George." But then I remember he said one time, "You know, you didn't belong here, but if I'm looking for you, I know how I find you. I just go to my window at the basketball court there, the shed, and if smoke starts coming out of there and I wait long enough, George comes walking out of there."

KL: That was the administrator at Fort Hill?

GM: Yeah.

KL: How long...

GM: That school closed after that semester.

KL: Okay. Where did you actually graduate high school?

GM: Then I went back to Roosevelt the next year. But I was bad when you're a kid, and when I was graduating, I had the annual, and I kept following this, he was the vice principal that sent me. He was a big man about 6'3" or maybe bigger . And for two weeks I couldn't catch him, and I finally thought, okay. There's a big area where there's no way you could duck. And I got behind him, he startled, and I said, "I'm graduating and I wanted you to sign my annual." He said, "Oh, of course." And George being George, while he's signing I says, "I hope you learned your lesson, sir." That's nasty of me. But I was so mad, I was a kid, I was so mad that he sent me just because he felt I made this... and then I pleaded and I said, "No one knows me, I've been here only two months," and all that. So yeah, I had a little chip on my shoulder for adults that acted that way.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 33>

KL: This is tape four, we are in an interview with George Morishita. And you graduated from Roosevelt High School, what year did you graduate?

GM: That was winter '50. I was a half year late.

KL: And what happened, what did you do with your time after you graduated?

GM: Oh my god. I just had short-term jobs for about two years until I went in the army. I worked, it was a joke, I mean, no more than two months at a time. And I think the last two jobs was the only one that I took a little bit... the last job was Farmer John packing house. I worked there for three months with a friend of mine who I understand he stayed, he got his brother and his brother's son, they moved up the ladder there. But I enjoyed that one there, there was a crew of five, three Irishmen, they're older, and learned a lot from them and all that. And then when I was in the army...

KL: Did you enlist in the army?

GM: No, I got drafted. For a while I thought, like a lot of people did, I enlisted in, I tried to enlist in the air force to get out of the army. And lucky for me, when the woman said, "Well, all you got to do is be sworn in," and I go, "Wait a minute. Give me a little time." Then I got my draft notice. I went back there to pleading, and she said, "No, we can't do anything." Then within a couple of months I thought it was good maybe just as well I didn't go in, because that would have been four years. And I tried to talk some, one or two other guys out of the air force, and they went in, and I don't know how they reacted to it. But I thought, no, better off gone in for two years instead of four. But when I was in the army, I was lucky. When I was in Japan I met this... when I was in Japan I met this, I met a lot of guys that had gone to school and all that. And one kid from Chicago, he kept saying, "George you got to go to school. What's wrong with you?" and all that. Said, you know, this and this and that. And I said, "No, it's too late for me." He said, "No, it's not too late." I said, well, the whole three years of high school I didn't study. But so I did go to school when I came out of the army. Then I dropped out and I went back when I was thirty.

KL: Are there things about your army time that you wanted to share with us that were significant? The interactions you had or places you saw?

GM: Well, in a nutshell, I guess any veteran, anybody that served in the military will agree with me that if one comes back without being injured, mentally or physically, it's a wonderful experience to be in the service in all kinds of ways. Not only you fulfill your obligation, but you see all kinds of things.

Off camera: So you were in Korea?

GM: I was in Japan and Korea. I was in Japan for about... I lucked out and I was there for almost a year. And then the outfit I joined were the 24th. And if you know that history, when the North Koreans came down, we rushed guys over there that were probably having a good time in Japan. And one of the guys with the 24th, they lost the regimental flag, General Dean got captured and all that. And they experienced where World War II bazookas would bounce off the tanks until the 3.5 came out. Well, they were in Japan for about eight months when I got there. So some of the veterans were still there. I had one funny experience, one day early on, our sergeant said, "I could send two guys to this school up north," it was winter warfare training for officers to learn skiing and all that, they wanted these guys to drive Weasels, take the officers around. So these veterans, they said, "Hey, send Jake and George." Jake was this kid from Gary, Indiana, Jake Nice. We were both the youngest ones. And so all the veterans said, "Sarge, send George and Jake to the school." It was a funny thing, that evening I went to the sergeant and I said, "You know, Sarge, why don't you take me off the list?" And he wouldn't listen to me. And I said, "I don't think I need to go to that school to get out of..." there was a big drop going to Korea at that time. On the train from Yokohama to Sendai, I meet a kid from Kansas, and we talked on the train, and he taught me how to play certain games and all that. I went to that thing up north, it was really bad. It was cold, and our little outfit was the only one that didn't get paid, so we were pawning our things. [Laughs] Anyway, I come back -- that was a good experience, too, I met people that, you know. And I come back and this guy from Kansas, he was working in headquarters, too. We didn't hang around together. And he caught me in the middle of nowhere and he said, "George," you know, we didn't have cell phone then and electronics. He said, "You didn't have to go to that school. I was the clerk that separated people," and he said, "I tried to send a message to you." I said, "You know what? I went to the sergeant that evening to say something tells me I don't have to go." He said, well, you got the [inaudible]. But yeah, this kid saw my name he said, he pulled it aside and said, "You don't have to go to the school. And I heard that you were going to that school up there, I tried..." but he said, "I was scared."

KL: What was your job responsibility in the army, or your task?

GM: Well, at the end I ended up becoming a clerk typist. I was just a rifleman, that was my training, so that would have been Far East and all of that. When I got to Japan, after we finished that training up north and came back to the base, this Captain Bush, he was the head of the court martials and all that kind of stuff, and I guess he heard that, "Hey, there's a Japanese kid in headquarters company." So they used me for errands and all that, I guess. So he called me in one day and I had the flu. I still remember, he says, "Can you type forty words a minute?" And I took typing before I got drafted thinking that might help, and I thought, nah, it's not gonna help. Then when I got stationed to that camp, I even tried for three weeks, this and that. And when he said that, I said, "I think I could learn." So I got a job as a clerk up there. And I used to wonder how in the heck, why does he keep me?" This corporal said, "There's a reason why he's keeping you." And only one time he asked me to do something. He was a scoutmaster, and all the kids that he was head of, they were kids of higher-ranking officers. So Captain Bush would take them out for treats and he would spend his own money and all that. So one day, he asked me, he said, "George, can you go down and pick up some art supplies," and this and that, he gave me a list. I said, "Sure." He said, "You know, I'm the scoutmaster," and he told me that story. I said, "Yes, I heard about that." So he said, "Can you ask the proprietor to fudge a little bit, make that bill just a few dollars..." not much, it wasn't much, it was just for about three dollars and fifty cents more than... it was something that came out to about seven something, and the guy made it for ten something. I said, "Got it." So I started walking out and he yells at me, "Corporal!" I turned around, "Yes, sir?" "What did I ask you to do?" and I told him what he asked me to do, pick up some supplies. And he says, "Okay." And so I went into town and told this proprietor the truth. I said, "My boss is a scoutmaster too, and he spends a lot of money. Can you, just a few dollars, American dollars?" He said, "Okay." So I thought all right. But then that was the only time he asked me to do anything like that.

And it was funny because when they used to have hearings or something, casual ones, they'd bring their own interpreters. And one day this lieutenant comes and sees my name, Morishita, "You speak Japanese?" And I go, "Oh, I'm sorry, sir, I don't." Then a colonel comes in, and I said, "I told your lieutenant I'm sorry." Then the captain comes with the colonel. "George, I hate to ask you this, but the colonel's in a spot." Oh my god, I was in trouble, and that colonel was mad. And it was a case where there were about five Japanese workers, blue collar workers being questioned, versus a woman, Japanese gal that was wearing a satin dress. And she spoke English. And these guys were telling me, "She's lying, she's lying." But the first witness, colonel, it was in the language of the courts and all that, and I can't translate those things verbatim. So I said, "He wants you to tell the truth," and he goes, "I know enough Japanese to know that you did not translate that verbatim, soldier, verbatim." So I told this guy real fast, so I'm going to just tell you everything, okay, anything. And he says, "Eh," and I said, "How's the weather and this and that?" "Eh." "How's your mom and all that?" Okay, he said yes. Then after the thing ended, the gal won. And then I heard the colonel telling the captain, "That damn soldier of yours, he doesn't, he can't speak Japanese worth a damn." So the captain came and says, "George," I said, "Do me a favor. No more."

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 34>

KL: What happened after your time in the army?

GM: Let's see, I got married in '56, it was two years after I came out. I struggled...

KL: Who was your wife?

GM: Sets, S-E-T-S, and her maiden name was Gushi, G-U-S-H-I. She was one of the people that were brought here from Peru for exchange with American prisoners, and you know that story.

KL: I do, but I'd like to hear her family's story. What was her family's background?

GM: Well, they were from Okinawa, and the father, he was a terrific businessman, because I think he went to Peru, he was called by his older brother, started off as a barber, he went out and cut hair. But the time they were brought here, he was, had a plantation, banana plantation. In fact, his mother, his wife told him, said, "George, I know this sounds crazy, but if we didn't, if we weren't brought up here, I don't think Papa would live very long." Because he used to be traveling to Brazil and gambling and just, he had a lot of money. But I understand that once they identified him as one of the guys, he went into hiding for about two months. Finally, he would come at night and sneak out in the morning and all that, and finally he turned himself in. And then when he found that he was not being tortured and all that in this country, he wrote to his wife. And I found out that he wrote in Japanese words, Chinese words, but using Okinawa language so that people couldn't understand. But anyway, he told his wife and kids, "Bring your kids." So my wife was the oldest at that time, she had two older brothers that were sent back to Okinawa for education, that was before the war, and so they got stuck there. And then she came, she had two younger sisters and a younger brother when they came her in July '44. And they were in Texas, was it Crystal City? And you know the story, when the war ended, we still had some Peruvian and our government said... and the Peruvian government said, "We'll take these citizens." Like the U.S., they didn't allow immigrants, Japanese immigrants at that time to be naturalized. So I understand from what I read, my wife's sister loaned me a book sometime. And some of the Japanese families went back to Japan with their kids.

KL: Most.

GM: Yeah, some of them who had adult children, they split, the adults went back to Peru. And then there was a couple of hundred that were still here, and I understand that lawyer from San Francisco, I can't think of his name, he failed in his effort to try to prevent us from being put into camp. Got the government to agree with his suggestion, and the remaining Peruvian Japanese, I think it was about February of '47, I mean, that's over a year after the war, they were allowed to stay here if they had friends or something like that.

KL: Did your wife's family, did Setsu's family work with a lawyer then? Did she talk about ever...

GM: Oh, you mean how they got out? No.

KL: How they were able to stay in the U.S.

GM: No, I understand that's how they did it, just this attorney, from what I've read, this... I forgot his name.

KL: It's Wayne Collins.

GM: Oh, okay. He supposedly made that suggestion. "Why don't you give them the choice, option to stay if they can?" And then I understand that our government said, "If you have any friends," or something like that, so, of course.

KL: How did you and Setsu meet?

GM: Well, when I came out of the army and I went to a dance, my friend Tootsie, born in Needles, and I saw I never met her before. She got real mad at me much later. One of my friends was such a gentleman, I know that he's going to get all kinds of information from her. So I called him over and he told me, "Don't say she sounds like she's from Hawaii, man, she'll get mad." So then I knew all about her, I cheated. [Laughs] I said, "I detect an accent," and she jumped all over me, said, "What? Hawaii? Who said that?" Said, "It's Latin." It sounded Mexican, but I said, "It's further south than Mexico, much further." I got all the way down to the land of the Incas and I said, "Lima." She said, "Oh, that really impressed me." Then later when we became friends, I had to tell her.

KL: Were they actually from Lima?

GM: Yeah, they were from Lima. In fact, they still have relatives there.

KL: When did you guys compare stories about your World War II experiences?

GM: You know, I don't remember. I don't know if we talked too much about that. I know that she was... oh, she was a little younger, she was, well, three years younger than me. But she had the impression... well, they lost a lot, I know that. Then she had no idea about our situation, and she just thought, oh, you had it made, and all that. She used to feel so bad. And this is crazy, when I came back from Korea, I mean, the United States looked so clean, you know what I mean, there's nothing wrong with it except it was not artistic like the old buildings and stuff like that. But I remember they used to have a hotel on Seventh and San Julian, that's at the edge of Skid Row, now it is part of Skid Row. There was a Ford dealership right across the street. And I remember telling her, of course, she's not going to listen to that, I said, "You know what? I would suggest you walk around the block, stop at every hotel, knock on the doors, any guy that come out, ask him to give you five minutes of their life." And by the time you come home, you're going to feel like, oh, man, you got no complaints. [Laughs] Because you know, they're winos and has-beens, whatever you want to call it back then.

<End Segment 34> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 35>

KL: So you came back to California, back home after your army service?

GM: Yeah, yeah. I met her two years after I came out.

KL: What did you do for work?

GM: When I first met her, I was trying to go to school then, and I dropped out after a while. So I ended up working in a dental supply house. I was aspiring to go to dental school, and I thought, well, maybe if I work in a dental supply house. And then, I was working in a dental supply house, and in '62, we moved to a brand-new apartment, it was about seven other tenants that were about my age, early '30s. And this guy next door was a cop, he was going to school. And I said, "You're going to school?" He said, "Come on, George, we're not that old," and all that. And I was two years shy of a bachelor's degree at that time. I wasn't shooting for a bachelor's before, I thought you could get into dental school with just an AA. So that's when I decided to go back to Cal State L.A. to get my undergraduate. Then I remember the first day after I got my undergraduate degree, I took a class in, I graduated class. And I used to take a lot of notes when I went back to school. I used to tell the younger students, "I'm not trying to ace the class, I'm just trying to keep up with you young guys." But anyway, that day I came home from school, that class, I threw my tablet, and my wife goes, "It's blank." I said, "I know. I don't need to go to graduate school." [Laughs] That was enough.

Off camera: What was you major?

GM: Sociology, general sociology. Yeah, because at that time, since I was a life science major before, pre-dent, where one plus one is two. And I took a course in psychology and I said, "These guys are trying to make a science out of mind, you can't do that." Then I took a course in sociology and I said, "Okay, they seem to be just not sure, but they were all [inaudible] this and that." So there was less resources in the sociology department, but I thought, okay, I feel more comfortable in that. Although, of course, psychology may be more appropriate to our life, I don't know.

KL: Did you -- I was just gonna kind of ask for highlights of that.

GM: And then I moved to Arizona because my wife has asthma and all that. And this one lady in south Pasadena, she and her family came from Detroit originally. And I got to know her, she was managing some apartment. And one day I told her, "Grace, I can't stand L.A. anymore." Because my wife couldn't handle the moisture. Anytime we went to the beach, we had to come home as soon as the sun would set. And then I was going bananas in my mind. And she said, "Go to Tucson." "Isn't that where John Wayne chases Indians?" She goes, "Damn you, George, no, it's a city there." [Laughs] And we went there, and I didn't know it at that time, but the copper mines which has, the major industry in southern Arizona at that time, maybe still yet, they were experiencing seven month strike. So the skies were bluer than even the natives had ever seen it. And I was driving with my son, and this peak Picacho Peak, that's the only place where there was a Civil War skirmish, about fifty miles. And I asked my son, "Did you ever see a purple mountain, Corey?" And he goes, "No," and I explained to him why it's purple and all that. And after I moved there, I started telling, "Guys, hey, smog." And they go, "George, we don't have smog here. That's L.A." I said, "You're talking to an expert, okay? That's smog, you damn fool." But anyway, I got there and I started working on vocational rehab, working with the handicapped. Because at that time, you didn't need a graduate degree, just undergraduate, some experience and all that. And I guess I had worked, in L.A. I had worked for the social service department or the old welfare department, I worked there for about three years before I went to Tucson. So then I started working in rehab. And then about 1980, my brother-in-law talked me into managing a hot dog restaurant.

KL: That was still in Tucson?

GM: Yeah, that was 1980, and then we did that for about seven years. And then the last job I had was working with people that lost their jobs because of business closure, foreign competition and all that. It was a great program. I was already in my mid-fifties by that time.

<End Segment 35> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 36>

KL: You guys have kids, too, is that right?

GM: Two, no grandkids, though.

KL: Tell us who your kids are.

GM: Yeah, my son is fifty-three... fifty-four, excuse me. And then my daughter will be fifty-three this November. He lives in Hawaii, Kauai, that northern island. And then my daughter lives in the city, San Francisco. Two nice places to visit, I think. Yeah, I think after their mother died they came to Tucson, and I said, "All right, you guys, I'm not going to even buy me a grandchild, don't worry about it." [Laughs]

KL: When was that, when she died?

GM: She died in '99. Yeah, so it was about 2000 they came one time. I wanted the pleasure of spoiling a grandchild, you know. Because when you see all your... my mom and my father-in-law.

KL: Did you ever talk, or have you talked with your kids about your Manzanar experiences?

GM: You know, I think I shared a little bit. Because I know my daughter, there was a book written by a Chinese gal, a Chinese American gal, The Rape of Nanking. And my daughter read that, and she called me up from San Francisco, and I still remember she said, "Dad, I know you told me so much about the Japanese. But still, reading this book, I'm almost ashamed to admit I'm Japanese, that's how bad it is." And she said, "I know you told me all those things." I didn't pull no punches or whatever, I knew. So we might have talked a little bit about camp, but not that much. I know that my nephews and nieces, they said, "You need to record what you remember."

KL: Aha, they're on our side.

GM: But I take off, so I said...

KL: Well, we'd be glad to share, we'll send you a copy of the tape and we'd be glad to share it with them, too, if they want copies. Were you involved at all in the redress movement that occurred?

GM: Yes, yeah.

KL: What was your involvement with that?

GM: Oh, no, only thing is I got the money. I was involved in getting that for my wife in a way, because she's from Peru and not all Peruvians got it. And around that time, my mother-in-law was living with us, and I saw in the Pacific Citizen that it said on there, "Any Peruvians, if their green card shows that they were admitted July '44 or sooner," and I said, "Mama, let me see your green card." It said July '44. So I got the paper going for her, she got it, I found out. My wife, 1956, I said, "This is baloney." That's when we got married. Just by chance, my sister Jean, older sister, and she was living in San Francisco by this time, and she met a Peruvian lady by this age, and she connected me with this lady. And this lady was mad at the JACL. She said they just thought about, they didn't think about us and all that. And I forgot the head of the redress money, this guy from Washington, he made the rounds talking about it to the various Japanese groups all over, and supposedly when he came to San Francisco, this lady raised her hand, and he called her down, and he showed her exactly how to do it. So she told me what to do. I went down to the federal building in Tucson and got all these forms and filled it out, and my wife got it. I still remember that. Because they would ask questions, and I would just say, "What's wrong with you guys? Why are you asking that for? She couldn't have been a daughter at that time."

KL: Yeah, sent over.

GM: But then I found out, yeah, because my kid brother-in-law, when he was in Tucson with his mother at that time before my mother-in-law moved, and we read that article that it was approved, he says, "Damn you, George, if you guys get twenty, we should get forty." I said, "You know, Pete, you're right."

KL: Yeah, I was gonna ask what their response was to the settlement.

GM: Well, my kid brother-in-law, he just said, "If you get twenty, we should get forty," and I said, "You're right, Pete."

KL: What did Sets and your mother-in-law think?

GM: Well, they got it, so Sets and mother, I found out after I initiated the papers and then she moved to San Francisco to live with her other daughter, then I found out she got it. And then with this lady in San Francisco helping me, guiding me, and then Sets got it. Then I found out that Peruvians didn't get it otherwise. I thought, "Oh, my god." I'm not very good, I didn't go around telling people how to do it. There's not that, whatever you call that, organization of something. I don't know to this day if they all got it or not.

KL: Some people refused it because they didn't think it was adequate. Like your brother-in-law said, they wanted to keep working --

GM: But I read that they were offered five thousand.

KL: Right.

GM: Well, I could see where some of them might resent that. I mean, they were not even Americans, I mean, they were...

<End Segment 36> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 37>

KL: Have you been back to the site of Manzanar at all as an adult?

GM: Twice.

KL: Tell us about those visits.

GM: Well, the first one was, I think it was just the year before the thing was...

KL: Around 2003 or so?

GM: Somewhere in there. I took my daughter and my niece, and I was still living in Arizona, and I found Block 5. And I couldn't find the kendo place because the trees were all gone. And then none of the apple trees were around. But I found the foundation, they had those things, and I found the toilet holes and all that. And I found another set, I said, "Okay, this was the women's and that was the men's." And from the men's, you look, and there's Building 11 right there, and then I was Apartment 3. And I said my friend Eddie lived in Apartment 1. And then one time I was at the cemetery where they had that, all the activities.

KL: At the pilgrimage?

GM: Yeah. And then there was a family, the woman, she was with her kids, and she might have been a little younger than me. And she was having a hard time, they were asking her some things, and so I started telling them, because from what I remember, said, okay, over there was Bairs Creek and this and that. And then I was pointing out what was here.

KL: Were you with anybody else in 2003?

GM: Well, I took my daughter and niece, yeah. And we just walked, Frank or whatever, the superintendent, he said, "Oh, yeah, you could walk up there." So we went, and they had some signs, Block 11 or something, I said, "Okay, we were right next door do that." And I saw those little concrete slabs out there, and there were toilet holes, drainage holes, and I said, "Oh, okay." And I looked around and I said, "Okay, this is the women's."

KL: Did your daughter and your niece have questions for you or what was your conversation like?

GM: I don't remember that too much, but it was nice. I went the following year just with my daughter. And that was the one that...

KL: Was that when you were at the pilgrimage, or this was a private...

GM: No, both times I went, but I went on my own car. But one time I went to Independence, there was, yeah, this gal from the newspaper told me, "Don't go by bus because you'll miss a lot of things." So my daughter and I, so that must have been the second year. We went to Independence...

<End Segment 37> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 38>

KL: Was it the year the visitors center opened at Manzanar, the 2004 pilgrimage?

GM: Yeah, that was the second time I went, so I went '03 and '04. And I saw the newspaper gal that gave me the instruction, and she was talking to a guy, a little older guy, he was one of the "no-no" guys I found out. I just got there when he went to, he went to the bad prison, what is that federal penitentiary?

KL: There was Santa Fe and Missoula.

GM: No, this was a...

Off camera: Leavenworth?

GM: Leavenworth. He was one of the guys that went to Leavenworth. And I got there just in time to say that four or five guys jumped him. But he said, "I knew judo or something like that," he said, "they never got me on the ground, I was almost naked," and all that. You know, he was an older guy. And he said, "Then they put me in the hole," and not the other guys that jumped him. So I remember I just went there just when he finished saying that. So I said, "I'd like to shake your hand," and I remember shaking his hand. I told my daughter, "Here's one of the guys that," I said, "I didn't know about them when I was a kid. I read that in the Pacific Citizen and I got real angry. I didn't write to the Pacific Citizen, but they were... when I found out that they were calling these guys traitors and all that kind of stuff during the war. Because JACL was doing everything to prove our loyalty, so they found these guys... but I was telling my friend in Tucson, this non-Japanese guy, I said, "Hey, I've always been proud of the 442nd, but now that I hear about these guys, I'm just as proud of them." I mean, come on.

KL: When did you start hearing about that "no-no" position? Was it around 2004?

GM: No, it was way before that. I was in Tucson, and the Pacific Citizen, it came out at that time, there were some people in the JACL that were trying to get the committee to reconcile with these guys. I guess they never "forgave them." And the first Heart Mountain reunion I came to with my ex-wife, my second wife, her oldest brother was one of those guys that went to, not the bad prison, but he went to Washington, he said. And while we were sitting down before the thing started, at least three guys separately would walk in, and they stopped, and Kay would get up and they'd talk, I couldn't hear what they were saying. And then as the other guy kept walking back to where he was going, Kay would say, "He was one of us guys." But about two or three guys came by that evening, and they never talked loud, and Kay didn't introduce me, but after they walked away, he said he was one of those guys.

KL: One of the resisters to the draft?

GM: Yeah, and they ended up in the prison in Washington or Leavenworth. But Kay was not, he said the group leaders and the real bad guys, I guess, they went to Leavenworth.

KL: Who was Kay?

GM: Kay was my brother-in-law, my second wife. And he was, I guess, old enough to get drafted at that time, he'd be eighteen or something, and he was one of the resisters that ended up in prison. But when I first read about them some years earlier, it made me angry that, gee, the JACL, you mean they're saying... because when I was in the army, I remember that court, I was just a clerk, but there was a regimental artist, regimental writer, you know, and the writer would send letters to towns in the U.S. about how the son is doing, whatever town from the Midwest, wherever. Well, these guys are casual kind of guys in Korea. And one day a master sergeant came in to our office, and I could see right away that he didn't like what he saw, guys with their legs up and all that. And he saw my nametag, Japanese. I found out that he knew some of the 442nd guys, and then he tells me, "Oh, when did you get your PFC stripe?" "Last month." He goes, oh, three months you'll come up to corporal?" I said, "No, no, my sergeant won't put me up," because I was in the security platoon. And now that I'm working here, he said in all fairness -- because he had a roster that the name goes up as you become and old timer, and then when you're the top you're up for a promotion. And he would put my name underneath. I said, "That's okay." So he said, "Would you like to be a corporal?" I said, "Well, yeah." So I get a corporal stripe, I come in and he tells me to straighten these guys out. And like a dummy I said, "Sergeant, I'm just a soldier. But these guys are artists, creators, you can't do that to creative people." And he got real mad and he threw that 442nd at me, that he knew some of the guys, and I was still a kid, and I just cussed him out. I said, look, I'm real proud of my... I said older brothers, I didn't say brothers. I said, "I'm real proud of my older brothers, but don't you ever pull that crap on me." I said, "I'm never gonna ask you to prove that you're an American, don't ever ask me to prove that same to you." My name was mud. [Laughs]

KL: Did Kay talk to you ever about his reasons for resisting, or how he came to that decision?

GM: No, I didn't go into that so much. I just... I hate to say the word assume, but I'm always trying to put myself, and at that time, he's eighteen or whatever they were, and when I was thirteen, like I said, my friend said, "You know, we're American." I said, "Yeah, I know." Then I come out of camp and I see that ration cards and I got hurt that I couldn't participate. Here's this guy, you're in the camp and then... because I was telling some people in Tucson who didn't quite understand that history, I said I think the JACL got our government to give it a try, to let the Japanese prove their loyalty, so they said they're gonna allow 1,500 for the mainland and 1,500 from Hawaii. And they had no trouble getting 1,500 from Hawaii, but here, I said, "Look, they're behind barbed wires." And then when the Japanese guys were going for broke, I understand the higher ups said, "Damn, they're good fighters," so they started drafting. I said, these guys were not asked to volunteer, they were being drafted. That's why they went to prison, because they resisted. They didn't resist volunteering. Because I know I role played one time in Tucson, I met this guy Bob, he was my age, about thirty-seven, he had two kids, he never met a Japanese guy. And he said, "Hey George, how did you feel when you got into camp?" I said, "Hey, Bob, I was just a kid, but let's role play." And I started talking about how he belonged to a certain group from Europe, and there was maybe a couple hundred thousand of you guys on the East Coast and all that. And when I got to the point about... so then we announced these guys were going to go to camp. And he just cussed me out. So I said, "Okay, maybe if you had somebody who was our age then, he might have answered like you, if he's American like you, and we're born and raised here, you have a certain thought. You don't think like a European, you think like here." You know what I mean? You're kind of cocky, oh, I hate to use the word cocky, but... but then I said, "But you asked me, I was only ten to fourteen." But that was kind of, I remember that, that was back in the early '70s or late '60s, we just, we're just role playing.

KL: So your second wife's family was at Heart Mountain?

GM: Yeah, they were in Heart Mountain.

KL: What was her name?

GM: Midori, M-I-D-O-R-I, last name was Yoshida, Y-O-S-H-I, D like David, A. She had two older brothers, and the oldest one was the one that resisted going into service. I think he was eighteen at that time.

<End Segment 38> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 39>

KL: How did you get to Las Vegas where you're living now?

GM: By marrying her. [Laughs] She lived here, she went to Tucson, we were both in the mid-seventies. She was, "I'm not going to move to Tucson," I said, "Why not?" "It's too country, like you." I said, "Hey, I'm from L.A." "No, you're too country." I have a friend in Tucson, he cussed me out, "Stupid, what the hell, why don't you guys live in a neutral place?" I said, "Where?" "Tucson." Because my friend that lives here, he moved here some years ago and he said, "Oh, yeah, when you guys moved to Tucson," he said, because he was stationed during the Korean War briefly in Fort Huachuca, which is southeast Arizona. He said, "Man, I heard that you were moving over there. I said, "I'm just that way." And then when I moved here, two weeks after I moved here, it's not because I wanted to move here. I said, "I like it." Tucson was a great place. I mean, the first day I go to work, I'm wearing a suit. July the 16th, this was the old welfare department, I worked there for about five months. And I knock on the supervisor's, "Mrs. Bartlett? George." She jumps up, grabs my wrist, pulls me out. And all the caseworkers' desks were together, six of them. "All right you guys, this is the way I want you guys to start dressing." I see cowboy boots, Levis, bolo ties. And I thought, boy, they must think, "What kind of monkey?" I said, "Oh, no, you're never going to see me wear the suit again." And those guys invited me to lunch, I said okay. And then monsoon starts about a week later, I'm comfortable now. I've been in Korea and Japan, I saw how stupid the GIs looked, all drenched, wet, and the Japanese guys are wearing getas and, you know. So I come to work and these damn cowboys, they go, "What the hell?" I had galoshes, raincoat, umbrella. And they insisted that I can't wear those galoshes, I'm not going to, "You're not gonna go to lunch with me." I said, "Damn cowboys." That was funny. But they were great.

KL: Yeah, you've been around.

GM: But anyway, yeah. So people are nice, yeah, I think.

KL: Are you part of any kind of Japanese American cultural groups or anything?

GM: No.

<End Segment 39> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 40>

KL: Well, my last kind of big question unless you guys have anything, just what, you know, if somebody watches this, either if next week a seventeen year old kid from Ohio who has never heard of this watches this, or fifty years...

GM: I hope none of my friends see it, they'll probably say, "Oh, George, that's embarrassing seeing you."

KL: I don't think so. I think you're a great observer, and I think you've seen a lot, and it's really wonderful to have heard your recollections. I think you're a good thinker, too, I think probably more of your dad rubbed off on you than you realize as far as observation and processing. But what, if somebody does watch this who doesn't know you, what do you want them to know about your experience?

GM: Gosh, I don't know. What do you mean by that?

KL: What about your life, or you can think about it in terms of your experience of Japanese American removal in Manzanar, or just your life more broadly, what do you want to pass on? What do you think is the...

GM: Oh, no, Manzanar was just a memorable era of my life, three years plus, and it's a wonderful experience, everything else. I have some fond memories, like in the army in Japan, and then Korea, too. I was lucky I didn't see any combat. Like in Korea I talked to a prisoner of war, that was great. It was funny, right after the armistice was signed and we were sending, I was stationed in the Kojido, and was a prison island. And we were sending the coins back, and me and the sergeant were sitting down on time on deck, smoke coming out of anther ship, and we got the word that it was a female prison ship. They were raising all kind of hell and this captain opens the gate to shut 'em up, and they didn't they jumped him. They didn't kill him, but then this sergeant was saying, "What a dumb..." I said, "I know, he doesn't know how girls fight?" So anyway, then the guys on our ship, you see movies like John Wayne, the LSTs, they land and the front opens up, and the guys, tanks come out. Well, they just converted that, put two-by-fours and barbed wire. And I'd even just watch them sometimes, and they all have to sit. And if one guy was too tired and he had to lie down, about half a dozen guys had to stand up. And then it was August, hot, and then when the food came, the guy would put his M-1 aside, open up the gate and say something like, "Hey, you son of a... come and get your food," and they could jump 'em, and they can't take the ship. But anyway, one day this South Korean soldier who was the interpreter -- and I felt sorry for him at first because he was the only non-GI and I used to talk to him. But anyway, one day he and one of the captains from the ship went down to listen to these North Korean prisoners. And I was up on deck and listening, I couldn't hear anything they were saying, but I did hear the captain say, use a cuss word, and he walked away. I said, "Oh, no," you know. So I went down there and I asked this one prisoner something, and he yells, "Who's your boss?" And then he yelled, and this middle aged man, they made room for him, he sees me and he says, "You're Nisei." "Yeah." He said, "Your country put you in a concentration camp." I remember he said that. I said, "I know, I know, but we're not here for that." I don't know how long we talked. I might have lied some, I said, "You know, we're stupid. We don't know how to handle prisoners, we're new, we're a young country," and all that. But I said, "In another day, you guys will get off the ship, get on a train, you go home." And I said, "Please, can't you just bear it and all that?" And then I remember he said, "Come back in a couple hours, I'll talk to the men." So when I came back, real nervous, he goes, "George, because you're of Japanese descent, and you showed consideration for us, the guys said we'll do ask you ask." I fell on my knees. [Laughs] And I don't know if he was pulling my leg, but I remember I fell on my knees and said, "Oh, thank you, thank you." I remember that. So that's the closest I got to a prison, I mean, in North Korea, thank god.

Off camera: That's a great story.

GM: But that was funny when he said, "Your country put you in a concentration camp." I remember even telling him, "Yeah, we're probably the best propaganda, we probably lied more than anyone else, but we are still number one," and this and that. So a lot of that is based on truth. And sure, we exaggerate like crazy. I mean, I didn't know what I was talking about, just trying to, he's talking about this and that, and I won't deny that, yeah, we probably did that kind of stuff. But I just kept saying, "Please." I had no idea how long it was going to take for them to get home. But it was really warm for me when he said... because I know how the Japanese were, I used to ask the Korean people, I couldn't believe it, how the Japanese were to them. I mean, not all the Japanese, I'm sure. They're worse than how we are.

KL: It was good for all involved in that incident that you were the person you were at that place. I want to thank you for us personally for letting us hear all these stories, and from the --

GM: I apologize for talking so much, god.

KL: You're great. Sometimes, not very often, but sometimes you'll have to encourage people to kind of give more details and share more and tell more of what it looked like or what it felt like or whatever, and you are very eloquent, I think, and I really, I feel privileged to have gotten to hear you, and I know the National Park Service really values this interview and I suspect that others who watch it will to, so thank you very much. I'm so glad you did.

GM: Oh, thank you guys.

<End Segment 40> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.