Densho Digital Archive - Rose Tanaka Interview (denshovh-trose

<Begin Segment 24>

AL: So your brother Tom is in the 442nd while you guys were in camp, right? What kind of correspondence did you have with him? Did you know where he was, what he was doing?

RT: I knew very little. We felt so isolated. That's the one thing about camp, because the mail service was bad and all that, it was just like we were cut off from the outside.

[Interruption]

AL: Did you get any correspondence from him at all? Did your parents get correspondence from him?

RT: You know, I don't remember that we got much correspondence from anybody. Sort of like a big blank.

AL: Do you know if your parents followed any of the activities of the 442nd, or were they...

RT: If they did, they didn't say very much.

AL: Did you know Floyd's family at the time that his brother John was killed?

RT: I must have known him, yes. I remember I knew Floyd, he had been in Denver, I knew his family. And word got in, I think it was in January 1945 that news came, and I remember his mother and his father. Yes, his father was still living, and he passed away right afterwards. But I remember his sister Carol and the mother, they went to Arlington Cemetery where he was buried. Yes, and Floyd was already back, I guess he was just being sent to the European front, because he was a later inductee into the army, and he went after John was killed, actually, to Europe. I read about it in his notes there.

AL: Did he volunteer, or was he drafted?

RT: He was drafted.

AL: So could you give us a little bit of background about Floyd? I know that some will be in his writeup, but as far as when and where he was born, where he grew up, any sort of sketch of his life?

RT: Yes, well, he was born in Colusa, California, and then his family went down to Los Angeles a few years before the evacuation, and were living down there. But he grew up in the farm country. And then, but that's about all I can tell you.

AL: And he was class of '43 in Manzanar?

RT: Class of '43, yes. I think he had done, he had spent one semester before he got to Manzanar or something. I don't know, it's getting very hazy here.

AL: Do you know if he worked at the camp at all?

RT: Yes. Actually, he actually worked at the hospital, he was an orderly at the hospital.

AL: Do you know, did he work there during the riot?

RT: If he did, he didn't talk about it much.

AL: Because there was actually a whole group, there were several hundred people that gathered up there during the riot. So some people have recalled that if they were working there that night.