<Begin Segment 27>

AL: What was it like to leave Manzanar, like the day you left?

RT: Well, it was sort of a celebration because several of the people in my class were also leaving. And so I wasn't the only one who benefited from this, so there were a number of people from my class who left.

AL: And did you go... how did you get to Denver?

RT: Well, there was a bus that took me to Reno, and in Reno the train brought me here to Denver. I keep saying "here" like I was in Denver. [Laughs]

AL: We can pretend. All the hotels look alike. So how did you start... I mean, this is, you came to Manzanar without any friends, had to start anew there, you go to Denver, start anew there. You had mentioned on the phone that Floyd's family had also helped you -- this is before you married him -- helped you. How did you connect with them in Denver?

RT: Well, Floyd's family was already living in Denver. His mother, but then his father passed on, so his mother and his two sisters. And because they were friends with my sister, the two sisters worked at the hospital in Manzanar, were good friends with my sister, and when I got to Denver, they knew that I was a hungry person. [Laughs] You don't have any money, you know... I told people I went to all the meetings because they always have refreshments at the meetings. [Laughs]

AL: What were his sisters' names that worked at the hospital?

RT: It was Carol and then there was Ruth. Ruth was older, and there's quite a story about Ruth, too. I took her material to the Japanese American National Museum, because she never married. And she went into the... became a U.S. Army nurse. She went to the same nursing school as my sister in Colorado Springs, and then she became a nurse, she worked... she became a polio nurse, and then she was a bit older, and she was right on the edge of the age limit, but she did get in and she became an army nurse. And they wanted her because polio epidemic was on, and her skills were very important, and she worked all over. She worked twenty years for the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, and she retired as a lieutenant colonel, and she was a very accomplished nurse.

AL: Is she still living?

RT: Oh, no, she died four years ago. She was up in her nineties.

AL: And her name is Ruth Tanaka?

RT: Ruth A. Tanaka, yes.

AL: So was she an army nurse during the war?

RT: Not during World War II, no. She went to the Korean War, she was stationed in Korea for a while. And then she served in Tokyo army hospital, she served in Frankfurt, Germany, so she had a wide overseas experience as an army nurse, received many citations.

AL: And you said your brother Henry also went into the military.

RT: Yes, just for a short while. So he didn't have a long history with them.

AL: Did Tom get out before the end of the war or did he stay in the 442nd?

RT: I think he... I don't remember. I think he must have finished out his term with them. Yeah, he became quite skilled in electronics, and was working in a company that... in the East Coast, in Newark, New Jersey, I believe, he had a career. And he worked actually, it turns out -- and I didn't know this, my family never talked about things much. My mother once mentioned that he worked on the Mercury capsule that was the first space capsule that went out.

AL: You had mentioned the other day -- and I'm sorry this is kind of random tidbits, but you had mentioned the other day that your mother had a nervous breakdown.

RT: Oh, yes. Well, coming out after she... we got back to Denver, and my mother was pretty high-strung anyhow, but she had a, pretty much a total nervous breakdown after they moved to Ordway. And I know that one quarter I stopped going to school and went down to help her. Then after that my sister who had finished her nurse's training went down and helped her out. But she recovered fairly well, but she was never the same person again. But having experienced the camp life and all the stresses, it was too much for her.

AL: So you think it was directly attributable?

RT: Oh, yes.

AL: When did your folks pass away?

RT: Oh, my...

AL: I mean a decade, sixties, seventies...

RT: Early '80s, late '80s and early '90s. My father was ninety-four, and then about three years later my mother passed away.

AL: Okay.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.