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KL: So did you ever hear anything from your grandfather about what his time away was like?

JO: No.

KL: You said he was in Missoula for most of it?

JO: That is my one regret. My grandfather, although he came over at age nineteen with just Japanese, and the education that he got in Japan, he spoke, at the time that I would have been able to ask him, he spoke Spanish and English. And I could have asked him anything and asked him, and I didn't. And I just regret not asking him about what happened in Missoula, Montana, and how he ever came over to Los Angeles and what he did and how he made his fortune. I mean, I'm assuming a lot from what my mother said and all of that, but nothing is really from what I learned from him directly, how he was able to buy all this property. Did he put it in his children's names, like because of the alien land law?

KL: But those were enacted in the teens, so he may have...

JO: No. When he came in 1899, he had to work his way... he leased property, and he was in Pasadena then, that's where my mother was born, Pasadena. But that was 1909, he could have had property then. But the other property that he had, he had property on Normandie (Ave.) and Thirty-fifth Street. His home was Twenty-seventh Street. And something that I really did not know enough information about. Even my father, I could have asked him more. I did get a lot of information from my father, but my grandfather is the missing link. And, of course, his papers, I figured if they interviewed him like they interviewed my father and got his information about his grammar school and high school, where he went and all of that, if I had that kind of information about my grandfather, that would be really helpful. But I can't find any of it. Went through Freedom of Information Act, camps, all sorts of...

KL: Yeah, channels.

JO: ...channels. And whatever file they referred to whenever the person that I had looking for me at the facility over in Laguna Hills, said all the folders were empty, not a paper there.

KL: That's weird. We should talk more about that maybe afterwards, because I don't know, there might be some other...

JO: You know Aiko Herzig the researcher? I asked her if she could help, but I don't think she can. Because I've tried all the channels that she knows and got nowhere. So the only other one that I was told that it would be the immigration files.

KL: Yeah, the alien case files stuff is what I was thinking of.

JO: Yeah, the case files.

KL: But Aiko Herzig would probably be knowledgeable about those. One more question about Manzanar and then if there's anything you want to add before your move, and my last question about it is what were nighttimes like at Manzanar? We don't hear as much about that.

JO: Nighttime? Well, nighttime I had to go to sleep, you know, I was young, and my mother made me go to sleep because I had to get up to go to school. But there was nothing to do at night, that's the other thing. After you eat, you play a little bit, and it gets dark and you go to bed, or you, maybe you have to take a bath or a shower. I don't even remember when I took baths or showers, whether they were in the morning or the evening or the afternoon. But we all had that Japanese ofuro.

KL: Oh, you did?

JO: Yeah.

KL: In Block 12?

JO: We had that, so we would take a shower and then go to the ofuro and get nice and warm, then walk back to your unit.

KL: How did people decide what times people would be able to use the ofuro and stuff? Is there any kind of system?

JO: I think... I don't really know if it was a schedule or anything. I think if you just were there and took a shower, you could go in, and the water was always warm, which was kind of amazing considering how they had to heat it up.

KL: I guess I lied, I do have one more question about Manzanar, and that's, you know, people sometimes talk about their families, either bonds kind of strengthening, or more often kind of dissipating because of the living conditions. What effect do you think Manzanar had on your family dynamic?

JO: Well, because we were so young, that did not affect our family. Our family always went to eat together, my mother and my sister and myself, we never went running around with friends to eat. And we always stayed together, my mother was very strict about that, and made me eat my food. My sister would eat anything, and I would not. I was very stubborn. If I didn't want to take a bite of food, I would sit there for an hour, she would make me sit there and finally give up because I wouldn't eat. So anyway, it didn't affect our family at all.

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