<Begin Segment 5>

KL: What are your recollections of Terminal Island?

MS: All kinds, but what in particular...

KL: Yeah, let's start with the house that you lived in. Would you describe for us where you lived and what it looked like?

MS: Okay, Terminal Island was a community, and it was almost like a Japanese village or a town. I believe it was over ninety-five percent of the people who emigrated or immigrated to this country from a prefecture by the name of Wakayama. And I'm assuming that the people from that prefecture, many must have been fishermen, and the early immigrants got engaged in fishing for a living.

KL: How did your folks fit into that being from Shizuoka? Was there any way that separated them, or was that really important?

MS: Not really. But the funny thing I remember is that after we moved to Terminal Island, the kids all picked up on the dialect of the Wakayama people which were spoken by the majority of the residents there. However, since my parents were from Shizuoka, they still maintained their, the way they spoke Japanese. So even today, I feel more comfortable in that dialect than the, more the Tokyo type of dialect that my father and my mother used to speak in.

KL: You're more comfortable with the Wakayama style?

MS: Yeah, because as a youngster I spoke that dialect.

KL: Did your mother speak much English? You said your dad learned...

MS: Not too much, not too much, for whatever reason. She never became fluent in English.

KL: Did she have communication difficulties in Terminal Island because of her different Japanese?

MS: Not really, not really. Of course, at home we spoke nothing but Japanese, and it's only when I went with my friends that, when I spoke to them, I spoke in the dialect that was being used by almost everybody.

KL: That's kind of neat that you had those three different languages or dialects.

MS: Yeah. However, that was... I used to be quite fluent in Japanese until the age of thirteen when the war broke out, and almost everything became English from thereon.

KL: What about the home that you lived in? Would you describe the house and where it was and stuff?

MS: Oh, yeah. Sorry, I forgot about that.

KL: No, no, that was great. I was going to get to there.

MS: The houses were like a barrack-type building. These were built by the canneries for their employees, so the houses were rented from the canneries. And they were lined up like a typical barrack building, in rows, and constructed mostly in wood. And many were shared by more than one family.

KL: Was yours?

MS: Yes. I think we had another family living in the same house.

KL: How many rooms were there?

MS: I think about six. There was a hallway from the front door to the back door, and the rooms were divided on each side of the hall.

KL: Did you share some space with that other family?

MS: No. The families were just, independently used certain rooms. And I think we occupied about one, two, three or four of the six rooms.

KL: Do you know which cannery owned that house?

MS: Pardon me?

KL: Do you know which cannery owned that house?

MS: I'm not too sure which one it was. I think there were, I know there were more than one, but today I don't know what the names were at that time.

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