<Begin Segment 17>

KL: This is a harder question to ask and I'm sure to answer, too, but you lost your grandfather, I think, in the camp.

WI: Yeah, out of broken heart. He just, he got sickly, and then I guess it was like he just sort of gave up. I'm not really too sure his age, I have to look at my uncle's notes, but he was fairly young.

KL: What was the effect on your grandmother and on other members of your family?

WI: Oh, well, it was quite devastating, being the patriarch, and with five offsprings. And so my cousin, which was my mother's older sister, they were in Amache, and they were allowed to come to Topaz to attend the funeral. And I remember that very vividly because that was the first funeral that I have ever attended and actually seeing someone that's passed on in the coffin. And I don't think back then the dressing up of a corpse was very good, because he looked dead. I remember that, like, oh my gosh, that's not my grandfather at all. And then we had that long procession to the town of Delta where they put him on the train and shipped him to a mortuary in Salt Lake City. And then... so I remember I couldn't swallow, my throat just... so I held my saliva from the funeral, and that long drive all the way to Delta, and then when we finally got there, I sort of snuck away and I had a mouthful of saliva, my throat was just so constricted. So that was an odd reaction. So then thereafter, when I had to attend other funerals, I was afraid that I was going to experience the same type of thing, but it was fine. Because my grandmother passed away and went to the funeral and I was fine. But yeah, it's strange how, as a kid, certain things just sort of have a profound effect.

KL: Was his body sent back to...

WI: Yeah, it was sent back... from Salt Lake it was cremated, and then his ashes is now up in San Francisco at the Japanese cemetery up there.

KL: Yeah, it sounds like it was very affecting for you to have that kind of physical reaction, and it sounds like an affectionate relationship.

WI: Yeah, it was.

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