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AL: Did your father, that accusation of him being an inu, did that follow him through camp or did it go away?

GW: I think it followed him through camp, because other internees that came out of North Dakota came back to Manzanar, so I'm sure that the story is still there, that they brought back with them.

AL: Of course, one of the things that every family there dealt with was the "loyalty questionnaire." And I know in the film it shows him going up against the character who is the fictional Joe Kurihara. Do you know, did he have any interactions over that publicly?

GW: As far as I know, no. As far as I know. I don't remember anything about the "no-no" questions, what happened or what transpired. My memory of that wasn't... I wasn't concerned. I didn't know the meaning of it really.

AL: How did your life change when your dad came back? You're talking about the abuse, but was it... I hate to say better or worse with him or without him in camp, but just your own daily life, how did that change when he came back?

GW: Well, you know, when I really think about it, it didn't change my life or my feelings at all. Because he was gone, and he was never there when I was growing up as far as I was concerned, because he's always fishing. It's not like you have a dad that went to work at eight and came home, work eight hours and came home, five to eight or that kind of a nine to five job. So family life that I remember with Dad is only when, weekends or maybe on holidays. But I was living my own life, I was gone all day.

AL: Did you and Jeanne socialize much in camp, or were you in different groups?

GW: No, we had different groups. I'm gone, I got my guys to play with. She went with what she had to do.

AL: So when you were there in April, we were talking a little bit about, I think it was Sister Bernadette?

GW: Yeah.

AL: And I was wondering if you could tell the story about Sister Bernadette and your dad, and just their relationship and interactions.

GW: [Laughs] Well, Sister Bernadette was getting my grandmother, trying to get her baptized, you know, going to catechism and all that stuff, and my mother was doing that, too. But she wanted to get Dad to go into the Catholic religion, but Dad was a devoted... I guess, I think he was a Buddhist, and she couldn't change his mind at all. So that was a conflict there.

AL: In the book it talks about her coming over to talk to him about Jeanne, because Jeanne wanted to...

GW: Go.

AL: Go, and there's a showdown between her and him. Did that really happen?

GW: I don't know. I don't recall that at all. I didn't know that Jeanne was really into that, going to take catechism and all that. But I had my own world I was living.

AL: Yeah. In the book she talks about seeing a little girl having her first communion, how she wanted to do that, have the pretty little white dress and be the center of attention. So I'm not sure how much it had to do with theology versus being the center -- I don't know. But it's just interesting because there is a lot of, between the book and the movie and just curious, what things are real and what things are Hollywood. Because in the movie it shows that you have a brother who goes into the military and gets killed. Did you have brothers in the military?

GW: Yeah, Woody. Woody was... in fact, this is the surprising thing about it, here we were in camp, Woody had two kids I think, and he was drafted. He didn't volunteer, he was drafted. And they put him in the CIC, Counterintelligence Corps. He was telling about his training back east and I forgot what the name of the camp was, but he was playing a Japanese soldier. He was playacting, said, "What am I doing here playacting like a Japanese soldier for the army?" But he went overseas and he went right after the war was over. He went into... in fact, they're trying to track down now, an uncle is trying to track down some records to see if he was in the MIS or CIC, so far they can't find the record of his name in there. So he could have been in some black-ops that they don't know.

AL: So your dad obviously had been away from Hiroshima for forty years by the end of the war, or about forty years. Do you remember his reaction or anything he said when the war ends, of course, and people started finding out about the bombing of Hiroshima?

GW: You know, that's the funny thing. We never did talk about that, the family as a whole. But we knew that we had relatives there, had relatives that survived that explosion. But we knew some relatives that died from it. But as far as I recall, there was no family conversation about Hiroshima during the bomb.

AL: On some of the records it's interesting because it shows your mom being a citizen because she was born in Hawaii. Other places it says she's an alien. And I know there was, I don't know the years, but I know for a while there was a law that if a citizen married an alien, she lost her citizenship. Do you know if, do you know, was she an alien or a citizen?

GW: I have no idea. I thought she would be a citizen because she was born in an American territory like Hawaii.

AL: It'll be interesting to talk to you after you read those, because it may make more sense to you. [Laughs] But I saw her, I think she was listed both as a citizen in some places and alien in others.

GW: Well, maybe that's true, because at that time under law, aliens can't own anything. That's why they have their sons as property owners.

AL: Were you ever treated in the hospital, besides that first bout of measles, were you ever treated in the big hospital?

GW: No. You know, in fact, I just met somebody from camp who said he knew my dad, because his father was a dentist and Dad was working in the dentist's office in the big hospital making false teeth. And one of the things that I remember is that there was this Indian that lived on the reservation close to camp who came into camp and my dad made him false teeth. And this Indian guy would come over at least once a month with deer, deer meat for us. We would have venison, and Dad and this Indian would drink his home brew and get drunk.

AL: Do you know if he was from Lone Pine or Independence or anything about him?

GW: I have no idea. All I know is that it was... this place was an Indian reservation at one time, so I guess there was Indians still living around there.

AL: Yeah, there are still reservations in Lone Pine and Independence, Lone Pine and Bishop.

GW: So they're still living there.

AL: There's actually some of your father's wage statements in there about when he was making dentures. He made sixteen bucks a month, but at that time your mother was making nineteen dollars, which was an interesting dynamic. And you also will have a case file that you can write to the National Archives and get it, and yours is probably going to be very thin because you were a kid, but it will have things like report cards. I saw, Hanako showed me the one that Ray had. He had some issues with behavior in school and not applying himself and stuff like that will come up. But in your mother's file they keep listing him as Roy.

GW: Not Ray?

AL: Yeah, typo. I know that you had some nieces and nephews born in Manzanar.

GW: Yes. We tried to get 'em to come up for this reunion, but they wouldn't come. I think George Ko Wakatsuki number two, we saw him Saturday. We came up for my niece's, we had a memorial service for my niece there in Oxnard and we told them about the reunion. Then there's Gary, my other nephew born in camp. I can't remember who the other ones were. Larry... but they're all in their sixties now.

AL: Maybe they'll come next year after you tell 'em about your experience.

GW: Well, I'm just wondering, are you gonna have one next year?

AL: Well, we don't have it, but we hope they will. How... you had such a big family in camp. Were there any other major life changes that you recall that took place in your family?

GW: Well, other than the births? No.

AL: Nobody died in camp?

GW: No. The only revelation that came out is that they had cataract surgery on Grandma and she could see again.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.