<Begin Segment 4>

AL: What is your earliest childhood memory?

GW: My earliest childhood memory I guess was when we lived in Ocean Park, California, near Santa Monica there. And we used to live, there's a beach, sidewalk, and then our home was a rental. And I guess summertime come, I'm out the door. I go sit with the lifeguards all day. And then they'd send me out to buy their lunch and then (they would) buy me lunch, staying out in the beach all day long, from sunup to sundown. I go home, but my family, I guess, never missed me. They knew where I was anyway. But that's what I remember, spending summers on a beach all day long.

AL: With ten kids they probably couldn't have kept track anyway. [Laughs] Were there any of your brothers and sisters that you were particularly close to either in age or emotion? That's a big range of ages.

GW: I think Jeanne and I were very close. And then my sister Mae, who was just older than I became closer as we grew older. Because May went to, when she got out of college, she worked in Long Beach with a family and she worked as, I guess, a maid. So she went to school from working, and May sent her to school more or less. So when she got out of college she went to teach English in Japan as far as on a, I think it was a naval air force base. So when she got out of there, she came to live with us in San Jose, and she became a secretary for the University of California working for the football coach there at that time. And at that time I was working at Lockheed and I had a, one of my guys working for me. I introduced him -- he was a Caucasian -- to Mae, and they got together and they married. So I joined her with my friend who worked for me. But when happened later on is that May got cancer and died at a pretty young age. That's why I thought that was being close to May is that we were closer in relationship because I introduced her to her husband.

AL: When you were growing up at the house in Santa Monica, what was your neighborhood like in terms of, like, economics and ethnic groups, economics?

GW: Well, Ocean Park is where we lived, and there's predominantly Jewish families living there. So I went to school with some Jewish boys, became friends, and one of the things I loved was that his family had a pastrami stand. [Laughs] I remember going out and getting a pastrami sandwich, I loved pastrami sandwich. And I try, every time I get down to Long Beach, I try to get into, go down to where we used to live and look for that pastrami place, but it doesn't exist anymore. And they don't make pastrami sandwiches like they used to. See, they used to put the bun in a steamer, and they steamed the bun and they put just pastrami and mustard, and they throw a dill pickle on the side and that was the pastrami sandwich. You can't get 'em that way anymore. I wish we could.

AL: Maybe if you make it. Were there... in terms of the neighborhood, was it common for different ethnic groups to interact?

GW: No. In fact, I think we were the only Asians around at that time in that neighborhood. But we didn't have any animosity or anything like that towards us as far as I remember. I had no problem assimilating or going out and play with the kids.

AL: What was your... one of the things that was interesting in reading your parents' case files is in some blocks in religion they say Buddhist, some say Christian, some say Catholic for the same person. And I'm curious just if your family had any sort of religious practice or tradition?

GW: As far as I remember, when my father was fishing, we never went to church. And this was the period before he went to before the war started. But anyway, we never went to church. It was during camp that my grandmother went to a Catholic, the Maryknoll, that's a Catholic church there, and she was being baptized as a Catholic. And then my mother went to Catholic school at the same place in camp. And my father, as far as I know, he was a Buddhist, at least, that's what I thought he was. And, in fact, when we got out of camp, he went, they started, we went to live in Long Beach and then they moved to San Jose in about 1950 and raised strawberries. And they used to have, I guess there was a priest who used to come around the house, and he wanted to convert Dad to become a Catholic. And I don't know what it was, my father never wanted to become a Catholic. He said he's a Buddhist. But you know when he died, I don't think we had a Buddhist ceremony for him. You know, Buddhists normally get cremated and they're put in an urn and then they're kept in a, sometimes in a house or in a church. But as far as I remember, no, he was never cremated. So I don't know whether he died a Buddhist or a Christian. In fact, what happened is later on my mother became Baptized in the Church of Christ. But that was primarily because, I think, Jeanne's husband's mother was going to the Church of Christ and that's when my mother was going there with her and got baptized into the Church of Christ.

AL: So when you were, when you kids were young, you didn't necessarily identify with any one tradition.

GW: No. In fact, when I went in the service, they ask you what religion, I put on there just plain Christian, I don't have no denomination. In fact, I would go to Presbyterian church sometimes, Baptist church another time, but I was Christian. But I always told them, I says, "As long as you believe in God and you treat other people correctly, like you would want to be treated, you don't need no denomination. You live a good life and you're clean, so you're a Christian, but you don't need no denomination."

AL: What kind of holidays did your family celebrate most? I mean, did you do the Buddhist holidays and the, or I should say Japanese holidays and...

GW: Well, you're Christian, of course, Christmas. That's the holiday that you always celebrate. But then the next one was New Year's, but to us, the New Year's was Japanese style, which was not the lunar one but January the 1st. There you would have your regular normal Japanese fare, sushi, roast pig, that kind of stuff. Like the movie showed, just like that, that's how a big feast.

AL: Did you guys celebrate Boy's Day and Girl's Day?

GW: I don't remember doing that, no. When I was, there was too many of us, I think. [Laughs] I didn't tell you this about the story of when we were in camp. I had to go take my birth certificate in to the teacher, and I took it in. And I always told her I was born on Christmas, but that's when I, they celebrated my birthday. So she said, "First of all, you were born in Guadalupe, that's in Mexico." I said, "No, it's in California." She said, "No, there's a Guadalupe, Mexico, so you're not an American citizen, you're a Mexican citizen. I think I can adopt you and take you out of here." [Laughs] And then she said, "You know, your birthday is not on Christmas, it's on December the 10th." And it wasn't until I was in camp that I knew that my birthday was on December the 10th.

AL: Did your family celebrate the emperor's birthday?

GW: No, as far as I know. I don't think they even knew when the emperor was born, and we didn't celebrate that. In fact, at that time, my father, when the war started, had nothing to do with Japan.

AL: Did he follow the news of Japan, like, you know, through the '30s and things started building up?

GW: I don't know, because if he did, he never talked about it, or he never talked about it or I never heard about it.

AL: When did your grandmother Sugai start living with you?

GW: Right before we went to camp she stayed with my mom. And at that time she had cataracts and she was basically blind. Because I remember when she lived in the house with us and she didn't, I couldn't communicate because I couldn't speak Japanese and she couldn't speak English. And the wonderful thing about it is when we went to camp, she got the cataracts removed and she was able to see again. And it was in camp that she regained her eyesight. And then when we got out of camp she lived with my sister Frances, took her 'til she died. She was like ninety-eight when she passed away.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.