<Begin Segment 17>

RM: So Kristen just brought up a good point. So much of the donation material that you've given Manzanar in the past few years is really incredible. A lot of it was Fujiko's right? So we were curious, her background, where her parents were from, for example.

GO: Her parents, they had a nursery. That's how it started, he had a nursery in West Los Angeles. I guess that's the most... and then after that he started to do gardening work. That's his, that's his work.

RM: Do you remember her dad's name?

GO: He's got a... Ryozo, R-(Y)-O-Z-O, something like that. I don't even know the mother's... her mother was... I forgot. It's been a long time.

RM: Do you know where they were from in Japan?

GO: They were next door to Kobe, is that next to Wakayama?

RM: I don't know my Japanese geography very well, but they were near Kobe?

GO: Yeah.

RM: We can look that up.

GO: I think it was. Anyway, they were close by.

RM: Did Fujiko have any siblings?

GO: Two sisters. One, she was, she was ninety or ninety-one when she passed. And she got a younger, no, she got a sister that was above her. She's in the Senior Garden that advertises. So I go visit her once a week.

RM: Did she come to the reunion a couple years ago, maybe four years ago?

GO: She came but now she's having trouble with sciatica so she can't, her leg hurts and so she doesn't come. But that's why Dorothy's taking her video, that's her. She said, "Take a good video of everybody." So anyway, she's the middle one.

RM: Was Fujiko the youngest?

GO: Youngest.

KL: When I first met you, we picked up a trunk that you were donating. Could you tell us the significance of that trunk or where it's been, what its past is?

GO: That came from there, Fuji's side. I think that went to Japan, I think she was telling me, it went to Japan and came back. Then after that, did it go to camp?

RM: I think it says Manzanar on it.

GO: So from there, I think it went to Manzanar. Because I don't remember. Yeah, I think it did Manzanar.

RM: Do you remember what Fujiko's parents did in Manzanar, what jobs they had?

GO: Well, he was working that nursery, the place I took the watermelon from.

RM: Did he know?

GO: He didn't know. And the mother just stayed, didn't work in camp.

RM: Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about Fujiko?

GO: Well, she worked in the library downtown, L.A. She was the first to work there, and she was the first one of her family to relocate from camp. She relocated by herself to First Street, they had a place where they could stay. And then from there she went to work at the library.

RM: So that was right after camp. So her family was still in camp when she went.

GO: Yeah.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.