<Begin Segment 23>

RM: Well, I would like to ask a little bit about the Manzanar High School reunion because we're there right now, I'm keeping you from having fun by doing this oral history. How long have you been coming to this reunion?

GO: The reunion, every reunion they had, I missed one.

RM: Since what year about?

GO: The first one they had.

RM: Wow.

GO: That's when my wife, she said they're gonna have a reunion, and then this friend of mine says he's going because he graduated, too. So I said, well... so she says she'll go with him and his wife. So they went to the first one. And after that, I went to most of the other ones. That's why some of those pictures and stuff from way back, that's the one my wife took. Them days they didn't believe in taking pictures. So she took all those pictures. Now I went to all the... and you knew how they were, by the pictures, you know how we were dressed from the very beginning? Suits and tie, now...

RM: You forgot your suit and tie today. It's sweltering in here, yeah.

GO: That's how much has changed. And then my kids, they didn't ever go to the reunion. See, my wife died in '07, and then reunion's coming up in August next year. So the kids says, "You've got to go." They want to take me to Vegas or go to the reunion, because I've been going every year. Okay, so they started coming to this reunion since '08. Every year they, we've been coming here. Look what they're doing now.

RM: Yeah, they're in charge.

GO: They wanted Grace to take over this year. I told them, "No way." Because she hasn't been in the camp, she doesn't know nothing about camp. I told her, "You got to have somebody that was in camp to take over."

RM: Well, I heard Rosie Kakuchi last night called you "the boss," so...

GO: That got me. [Laughs] Boss.

RM: So, George, I've also seen you at a number of Manzanar pilgrimages at this point. I wondering when the first Manzanar pilgrimage was you went to.

GO: Oh, that was... I don't know, that was pretty... because Fuji, she liked to go to things like that. And then I don't know, we probably went from the first. Because them days they were younger, everybody was younger and then drove, and her sister likes the Manzanar too, so I think we all went about the first one.

RM: Tell me a little bit about the trip that Dorothy showed me some pictures of and I think you were mentioning earlier that you all went up to Manzanar when your kids were just kids. What was that like? Was that your first time to go back up there?

GO: That's the first time I took the kids.

RM: What happened?

GO: What happened was we were out there. I guess we were looking at the apple tree, or was that a pear tree? Then I was sitting, there were some cows coming towards us. So I said, "Well, we'd better get away from here," so we took off.

RM: So it was a little bit different than the last time you'd been at Manzanar.

GO: Oh, yeah, much different. After that we, the cows were gone, so we've been going, I've been taking the kids right along.

RM: You know, you've been so involved, I would say, in Manzanar since I started coming to these reunions in 2010 and I met you and your family and you've been donating so many amazing things that we've already used some of them in our exhibits. So I guess I want to say, in part, thank you so much for all of that, it's really, it's made a huge difference. But then the other thing I want to ask is what do you think about what we're doing at Manzanar right now as the National Park Service?

GO: That's good for the younger generation. Because I think there's a lot of them that still don't know what went on. So that's going to do some good. And then Grace was saying those posters you got down there, says they're gonna donate after they... because they're not taking it apart.

RM: Oh, the reunion posters?

GO: Reunion, what they have down there. Said somebody wanted it at the museum.

RM: Probably Alisa.

GO: So that's where it's probably gonna go.

RM: Well, we certainly appreciate all your donations.

GO: And they put a lot of work in that, too.

RM: So let me ask around the room, I have one last question for you, but I sort of want to make sure that everyone else in the room has a chance to ask you anything that we've forgotten. I can see Kristen's eyebrows going right up.

KL: So one of them you mentioned that a lot of people from North Hollywood went to Tule Lake, and I wondered if you have interactions with people when they came back from Tule Lake to that part of Southern California. Did people ever talk to you about what it was like at Tule Lake, and also if there were any divides when they returned, did the friendships keep up?

GO: Oh, yeah, they're still friends. But then they talk about what happened in Tule Lake. So they know what happened at Manzanar, so they know what happened in Tule Lake, they tell us what happened. That they went to school and what they had to do, did every day.

KL: Did you guys pick up on differences between 1944 and '5 at Manzanar versus Tule Lake?

GO: No. No, we just talk about it and that's it. Like we say, we talk about Manzanar reunion, whereas that Tule Lake reunion, they had one the other day.

KL: What about in the 1950s? I don't know if there were people that you knew who did expatriate to Japan and then come back? Do you remember anybody coming back?

GO: Yeah, there's people that went to Japan, but they didn't like it there or they couldn't... anyway, they came right back. They came right back and then ended up, North Hollywood boys that said "no-no," they came back and then volunteered for the army to get their papers back.

KL: Was it a tough adjustment do you think, or did they just kind of integrate back into North Hollywood?

GO: Well, actually, all this thing here is what the parents told them to do. Because like I was saying, when the parents tell you to do it, we did it. But I think right now, if we tell our kids to do it, they won't do it. That's how we were brought up. When they tell us to do things, we do it.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.