<Begin Segment 18>

KL: What about your parents? Were you able to communicate with your mother and father?

MN: Not during the war. But during the war my father passed away, year before, no six months... no, a year before war ended, that was 1944, my father passed away. He was only sixty-one. And my mother lived alone. So I went to see my mother four times.

KL: You said that during the war your father had a job, or --

MN: No, not a job. He was retired, but everybody had to take a turn and watch your town. He was the one, "Look out, here comes the American plane to drop a bomb on the city." So my, they didn't have much telephone either, so my husband, my father used to, house to house, "Here comes American airplane. You better shut the lights off." At nighttime they weren't allowed to have a light because it can, from the sky, everything dark, they could see. So that's what, men used to take turns, every night they have to watch.

KL: One question that Whitney had, you said that when you arrived at Manzanar in 1942 it was dark. And then the next morning, I wondered what you thought when you looked around and you saw where you had come.

MN: Oh gosh. I cried. Yeah, because floor has a lot of openings and all the, it was so windy you couldn't believe it, so all the dust would come in. Course, it was end of April, but at night and early in the morning, so cold. They didn't give us enough blanket, army blanket, about one to one person or something like that. So it was sad, but you get used to it. Nothing you can do. And after a while we made a lot of friends and then went to English school and learned how to do crocheting, knitting. So I guess a lot of people enjoyed it after a while.

KL: Were you involved in a church at Manzanar?

MN: No, I wasn't. I was Buddhist then. I became a Christian, fifty years ago I was baptized, after I came out. But a few times I went to Buddhist temple, but I wasn't believing in Buddhist.

KL: When did you go to the Buddhist church, to the temple? Was it a special occasion?

MN: Yeah, it's a special occasion. Like over here Easter, in Japan, Japan Buddhist church has a, called hanamatsuri. They have a different thing. So I used to go once, maybe I went twice. That's all.

KL: Would you, you said it's hanamatsuri?

MN: Hanamatsuri is April 8th.

KL: What is it?

MN: Hana is flower, matsuri is a festival, so they call it hanamatsuri. They have a special thing, like Easter over here.

KL: What did people do? What was it like at Manzanar, at hanamatsuri?

MN: Well, just go to temple and kids kind of dressed up and walk around. Yeah, they used to wear nice clothes and go to Buddhist church, temple, on hanamatsuri especially.

KL: Is it for springtime, or what is the occasion?

MN: Yeah, it's April 8th, every year April 8th.

KL: I wondered what you thought of the mountains.

MN: Mountains?

KL: Uh-huh.

MN: Oh, it was beautiful. A lot of snow, snow year round. And below the mountain was a river and they used to catch trout. Some people went to trout fishing from camp. It's outside the gate, but they'd climb up the gate, barbed wire. They're not supposed to, but a lot of people, younger people did go to the other side of the fence.

KL: People that you knew?

MN: No, not really. My husband didn't, never go.

KL: I've heard that sometimes people would bring those fish back for elderly people or just special people sometimes.

MN: Yeah, would bring it back. They used to cook it in the mess hall.

KL: Okay.

MN: Mess hall for everybody.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.