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KL: Is it -- [SM starts to speak] oh, go ahead.

SM: But, I'll also mention this later, but I'll mention it now, one of the things I missed the most, three years away in camp, was my friends. We were real tight, close friends, and so when I came back, the first thing when I went back to school was look up my friends. And someone told me they're on the front lawn, so I went to see them and when I got there they stood up, and we were all same height in the sixth grade, pretty much, but three years later they were like a foot taller than I was, so I remember looking up in the sky to say -- and all they said was hi. And what I was looking forward to was that wonderful reunion again, but it never happened. And all through high school, not one word was mentioned about, I was away for those three years. No one ever asked me, or no one ever said, "Gee, we're sorry. What happened to you?" They didn't say, "Where did you go?" or, "What happened?" or, "We missed you." Not a single word, and that really disillusioned me and I thought, gosh, what happened? Because they were still friends, but that close bond was gone. And some years later I was looking at the old copies of the Fresno Bee newspaper, and I saw all the propaganda and the Hearst papers, and I said, gee, I guess they read that, their parents read it, and so they must've thought that it was a good thing that we were put away during the war.

Although, at a high school reunion one of my, in fact, this black classmate said something that really surprised me. He said, he said to his, to my other classmates, who were not, who were white, he said, "Don't you remember when Sab was walking on the --" see, I had to go, the day before we were to be rounded up, which was a Friday, I guess, I had to go early before school started to pick up my war stamps and war bonds that we had been buying to support the war effort, and a little bit of savings that our teacher was having us save as good discipline. So I went back to school before school started, and I walked in the classroom and I told my teacher, Mrs. Fike, who was the principal as well as my teacher, sixth, seventh, no... yeah, sixth, seventh, eighth grade teacher, and all she did was walk up to the, her desk, pull out the drawer and got my stuff and just gave it to me didn't say a word. And I just walked out, and I was walking home, looking through the school fence I could see some students playing. I don't remember seeing any classmates, but I'm sure they were there. But Bobby Jones, the black student, at one of our reunions he said, "Don't you remember when Sab had to leave, we all stood on the front steps and we cried because he was leaving?" And that was wonderful that that, he said that happened, but I noticed that the others didn't seem to say, "Oh yeah, I remember that." They didn't say a word because either they'd forgot or, or that was Bobby's sort of wishful thinking that that happened. But that was interesting. We're going to have a class reunion, not a class reunion, but a reunion of some of my classmates, next week I think. So I want to ask them if they remember that at all.

KL: Do the other kids, the other boys that you were close with, do they attend the reunions?

SM: Yeah, my whole class.

KL: Have you ever had a conversation with them about...

SM: Not really. And I'm surprised that I never have. But I want to get together with my close buddies, both male and female, and ask them what do they remember. How did they feel when we were gone, and how did you feel when I came back? But we've never discussed that at all. Partly my hesitancy, and maybe their reluctance.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.