Densho Digital Archive - June T. Watanabe Interview (denshovh-wjune-01-0014)

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KL: That reminded me that I wanted to ask you, when you were in Rohwer, if you ever interacted with local people who were from Arkansas?

JW: Uh-uh. I went out to the town of McGehee once. I was going to cross the street and somebody stopped me and said, "No, that's the 'colored side.' You belong here." I think a white person told me that. Yeah, I just learned so much just being there, too, in that respect, because we didn't have very many of the black people in our area in Lawndale, we never did. But I thought that was terrible, I just learned about it.

KL: Yeah, I always think it's interesting to hear Californians, Nisei, talk about navigating that, because it's so... I mean, I lived in Montgomery, Alabama, for a while as a young kid, and that was in the '80s, but still, it's still pretty... I don't know what the right word is, but there's still sort of two categories of people, and it's black and white, or it's black and not black, actually, is more kind of the way it's structured. And that would have been... one guy I interviewed who was in the army, he was in the 442nd and he said that he got sort of instruction from the army on how to navigate segregated facilities because he had no experience with that.

JW: He didn't know, no, that's true. When we were in Rohwer, you know, there's one experience... they had, Mississippi, Camp Shelby was across the river, and we were over here, and they wanted, some girls wanted to go over there an entertain, not entertain, but dance, and, well, entertain. And so to socialize with them, one of my girlfriends says, "I'm going," and I says, "Oh, that'd be fun, huh?" And, of course, my parents... but when they found out that one of my parents, dear friend of theirs, was going over there because her son was with the 442nd, she was going as a chaperone, so I told my folks that. They said, "Well, okay, if she's going, okay, you can go." So I went there, and it was nice, we stayed overnight, or did we stay overnight? No, we just, I don't think we stayed overnight, but it was nice. Met a lot of Hawaiian boys, you know.

KL: What was that like?

JW: Yeah, that was nice, that was fun. You could tell by the way they talked that they were from Hawaii, a little different. (...)

KL: What did the Hawaiian soldiers think when you told them about Rohwer?

JW: Well, you know what? I think they had their... some of those people were interned, too, did you know that?

KL: Yeah, but a lot of people don't know that. There were individuals who were...

JW: Yeah, they were, they had a little camp for them. Were they sent here to the States?

KL: Many were. Many came to Jerome, some to Santa Fe, some to Crystal City.

JW: Yeah, I never asked their opinion about us, I never have. It was a fun day, yeah.

KL: How did you get there?

JW: By bus, we chartered a bus, and a busload of girls went. So long ago.