<Begin Segment 14>

KL: I wonder if you remember any emotion attached to your parents' discussion about the questionnaire and how it was for your mom?

RM: No, see, that part of it, from camp, I don't remember anything. It's after camp that my mother told us about it, like thirty or forty years later, as to why that happened.

KL: Did she say what it felt like to have to make those decisions that involved her children?

RM: All she said is they don't want to go, because how are you gonna live? But I do remember one thing. One year, I had these real good friends that lived in Portland, so my brother took my mother to Portland to visit them. On the way back, they stopped at Tule Lake. As soon as they stopped there, my brother said my mother started crying. We never talked about that. My brother only told us that when he was going to the pilgrimage. Until then, he never told me that, so I never got to talk to her about that, so we never talked about camp. Except one time we did an interview which, I have to get my niece to type whatever the interview was about. But anyway, we never really talked about camp. But she had some, I know she had some bad memories.

KL: Your mother?

RM: My mother.

KL: Do you know whose idea it was to stop in Tule Lake?

RM: I think it was my brother's.

KL: I wonder if also, your father being a block manager, sometimes in some places -- and I don't know if this is true at Tule Lake -- there were conversations in the block manager's office, people were expected to go there to answer the questionnaire. Did your father have dealings with other people or anything of that nature? I know he wouldn't have told you then.

RM: No, that I don't know. One of the things I do remember though, when all this turmoil was happening at Tule Lake, we used to like to go to see movies whenever they had it. We always had to walk to anther block. He used to always tell us, "When you go movies, don't go by yourself, you have to go five or six of you together." Because if you go singly, guys would get beaten up by the Kibeis. So he said, "You have to go five or six of you together." And that was before, in the first year. That's the one thing I do remember about that.

KL: Do you have any sense of whether his worry was general, or whether it was specific to you as the block manager's kids?

RM: No, he just told us, not as a block manager, just advice he gave to us and to my cousin, because he was older than I was. Because I used to hang around with him to go to these things all the time. So he really told my cousin that, who was about three years older than I was.

KL: Oh. So your sister was very young in Tule Lake and in Marysville. What was it like to have a baby in that housing situation? Did it affect your relationship with your neighbors, or how was it for your mom?

RM: No. All I know is I was the oldest one in the family, and I had to take care of my younger siblings, so that's all I remember. That's part of life.

KL: Was she a pretty quiet baby or would she cry a lot?

RM: Yeah, quiet.

KL: What was the name of the church in Florin where you stayed?

RM: Florin? I wish I could remember, but that church was started by my grandmother Murakami, my mother told me that. But I don't remember what the name of the church is. My uncle lived right next door, and that's the church I... I wish I could remember the church, but I don't.

KL: What's the name of the road or the community in the neighborhood?

RM: Florin, Florin Road.

KL: Was it a Buddhist church?

RM: No, it's a Christian church.

KL: Do you know Grandmother Murakami's first name?

RM: [Laughs] I don't.

KL: You will in two hours, don't worry. Oh, you mentioned your best friend Julian from school before the U.S. entered the war.

RM: Castro.

KL: Did you have letters with him or did that relationship...

RM: No, we didn't.

KL: Okay, that's all I've got.

LP: Actually one thing, you brought up the DOJ, so from Tuna Canyon they went to Tule Lake, or he went to Tule Lake?

RM: No, went from Tuna Canyon to another Justice camp, I don't know which one, though.

LP: And so he never ended up in Tule Lake?

RM: He ended up at Tule Lake, yeah.

LP: Do you know what year?

RM: No, it was after we left, so I don't know what year.

LP: And did he repatriate?

RM: No.

LP: And there was a second person you mentioned that, was it a DOJ camp?

RM: Yeah, my father's older sister, his name Yagi, he went to, Takashi Yagi, he was in a Justice camp, and he's probably one of the very few Nisei that was picked up. He was picked up, you know why? He used to work at Southern California flower market, and he was the only one that knew how to take care of books, so the Japanese school come and asked him to take care of the books, because he was doing that they picked him up.

LP: And so he was at Tuna Canyon as well?

RM: No, I don't know where he was. That, I don't know where he was.

LP: And same thing, at some point, he ended up in Tule Lake after you left, and he also did not repatriate?

RM: Yeah, did not.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.