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LP: Today is November 19, 2014. Present in the room is Larisa Proulx, National Park Service staff with the Tule Lake Unit, Kristen Luetkemeier, NPS staff at Manzanar, and Masako Murakami. Do I have your permission to record this video --

MM: Yes.

LP: -- and to use it for educational purposes? Thank you very much. Could we start off by having you talk about your birthdate and where you were born and some of your family's background?

MM: I was born in San Francisco, March 27, 1934. And my parents... my father was born in Bakersfield, my mother was born in Seattle. They both were sent to Japan, so they're Kibeis. I think their primary language probably was Japanese, although we spoke English in the house most of the time. I have a younger sister who was two years younger, Yaeko, who was also born in San Francisco. And when the war started, my father decided that he wanted to evacuate to Fowler, California, in central California, where we had relatives. So we packed up, and I'm not sure when we did, and we probably lived there for months, I don't know. And then everybody in central California had to to go to camp, too. So we went to Gila, I think it was Camp 1. And so most of my people that I met were from central California. And then when the questions 27 and 28 came, we went to Tule Lake.

LP: What was San Francisco like prior to camp and all of that? I worked in Angel Island State Park in San Francisco for about four years, and just curious what it was like kind of growing up there.

MM: I lived right in Japanese town, which is now Japanese town. And I went to Japanese school around the corner, and that's the picture of the people all lined up, I think, to get their registration for camp. And that's always in that area. And I went to Raphael Weill school, which is now another name. But my girlfriend and we were all in, we would always salute the flag in the morning before school started, and Dorothea Lange was taking a lot of pictures in that area at that time before the war, oh, when the war started. And my girlfriend is the one on the big poster that's used all over, she's saluting the flag. We've been friends from when we were born, and I probably was in the background, in the crowd someplace. And then I used to go to Japanese school at Kinmon Gakuen. And then I guess we just moved to Fowler. I don't remember that much about the city. My mother didn't work, she did a lot of piecework at home. And my father was a salesman for some Japanese company, Pacific Trading, I think it was. And then we lived on Buchanan Street, which is part of Japanese town right now. And had a lot of friends who all went to Topaz, 'cause that area when to Topaz or Heart Mountain. A lot of them went to Heart Mountain, too. So I lost touch with all my friends because of camp, but I made new friends in Gila.

LP: What's the name of the friend that's pictured in that photograph?

MM: Helene. Her name was Helene Nakamoto, and they were Japanese, and it was Hideno, and she's in, I mean, if she had a penny for every time they used that, she'd be very wealthy. But she's visited the Smithsonian where they had the exhibit, and she had the ground floor tour, it was really nice for her. But she looks just like it. I mean, if you look at her, you know that was Helene. And her husband goes around now lecturing on Heart Mountain, 'cause he was in Heart Mountain. And she was in Topaz.

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