<Begin Segment 8>

LP: Did your family... it sounds like your parents buffered you from being picked up, but did you later become aware of, or did you ever get a sense of the conversations concerning repatriation, if that was something they ever entertained as an idea?

MM: I don't think so. I don't think so, because of what my father said. I think they probably figured we would do well in Japan anyway. My father's family was from Yamaguchi, and they were small time farmers. My mother's grandmother, I think some of the relatives died in the war, 'cause they lived in Hiroshima City. And my mother would never go back to Japan. She never even wanted to talk about Japan, whereas when she lived there, she loved it. But after the war, she would not talk about it, she wouldn't make any references to camp, it was interesting. And she didn't want to even talk to people about camp at all, whereas a lot of parents you could encourage them to speak a little bit, but she just didn't want to. What was interesting was when I went to the archives to get her papers, they wouldn't let me get them out. I don't know why, I still don't know why. But after much discussion... if I could find it, maybe I could figure out what happened. But my archives, papers from the archives, I was in the hospital, 'cause I had pneumonia. And I was only probably ten at the time, but they also diagnosed me with scoliosis, really severe scoliosis. And they talked about, maybe I need a brace. There was no, I'm sure at ten years old, if you had bad scoliosis, they would treat you outside. But they couldn't do anything, so I thought I was going to be an adult cripple, but I'm okay.

LP: Do you have any memories of what the hospital looked like?

MM: I enjoyed being there as a kid. We probably ate better food, maybe, I don't know. I don't remember being treated badly, I thought it was a good experience for me. I don't know about for my parents, but...

LP: Were the doctors and nurses all people from within the camp?

MM: I think so, a lot of them were.

LP: Do you recall any of the areas outside of the residential parts? So like the hog farm, the potato...

MM: No, not at all, because we weren't allowed to go out of camp. We did do a lot of walking, and I don't know where my father had got the money, but he ordered a bike for me from Montgomery Ward, put it together, he was not mechanical, so all my girlfriends, we all shared it, each one would write it, run after that. And then he also ordered ice skates for me. So we would ice skate, we all took turns using that one pair of ice skates, that I remember. And my girlfriends still remember that. She said, "I don't know you did it, but you shared with everybody." But we walked... 'cause we were at one end of the camp. It wasn't that far, though, I guess, but we would walk to the library, we would walk to the school. Actually when you think about it, I probably had a great time, until later on in adulthood, you realize, that was three and a half years of my life that I was there. I missed a lot. But I think those of us in grammar school didn't suffer as much as the people in high school and college, they missed a lot more.

LP: When you talked about ice skating, do you know where the area was?

MM: They just filled out, filled up an area, put water in it, and that's what it was. I don't remember what it was, because we were at the end of camp, so it must have been close by. Yeah, 'cause we had a lot of snow, lot of ice.

LP: When you were in Tule the first time you had seen it snow?

MM: Yes.

LP: Was that a pretty amazing...

MM: Oh, yeah, amazing, it was amazing.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.