<Begin Segment 13>

KL: Did you ever have an interpersonal or kind of face to face interaction with any of the MPs, or was it always distant, like them up in the tower with the light?

KN: I've seen them come through camp, but never on a confrontation. I do know that one of the Ito brothers got killed in camp.

KL: Oh, the Itos that were your neighbors were Jimmy Ito's family, who was killed in the riot?

KN: Yeah. I'll tell you what, we were very close to the Itos. When we came out of camp, we lived in the Itos' house, Itos' house from September to January or February of '46, September of '45, because we had no place to stay and Mr. Ito let us stay there.

KL: Do you have any memories of the man who was killed, Jimmy, James?

KN: I'm not sure if James worked for my grandfather Sueji, but George did, George Ito.

KL: Is George older?

KN: They were delivery boys, they delivered from the nursery right to the customers.

KL: Wow.

KN: So George was... the interesting thing about the house, it was 273 Pepper Street. And if you go a couple of blocks up, that's where Jackie Robinson grew up and his mom lived there. And if you read Jackie Robinson's biography, he finally talks about the Pepper Street Gang and the Ito Brothers that he hung around with. The Ito boys were very close to the Robinsons.

KL: Did you know the Robinsons?

KN: I knew one of Jackie's nephews, I went to school with him.

KL: What are your memories of George Ito, what was his personality like?

KN: I used to see, after the war I used to see George every now and then. He used to stop by the house and talk to my grandmother, because he worked at the nursery.

KL: Did he work there after the camp, too?

KN: No, we didn't have the nursery afterwards. It got confiscated by the government.

KL: But he would come by still and see her?

KN: Yeah, it must have been hard on my grandfather, but we lost the nursery and the state of California and the federal government went to court on who should own that property. And I know my grandfather thought it was a ridiculous thing to do. They called up and said, "Will you come to court and be the friend of the court?" Said, "Which side would you rather have win?" It was sort of insulting. And, of course, the federal government won because the U.S. post office when on.

KL: Whose name was the nursery in?

KN: Guess who? Nobody else could buy the house, that's why. Because they confiscated it because nonpayment of taxes.

KL: During the camp time?

KN: No, no.

KL: Prior?

KN: Or they just can't get the money to buy the land. It was never reported, right?

KL: So your family was making payments, but because it was in your name it got confiscated?

KN: Yeah. Basically the IRS confiscated it. Then the State of California says, "Well, they owe us money, too." My grandfather said, "You guys duke it out. I don't care who gets the place."

KL: But your family was making payments, they just got you on a technicality?

KN: Yeah, they confiscated it as we went into camp. And they took precedent over the bank, right?

KL: Sounds like it. [Laughs] Back to Jimmy Ito's death, do you remember that happening?

KN: Yeah, I remember hearing about it after that, everybody's somber about it. Everybody had a long face for about a week, I think. You could tell it impacted the morale of at least our block. It happened someplace way toward the gate, right? It was far away from where we were.

KL: Right.

KN: So people were very unhappy about that, I noticed that. And it was extra sad for my grandmother because she knew the Itos very well. And she felt very sad for Jimmy, I guess. And of course you get all kinds of rumors on what happened.

KL: Yeah, what kind of rumors did you hear?

KN: Of course, there's a lot of anti-U.S. Army feeling, outright murder. What can you do? It's pretty tough when you get a eighteen year old soldier standing up there, raw recruit, and there's a mob out there, even though they're not doing anything, they got loaded rifles. And you can't tell if they're going to pull the trigger I guess. And what happened is tragic. Anyway, the Itos I think had to work through that. I could tell it wasn't a very pleasant experience for my family. Not me so much because I'm so young.

KL: Yeah, I've heard that Jimmy was really popular, I mean, it sounds like a lot of people liked him as a person, so there was the tragedy of the death, but then also it wasn't just some anonymous person.

KN: When it happened, a lot of people knew the kid. But anyway...

KL: Do you have any other memories attached to the event that gets called the Manzanar Riot in December of 1942, like do you remember people moving through the camps, I mean, moving through the camp or being told to stay in or noise or anything?

KN: You know, there were other things like there was suicide committed, and of course murders happening and rumors of that. We used to hear about it, there would be fear of the pro-Japan group against the pro-American group. And once in a while, I guess, it got fairly violent within the camp.

KL: Your family had some concerns about that?

KN: I think our family stayed pretty neutral in that. Didn't get involved in discussions of pro-Japan or pro-America.

KL: I wasn't sure if guayule would have pulled you into that.

KN: What's that?

KL: I wasn't sure if people's participation in the guayule project would have kind of pulled you into that regardless of whether your family wanted to be involved or not.

KN: Here's some of the interesting things. My uncle Shimpei knew the Ito boys very well, he never talked about it. He never talked about it, never. He'd talk about George and some of the goof-off things he did, you know. But he never talked about that incident, never ever. Not a word. So if there were feelings, they died with them. And I didn't think of asking 'em, 'cause I didn't have any need to ask them. Some of the interesting thing about camp was, I think it was Morgan Ward, he was a mathematician out of Cal Tech. He used to come into camp with the, all the chemists that used to come in for the status of the guayule project for the government. Of course, they didn't know, but he came in with the Cal Tech crew. And he would end up playing go with all the go players. They had all the good go players in camp. Morgan Ward was the, I think he was one of the foremost authority on abstract algebra at that time. I think what he was trying to is formalize the game of go into game theory. So he would come in and play everybody, I remember him doing that. And once in a while he would say something to me and I'd watch him play. So that's another, it's just a snippet of things that I saw. Here's this brilliant man playing go.

KL: Where did they play?

KN: They played sometime in our place, my grandmother hosted them because of Shimpei. And they're intensely thinking about this game. I'm going god, he's going to burn his brains out. And he would speak to me and say something. And then somebody would make a move, his brain's working like a computer, right?

KL: Yeah. That's interesting, and he was from Cal Tech also.

KN: He shouldn't have been there, but he could sneak in with the security clearance, he's Dr. Ward of Cal Tech, they're not gonna ask him, right. If they challenge him, someone like Emerson said, "Oh, he's part of the crew."

KL: Right. How often did Cal Tech personnel visit Manzanar? Do you have a sense for that?

KN: I thought they came in at least once a month. It was pretty frequent. There were a lot of people that came by.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.