Densho Digital Archive - Ko Nishimura Interview (denshovh-nko-01-0014)

<Begin Segment 14>

KL: I read in an article this morning, I forget his name, but the man who wrote the monograph about guayule, he said that it was weekly, and that seems very frequent.

KN: I think it might have been that frequent. It was pretty often, there was a lot of guys coming through. I know because you could almost think of Dr. Emerson, Robert Emerson, as being an internee almost, because we saw him all the time. The other guy I found fascinating, because he was a Caucasian, is Reverend Nicholson. Remember him?

KL: Yeah, tell me about him.

KN: He used to come and talk to my grandmother, and I used to sit there fascinated listening to him because he speaks Japanese. But he speaks this anglicized Japanese, all the words he speaks, they're anglicized. But he speaks perfect Japanese as far as vocabulary and everything. So I used to sit there fascinated listening to this, gee, look at this gaijin speaking Japanese. Because I'll tell you, this is the same thing as, I used to go to Singapore a lot, so I used to catch the morning flight back, eight o'clock United flight out of Singapore. Or I'd go to Malaysia and I'd take the eight o'clock flight, the Singapore flight. So I go up to the Singapore counter at six o'clock in the morning, there's hardly anybody there. So I'm talking to this gal, and almost like this young girl, beautiful gal, almost amorously looking at me. And she's leaning in like this, she's just mesmerized. And then the next thing she said... I said, "What's the matter?" She goes, "I can't believe a Japanese person's speaking this good of an English." And so I start to go and she says, "Can you stay here and talk to me some more?" She wants me to speak English. Because, you know, she's not used to... she thought I was a Japanese national. Of course, she's not in love with me or anything, but she says, "I can't believe it."

KL: Just the novelty, yeah.

KN: Novelty. "Can you say something more?"

KL: "Speak English to me more."

KN: Anything. Because their English sounds pidgin to me. So that's how I used to listen to Nicholson, that's what I'm trying to tell you. It's that kind of a thing, because I was fascinated that this man speaks Japanese. Of course, he did a lot of mission in Japanese, right, in Japan.

KL: Yeah. What did you call him?

KN: I used to call him, I think my grandmother used to call him Nicholson-sensei.

KL: How did they know each other?

KN: I don't know how they knew each other, but he used to come over and talk to my grandmother reasonably often. So that's another outside experience I had. I saw Robert Emerson and I saw him.

KL: What was Emerson like as a person? What characteristics?

KN: Emerson just struck me as an intellectual, complete intellectual. He was always serious, he never joked. The one thing that I found odd about his family is everybody called each other by their first name. I remember after the war he went over to his house. And I'm going, he says, yeah, we have Bob. Who's Bob in this family? He said, "That's my father. Isn't that right, Bob?" This is completely weird to me. They were an intellectual family, right?

KL: Yeah, their family history is actually pretty interesting. I think there were connections to New England abolitionism and intellectualism.

KN: I think he was a Quaker, isn't he?

KL: He was, yeah.

KN: He was a very, very principled man, from what I could gather.

KL: Yeah. Well, who else... I did have a list of people involved in guayule, but just in general, who else do you remember from Manzanar like Dr. Emerson or Reverend Nicholson?

KN: I remember Herbie Higuchi, and that's because he was a kendoist. And I know there was a kendodojo, but I've never been there and I think, like you said, that a lot of kendo people were segregated out to Tule Lake. Who else did I see over there? Mr. and Mrs. Kawahara.

KL: Why do you remember Herb Higuchi? What about him stood out?

KN: Oh, he came by the house. I don't know why, but he came by. Some of the other people I remember is Mrs. Hoshiyama. She was the Sawtelle Gakuen Japanese school teacher.

KL: Did you study Japanese with her?

KN: Yeah, and I was pretty impatient, so I was her student for an hour lesson that took half a day. So she gave me fifteen minutes and I'd get to go play half an hour, come back and do another fifteen minutes, go play another half an hour. The other one I remember is Mr. and Mrs. Saito. They were barbers out in Los Angeles that lived on, I think, Block 34. I used to go get a haircut from them. My haircut came in three parts. I'd get a third of my head cut and I'd go out and play, because I can't sit still that long. I'd be diagnosed now as Attention Deficit probably, but the funny part of it is when I came back from Los Angeles to get haircuts from them, everybody would say, "Is this the kid? Is this the kid that got the three-part haircut in Manzanar?" That's how I got known. We used to have a, in Japanese Town in Los Angeles they had a barber shop, so that's the other couple I remember. And I remember anybody else, I think I told you about Dr. Little.

KL: Well, I don't think it was on the camera. So if you would tell us again, that'd be great.

KN: I remember there was a young doctor named Dr. Little. A couple times I got pneumonia, I got very sick, and I almost didn't make it. And so one time I was in the infirmary up there in the hospital. So he looks at me, and I think he wanted to put me at ease, he said, "Itai kai," which means, "Are you hurting?" It's sort of colloquial. Itai is, "do you hurt." Kai, the word kai, by itself, means differently, it means "itch." I go, "What? Are you asking me do I hurt and itch at the same time?" Because I spoke no English, see, he was trying to communicate with me. So that's another interesting thing.

KL: Were your parents satisfied with the quality of the health care that you got at Manzanar, do you have any idea?

KN: I don't know, they never said anything. I think they were a little bit worried they were going to lose me, because I got pneumonia a couple of times. Because I was a frail kid.

KL: Did you have to stay in the hospital?

KN: I don't remember. I was three or four years old, it's so cold out there, and you had hardly anything, right? So you just caught a deadly cold.

KL: So what you remember about Dr. Little was mostly his youth. Do you remember anything else about him, how he struck you?

KN: No, no, he just, I think, tried to humor me. And I didn't realize he was trying to humor me. But seeing Caucasians was sort of strange anyway, right, because you're not used to seeing Caucasians. Even from Pasadena, because I was raised by my grandparents, my grandmother.