<Begin Segment 19>

KL: Are there things I've left out that you wanted to talk about related to Manzanar? Any of your firsthand experiences or anything else that's significant from that time that you want to record?

KN: Well, thinking back and reflecting on some of the things I did, I did attend the dedication ceremony for the museum there. I thought that was nice.

KL: In 2004 when it opened?

KN: Yeah, I was there.

KL: Tell us about that.

KN: I came on my RV, I stayed in Lone Pine, this RV place, park. Had a good time, brought my dog with me, and I brought my wife with me, and we had a good time. And it was sort of nostalgic. And so we drove by the guard house, I remember that, it was just like I remembered. Like it was like yesterday, and I knew exactly where to turn. And you're guessing now, since I got to get up there. The monument is right up over here, so they're trying to tell you how to get there and I said I know how to get there, so I found my way pretty quick. So yeah, I was pretty pleased, it was just nostalgic. And I went in there to the museum, and you saw your name with the family and your number, whatever you want to call it. I remember where we lived, but it also told you where you lived, right? You looked at some of the artifacts there, it brought back memories, so it was really nice. And I say that because I used to go by there all the time, I used to go fishing in upper Owens and Lake Crowley, even when I was a Boy Scout in the '50s. And that thing was, they were using the auditorium as a snowplow shed or something by Caltrans. I thought, what a shame. People lived here, it was too bad they don't do something to preserve it. I was always really delighted to see that. And it was interesting, as I mentioned, that one of the guys who worked at IBM, this is how connected we are to the world. We're not very many handshakes away from each other. His name was Carl Rook, and I said, "Carl, it's too bad they don't do something with that shed," and I said, "Caltrans runs that place." He said, "You know, my dad operates out of there," he works with Caltrans. He was thinking the same thing. Because I guess a lot of people in the area know what happened over there. He would know more about it, but the atmosphere in Lone Pine was a heck of a lot more different than I, even when I came up in the '50s, they're not very friendly. I got to tell you an interesting incident happening in Lone Pine when I came up.

KL: This is in 2004?

KN: No, this is the '50s.

KL: In the '50s.

KN: Early '50s. We're gassing up our car in Lone Pine, and I said to this guy, I said, "I don't know if there's any Japanese up here." He said, "There isn't." I said, "Are you a Japanese?" Says, "Are you kidding?" He said, "I'm an Indian." It's hardly rare for the Japanese to mistake somebody for not being a Japanese. This guy looked very Japanese. Then you come to the realization, of course, they came over there, so people would probably carry the same genes. So just giving you a human interest story here. I swear to god he... if he told me... I almost told him, "Yeah, you're a Japanese," I said, oh, I'm going to insult this guy. But he looked so Japanese, I said, "How can I make a mistake?" But he looked Japanesey. He was an Indian, I think, right?

KL: Yeah, it's Paiute... I mean, Lone Pine's on the border of Paiute and Shoshone homeland.

KN: Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of Indians out there. But that area has a lot of history, I did a lot of reading, and of course, the big name in Los Angeles is Mulholland Drive, he's one of the guys that bought all the water rights out of there, secretly, right, from the city of Los Angeles? Really ruined that whole valley up there.

KL: Yeah. Los Angeles and the Owens Valley have, you know, more connections than people would imagine, I mean, through Manzanar, through the population that was confined there during World War II, through the water question, through just current land use, through the mining even and the money that built Los Angeles, those two places are very closely linked.

KN: It's a beautiful area, actually. And you know, you become keenly aware about the Alabama Hills, because I watched those Hopalong Cassidy movies, and of course the most recent one probably is Iron Man, right? They used the Alabama Hills. As soon as I saw that Iron Man, I said, "I know where that is." So anyway, it's a beautiful area, actually.

KL: Did you like it as a kid? Did you like the area, the valley, the mountains?

KN: No. Because in the summer it was so intensely hot, and then sandstorms, and the wintertime was bitterly cold. And of course, we didn't have the proper clothing. So I didn't like it. That's not where I'd like to live now. It'd be nice to go visit and have a summer home or something like that, it'd be pretty. If you got off the Lone Pine floor and went up a couple thousand feet, it's pretty pleasant, actually, it gets cool, right?

KL: Yeah, it's very different as you go up in elevation, it's great. I love having all that variety right there.

KN: As a matter of fact, I never did it, but if you go up to, as it starts going on the mountain, if you could build a house there, I bet you it's a beautiful panorama of the valley and it's cool up there in the summertime. But you better get out of there in the wintertime, because you'd never get a car out of there.

KL: When you were living at Manzanar as a kid, did you ever leave the camp and go...

KN: No, never. Oh, I take that back. Yes, I did, with my father. Because in order to get to the reservoir, you had to drive out of the gate. I think it went south, and you had to go around to get there, to get to the reservoir.

KL: That's right. So I want to respect your --

KN: I used to leave almost every day, yes.

KL: I want to respect your time, but I also would love for you to tell me what your dad's involvement with the reservoir was.

KN: I think he was one of the guys that worked as, I guess it would be a technician, right, to monitor the water and regulate the water. I think it was even feeding Lone Pine then, too. Or was it just Manzanar?

KL: It was just Manzanar, yeah.

KN: But I could tell he was looking at the valves. If you go up there, I told my son this, I said, Bob, when you go up to take a picture of those valves, and if you look at these copper tags hanging on them, I'll tell you what it does. Here comes the problem solving Japanese. My dad would write it in English. If you couldn't read Japanese, you couldn't turn off any of the valves. [Laughs]

KL: Did he ever... I mean...

KN: I think that was his way of testing, okay?

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.