Densho Digital Archive - Victor Ikeda Interview (denshovh-ivictor-01-0025)

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RP: Last night we were talking a little bit about nicknames, too. And wanted to kind of get you going on that a little bit. Now, you had a nickname.

VI: The nickname Junks.

RP: Junks.

VI: And that became --

RP: Who gave you that?

VI: I really don't know whether I said it or somebody said it. There were about three Juns, so two of 'em kept the "Jun," and somehow I got nicknamed "Junks." But I wasn't the only Junks with the nickname, there was another one. So there were two of us that picked up the nickname Junks, and it kind of just stuck. And you find that during our era, our times, people had nicknames. And if you were with a group, you probably picked up a nickname. And we had all different nicknames, we went through the whole thing. And you pick it up because you did this, or we had, like Pheno. Now, we gave him that nickname because one day he had this Phenomint gum that we had, which was a laxative.

RP: Phenomint gum?

VI: Right, and we gave it to him and took and he's just chewing away, we were all watching him, you know. From that point on, he was nicknamed Pheno. [Laughs] His brother was called Edgewater because every time we talked, he's putting his word in edgewise, you know. My brother-in-law, we called him Gypo because we saw a movie and Victor McLaglen was playing Gypo, he says, "Call me Gypo," and it sticks. We have, a girl, we called her "Onion" because one day an onion kind of rolled to her and then she picked up and somebody called, "Hey, there's Onions," and that stuck. So everybody's got a nickname. And we had nicknames Pancho, and we have nickname Nag, and we have nickname... oh, you could go through the whole works. But the interesting part was when we had our first reunion back in 1983, and people came from out of town...

RP: This is the Minidoka?

VI: Minidoka, it was a class reunion, our fortieth class reunion. And people came from out of town and they all had nicknames. And my daughter was going to the Arthur Andersen training school, and she met another person there, Japanese American, and he said, "Oh, my mom's in Seattle, she's at a reunion." And Karen, my daughter, asked her, "What's her nickname?" And he looked at her, and says, "How do you know she's got a nickname?" [Laughs] And her nickname was Knuckles, 'cause her names was Naoko, so she got the name Knuckles. And he says, "How did you know she had a nickname?" Well, when she went back, she wrote me a letter says, "My son met your daughter." [Laughs] So nicknames are, we have... Tom may be talking to Lucius, and some of his friends got some weird nicknames, you know. And the way they turn out was like, one of 'em we called 8 Balls, he turns out to be the head of the college now. We call guys, we called a guy Boner, he says, "Please don't call me Boner now, call me Fred." [Laughs] So we go through this whole bunch of nicknames.

RP: Right, especially when they've achieved levels...

VI: Right, right. So they just don't like, I guess... how would you like to have the head of the college called 8 Balls, you know. And we got a guy named Egghead, the whole bit.

RP: But yeah, it was kind of a form of affection in one sense.

VI: It was, it was.