<Begin Segment 8>

TI: Okay, good, fishing, how about boys your own age? What kind of things would you do with boys, or girls your age in terms of playing?

AM: Well, I guess I left there when I was about fourteen, thirteen, thirteen, I guess. And the kids I used to hang around with, you know, as your age progresses then you start doing different things. And I imagine that I was just like any other kid in the neighborhood or anything like that. We used to go raid apple orchards and stuff like that. Just because I was Japanese or something, say, "Hey, you didn't do things," like I did what everybody else did.

TI: And so were most of your, your friends that you ran around with, were they non-Japanese?

AM: Yeah, yeah.

TI: How about entertainment, especially around, like, Japanese entertainment. Was there anything like that in Scottsbluff, Nebraska?

AM: Well, they used to have a hall right next door to where we lived, and they just used to call it the Hall, the Japanese Hall. And they used to hold plays there, shibai, they used to hold banquets there. I remember when, I believe a Japanese counselor or somebody came to visit, and they had a big dinner, you know, it's more like a potluck dinner. And I have some pictures that was taken in the hall, and my dad was there and some other dignitaries. Of course, it wasn't captioned or anything, so I don't know who those people were. But they used to have their New Year's celebrations there. Mainly, they didn't celebrate so much, they used to have plays and food.

TI: How about Japanese movies? You ever see Japanese movies?

AM: Oh, yes. There used to be a man called Ban, S. Ban, and as far as I can remember he was from the Seattle area. And he had a touring car loaded with, with film and a projector. And he would announce through somebody that he would be in town at a certain date, and he would show certain pictures. And in those days, everything was silent pictures. But this man would portray all the characters in, in the movie, and lot of those were tearjerkers. I suppose in those days, tearjerkers were probably the norm besides samurai movies, chanbara. And sometimes he would have a short chanbara movie, and then he would have one of these tearjerkers. But he would portray all the men, all the women and all that stuff. And sometimes he'd run a reel and then in between the, a break or something, he'd be winding the, rewinding his film. We used to go help him rewind the film sometimes. But he used to load up and go to the next town. But far as I know, S. Ban used to have a pretty-good sized business in Seattle, but other than that, I really don't know.

TI: And so I'm curious, when he would do all the voices, is he also then running the projector, or is he up by the screen? Where was he when I did the voices?

AM: He was right there at the projector.

TI: And so he's just like, so if if it's like a samurai movie and someone gets killed, he would act out being killed and scream out, or if someone's crying, he would, a woman crying, and do all that?

AM: Yeah, I think he had a prompter. You know, he used to read from it, the words and stuff like this, and he used to look at the movie, and look at the prompter and the words, and that was all in Japanese. And I remember he was, he was pretty decent, you know, he did that pretty well. He must have really practiced that. Now, I don't know whether his name was Ban, but they used to say, "Ban-san, Ban-san," you know.

TI: And so was that kind of a big treat whenever Ban-san came to Scottsbluff, everyone would, lot of people would show up and go to the club or wherever?

AM: Oh, yeah. Seeing a Japanese movie was quite, quite an experience. You don't see anything like that, and so all the Japanese used to make time to get everything done, come into town, get all the chores done, come into town and see the movies.

TI: And so you grew up learning both English and Japanese? Was your Japanese good enough so that you could follow along with the movie?

AM: I think, I kind of think that there was some captions on there, closed captions. But then during, he would actually try to imitate the voice and the emotions of the actors. Now, when you see a closed caption, you just see the words, you know, so you don't know the, how they emote, things like that, but he used to do all that. That's what was so spectacular.

TI: That's a good story.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.