<Begin Segment 10>

RP: Tell us about your experience in Boise, Oklahoma. You're in a strange place with... and you're going to a strange school and everything else. And then on top of that, your mom was unable to deliver her child in the local hospital.

YW: Right. Oklahoma, in that area, wouldn't allow Japanese people in the hospital. So my dad had to take her to Colorado to our sponsor and so my mom stayed over there. And then he came back and stayed with us. We, and the different families had to stay in different places and we got to stay in the barn. I remember being in the loft, on, sleeping on the hay and there were bedbugs, and we always looked for bedbugs. And I remember my, my friend, one of the children of the family that was, they, they got to stay in the chicken coop, I think. And another one got to stay in the hut, and another one got to stay in this stone building. But, we all stayed in different places on...

RP: Same property?

YW: Uh-huh. On this farm.

RP: So all of these five families are living on this farm.

YW: On this same farm but in different buildings.

RP: In different spaces.

YW: And we all went to the same school, it was a one, one-room school from first grade to eighth grade, or something like that. So my sisters were in the same class, the same room as I was. I was in the first grade and my sisters were in different grades. But I could remember every time the teacher asked me to read I can think, all I thought about, I missed my mom and I started crying and so I couldn't read. And so my sisters, on the last day of school, my sister says, "You didn't pass because you just cried all the time." So I thought, "Oh my gosh, I flunked." But I saw my report card and they had passed me. They must have felt sorry for me. They passed me, so I made it through school.

RP: So, how long was your mom actually gone? She, she went to the hospital, delivered her child, and then she stayed in Rocky Ford?

YW: Uh-huh. She stayed with our friends.

RP: Until you joined her later.

YW: Uh-huh.

RP: I see.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.