<Begin Segment 13>

RP: Just to backtrack, when you came back to camp from your, your year in Eden, you felt like you were, kind of like the king of the hill.

JN: Oh absolutely.

RP: But what a change back into camp, what was that like for you after you've been sort of living a, sort of a charmed life?

JN: Well, let me explain what I... I went through a metamorphosis, if you will. I was a child and then I've become a, I went through puberty. And I remember all of a sudden I'm looking at girls. There was one girl, Lulu Toyoota, what a name. She was the sweetest lookin' gal I had ever laid eyes on, and she lived way at the other end of camp. We lived in Block 4 and she lived in, I don't know, Block 40 or someplace, and there was this big dance. I was able to dance because I learned how to dance in Eden. And I, and the kids that I remember that I sought after in retirement, (...) one of my great pastimes was to seek out people that I knew as a child. I came back from Philadelphia and found many kids here. But anyway, those kids (in camp) that I came back to (after Eden) are no more my friends because socially I'm beyond them. I mean, I (did not) want to play basketball and whatever the heck these kids still (did). I wanted to go see the girls and whatever. I don't know what happened to me. And I remember asking, there was this huge dance, the internees built this beautiful gymnasium in Minidoka, and they had this dance, and it was the social event of probably the whole four years of camp life. And some of my older friends said, "Jim, you gotta come." Heck, I couldn't even afford the fifty cents for a corsage, it was a, it was one of the gardenia corsages, it stunk and everything, but it was fifty cents. And they bought it for me, I remember. And I asked Lulu if she would go to the dance with me. And she says she'll have to ask her parents. "Your parents, you gotta ask your parents?" So she asked her parents and she tells me she can't go. She knows her parents, you know, they're too young to go to that kind of thing. Well, I took it upon myself to go all the way to seek her parents to ask, and the old man, oh, he hated me. [Laughs] And he said no, or whatever he said. So I went with another girl (who) was older than, older than me. But, I don't know what the question was, but... oh you asked me about what it was like (in camp) after I came back from Eden. So it was, it was not so much the environment of Eden that changed me, it was my, I just grew up (and became) a young man.

[Interruption]

RP: James, we were just talking about, a little bit about life after Eden when you returned to camp. You were talking about some of the, the differences that you felt coming back in, you're grown up a little bit. How much longer did you spend in Minidoka before you relocated?

JN: I believe it was another school year. Well, not quite, because I became a junior in Philadelphia, so maybe it was less than that. As I said earlier, the minister of our church, Father Joseph, Mitsuo Kitagawa, convinced my father that I should come east and he brought me to Philadelphia.

RP: Oh, the reverend did?

JN: Yes, Reverend Kitagawa did.

RP: Was he also recruiting other people as well?

JN: Oh yeah, he, as I understood, I mean, I didn't know at the time, he had meetings with older members, older than me, people that used to meet at his house. He lived in Block 4. He got people to try to convince them that they should relocate eastward. But, no, Father Kitagawa, I'm sure he did not bring me specifically, well, maybe he did, I don't know. He brought me to Philadelphia from camp, from Jerome station. [Laughs]

RP: Speaking of him, how important was religious life in the camp for you and was it, was that a focus of your experience?

JN: No, it was just something that we had to go to, go to church every Sunday. Because it was, my mother was, as I said, was a very religious person. She was Buddhist, incidentally, before she was married. And after, because my father was Anglican, she became very much part of our church, baptized into the Christian church, into the Anglican church, and became a more... well, not, "fanatic" is not the word, but she became a very good churchgoer, more so than my father, I'm sure. [Laughs]

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2007 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.