Densho Digital Archive - Eddie Owada Interview (denshovh-oeddie-01-0018)

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AL: Did you have any problems in supervising your brothers? Did they, did any of you get into trouble or anything like that?

EO: No...

AL: All good boys?

EO: No, in camp they were all very good, I think because of upbringing. We had to work on the farm before school, after school. Dad being strict, we know that there wasn't any monkeying around. But there were all those things that made us keep our nose to the grind wheel. At the field we, we'd play around some time. Being that we raised a lot of peas, we would put stakes in the ground. To do that we would take a crow bar, that is a long bar, put a hole in the ground make an enlarged hole. Take this post that was about 6 feet long, pointed end, shove 'em in the ground. Later with a little tool that we made, pound them in the ground. But, one... because we liked sports, when we started stringing peas up, we would high jump over those pea strings. Sometimes we'd miss. But we would do that. Another thing, we would take the pea posts, like a pole-vaulting post, and pole vault over some strings. And lotta times, in the process when we were, before all that, we'd be puttin' the posts in the ground, Dad would see us monkeying around, so he would pick it up, post up, they were light, he'd chase us with it. Never caught us, but we became fast runners because of that. Because at school, we were the fastest runners. I remember being the fastest runner in the K-eight at Burton grade school. So, things that we look at as being kind of negative, can turn into a positive thing.

AL: When, when he came back from Missoula, when he joined you, did you notice any difference in him physically or mentally or emotionally? Or was he just the same old guy?

EO: Well, we know, of course, he was glad to join us. He was able to see some other Issei people that he had known previously and also had gotten to know, so he socialized a lot with them. He didn't scold us or anything. But at home he was, he was a father, took care of the boys. But we weren't home too much because of school and work. So we didn't see too much of him like we did before the evacuation.

AL: Was it a difficult adjustment for you to go from being in charge to being the son again?

EO: No, 'cause I was still kind of on my own. I went and got that job at the fire engine as the engineer on my own. Went to school because I wanted the education. And I just, my teacher at school said, when I got drafted, that when I finished my basic training I would have enough credits to get my diploma, to graduate. Which, because of the war and the camp closing, everything, I never did. Except last year there was a law passed a few years before that that the veterans, under this national law for certain, I guess, requirements, can receive their diploma. So, I think it was last year, I went to Longmont high school here in Colorado and I was in the graduation ceremonies. They introduced me as a veteran, gave me a special gown with a red, white, and blue ribbon and all on it. It was surprising. But I got my diploma then as the class of 1946 graduate of Longmont high school in 2006 I believe it was, or '07.

AL: Congratulations.

EO: Thank you. [Laughs]

AL: That's great.

EO: Funny things happen.

AL: Do you know... your father's son, Daiji, in Japan, do you know if he was in the Japanese military?

EO: I don't know if he was or not.

AL: Okay. So you didn't have any correspondence with him, or...

EO: No, not after war started. There was no correspondence. Yeah. And he wasn't in the military there before the war started. I do know that while he was in Tacoma visiting us once, that he went out one night to look at the town and there was a shooting down one of the street and he got hit in the knee by a bullet, and I remember him coming home with that. And I don't know how Dad took care of that, but I never... he had a bullet in the knee and because of that he may have been crippled enough that he may have not been eligible for the military. I don't know. But I have not had any contact with him since.