<Begin Segment 15>

RP: Tom, just to backtrack a little, you mentioned that when you came back to this area, you had to stay at the Buddhist church chicken coop.

TI: Yeah, chicken.

RP: Were there other hostels that opened up in this area for people returning from...

TI: Yes. The Japanese group down here had grown. People used to go in there, but there's so many people, it's hard to find place to go to. And Santa Monica, I think, had one, too. But that was about the size of it that I knew of. But I was so busy, it was hard for me to get around and try to see what was going on.

RP: And so you get a sense of how much, how much the community was trying to help people out, and a lot of folks doing a lot of things for, just to help out people.

TI: Yeah. Because when you got out of camp, you had no money at all.

RP: You had no job.

TI: You had nothing. So one of the things that they knew what they could do is go gardening. So most of them became gardeners. Whether they had to do gardening, gardening work in pickup trucks or passenger cars, had to be something.

RP: Just to pick up the thread of the rest of your family, decided not to go to Japan, and they came back to this area as well from Tule Lake?

TI: Right, yeah.

RP: And did they, you said your dad had been a gardener before the war.

TI: Yeah.

RP: Did he pick up where he left off?

TI: He continued on.

RP: And how about your brother John? What did he drift into?

TI: Well, he went into gardening also because my dad did.

RP: And much of their business was centered around these estates in Bel Air?

TI: Well, see, my dad knew, his customers were mainly in Beverly Hills, Westwood area. So he just contacted them again.

RP: When he got back?

TI: Yeah. So he got busy right away.

RP: Did he also design landscapes and install landscapes or was it just predominately maintenance?

TI: Just a little bit of it, but mainly gardening. Taking care of it.

RP: Yeah, a lot of those estates were pretty large.

TI: Yeah.

RP: Did a few of those. You got your guns back.

TI: Yeah, oh, yeah. I was allowed to own 'em then. But I joined a couple of gun clubs after I got back, and that was real nice. They all treated me good. Except one club didn't treat me too good.

RP: What happened?

TI: The Hollywood Gun Club, one guy in there knew I was Japanese so he says, "We don't want any in our club." So lot of guys that knew me argued with 'em, but they still wouldn't take me in. But it didn't make any difference, I got into two others. So I was okay. Nobody said a word after that.

RP: I also saw some photos in this book that showed you racing boats.

TI: Yeah, that's when I was just getting out of high school, hydroplanes. That was a lot of fun. I didn't do it very long, though.

RP: Are those in, were those in lakes or the ocean?

TI: No, it was actually down here in Del Ray, in the lagoon back there.

RP: Oh, Marina Del Ray?

TI: Yeah.

RP: Oh, along the lagoon, right.

TI: There was a place, there was a swampland that they made into a lake called Lake Los Angeles. That was a pretty good track. That's where I did my running around.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.