<Begin Segment 14>

RP: Jim, you told a story about when you were in Tule Lake that you remember the seagulls and you used to paint the seagulls red.

TT: Oh...

KP: Yeah, could you tell the story about the seagulls?

TT: Oh, yeah. Kinya Noguchi was also the, he did the same thing we did. What we did is that we get a little, middle of the block, we used to have that ironing room or whatever. So we'd get a long string, prop it up, then get a little rice and put it underneath the box, and then we'd sit there in the washroom or the laundry room and catch a seagull. Then what we used to do (...). But what we did is we'd take it, we'd spread eagle that seagull, we'd go to the paint shop, and then get a can of red paint. That's when if you go down to (paint shop), we got a contact. Said, "How much you want? A gallon?" Said, no, no, we just want a little bit. So we, anyway, get that paint, we get the biggest potato we can find, okay, then we cut it in half and we dip that into the red paint, spread eagle the seagull, and put a "rising sun" on that thing. Then we'd go underneath the guard tower and turn it loose. [Laughs] You'd get a, because towards the end there, we'd get a lot of these shellshocked guys from the South Pacific, they think it's a Jap zero and they shoot at it. [Laughs] We used to stand there and holler, "You missed, you missed, you missed." [Laughs]

KP: So they actually shot at them?

TT: Oh, yeah. But you get the shellshocked guys, you know. You're seventeen years old, you'd do anything, you know, to get at the authority. But long as you do something, you don't get caught by the... we used to have a police department, we used to call 'em wardens. As long as you don't get caught by them, you're fine. Because they take you to the, take you home, and boy, then you really get it from your folks. But that very seldom happened. Because they do things like that, they look the other way. [Laughs]

KP: So what else did you do? Anything else?

TT: No, besides chasing girls. But that's one thing, (...) there's no problem meeting girls, though. Because find out what block they live in, that's all you had to do is go to the block and wait. That's why a lot of these people, like California, Oregon and Washington, especially in Tule Lake, they got to know each other, you'd be surprised. Californian marry a Oregon or Washington girl, natives and all that, so it was like a melting pot. Like in Topaz, it was mostly from Bay Area people.

KP: So you came from a, when you lived in the Fruit Ridge area...

TT: Yeah, Fruit Ridge, Forty-fourth street (and Twenty-third Avenue).

KP: You had a fairly small Japanese American community.

TT: Yeah.

KP: And suddenly you find yourselves in Tule Lake with a huge Japanese community. What did you think about that?

TT: Because every once in a while, we used to get together at, we used to have festival once a year.

KP: So you knew they were out there.

TT: Because that Oak Park area, that Fruit Ridge, Forty-seventh Avenue, Franklin Boulevard, we had quite a few, a good-sized contingent.

KP: Did you participate in any -- well, you probably wouldn't -- prefect picnics when you were a kid?

TT: No.

KP: No, 'cause your dad was from Hawaii, and yeah, you were probably way far away from that.

TT: But we had, one thing, about a year or so after, they had a lot of things for sports, like, especially baseball. Not too much football, but we had weightlifting, then we had martial arts. Then like women have sewing class, dance class, singing, things like that.

KP: What did you do?

TT: I didn't do much of anything. [Laughs] Played lot of baseball.

KP: Did you? What position?

TT: I used to play third base, second base.

KP: Were you any good?

TT: [Laughs] I was below average.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.