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RP: You told me again a while back when we were first talking, you said, "We did a lot of crazy things that we, in camp, that we couldn't do in the city." Is that kind of, sort of represent maybe a bit more freedom that you had in the camp? And what are some of the things that you...

MI: Oh, I think it was more like a teenage rebellion. We don't realize it as a rebellion, but teenagers go through all that right? We didn't think anything of breaking the curfew. Where else would they go? Where else would they put us? So we stayed out as late and beyond the curfew.

RP: There was a curfew in camp?

MI: At the park. You know, what is that?

RP: The north park? The park to the north of the block there, 32?

MI: No. The... Bair Creek.

RP: Oh, the picnic area.

MI: It would get so hot in camp. Everybody would go to the camp and wade in the water or the streams, yeah. But we would all... you know, we're safe. Where else could you go. Except there was a guard tower there. We could have been shot. But it's like Stalag. We said, "Oh, this is exciting. Oh, the light is going over that way. Okay, come on. Now's the time to move to get out of here." You know I'm going if my mother and dad found out about it, they would have croaked us one. But we did that. Thought nothing of it. We just thought it was an adventure.

RP: You pushed the boundaries a little?

MI: Yeah. I think you could only do that in camp. That's one of the things you could get away with in camp.

RP: And the one, the one thing that people often remark about in terms of when they mention the breakdown of the family unit at Manzanar, they always mentioned that, "We ate with our friends rather than our parents." What was the case in your family?

MI: My mother was the glue that held us together. And my dad, too. But that it was because my dad worked so long hours and my mother was the one that controlled the family. She said, "We are not gonna eat separately. We are gonna eat as a family and after we eat, then you can take off with your friends. But you are not to go to any other block and eat as you please." Whether we were on one end of the camp all the way to Block 32, we ate together. Unless we told them ahead of time that we'd been invited, you know. Other than that, my mother had a very strict rule about that.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.