<Begin Segment 31>

RP: Now, you went out of camp a number of times on these furloughs.

TM: Uh-huh.

RP: Did you ever go out of camp to go fishing or --

TM: No.

RP: -- to take a walk or a hike or?

TM: No.

RP: You never went out once?

TM: No.

RP: Some of the Terminal Island guys liked to go out and fish.

TM: Yeah.

RP: But you, you waited 'til you got to Idaho to, to get into --

TM: Yeah, that's when I first picked up fishing, yeah.

RP: But did you hear about, did you hear about guys sneaking out the fence?

TM: Oh, yeah, I had this one guy that stayed with me, when I left Terminal Island, he's same age as I am. His family went with us. And he was, in fact, he's the same age as I was, and then he had two sisters. And he used to do that. Yeah, he used to sneak up and go up fishing a lot, yeah. And that's all they ever talked about, fishing. I don't know whether he talked about fishing in camp, but he, even after that, he used to go up to the High Sierra and fish. That's all they, that's all they ever talked about. He was a fanatic fisherman, yeah. Ocean fisherman, everything.

RP: What was his name?

TM: Oka.

RP: Oka?

TM: John Oka, yeah. He passed away quite a few years ago, yeah. We were same age but he passed away.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright (c) 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.