Densho Digital Archive - Henry Nishi Interview I (denshovh-nhenry

<Begin Segment 24>

RP: How did you react to the news, how did you react to the news that you would have to leave west Los Angeles and go to Manzanar?

HN: Well yeah, for us, we were pretty young, so I think if, if we were older we might have acted differently. But being pretty young and, just whatever happened, happened. And we had to obey whatever it was. It was, it wasn't like it was a situation where you'd want to protest it. You just took it as something that had to... maybe if we were older we might have protested that you can't, or whatever, I don't know. It's just something that happened and you just obeyed it, that's all.

RP: How about your older sister, Setsuko?

HN: Yeah.

RP: Was she married at that time or...

HN: No, no. She got married in camp.

RP: Oh, she did.

HN: Yeah.

RP: Uh-huh. So you were fortunate that you found someone to take care of the house and also store items and that type of thing.

HN: Actually, take care of whatever... make sure there's the taxes, taxes were paid, making certain that there was enough money in our account that paid for these things. An attorney that we had never known prior to, to this, we were introduced to him at that time and he, he said that he would take care of it. And, and we trusted him. Well, we had to trust him.

RP: Basically --

HN: 'Cause if we, I think the only... at that time when, like our parents, if they needed a lawyer most, it would be, they would hire a Japanese lawyer, I mean, a Japanese American or a type, because of the language barrier. If we had known, if he had, he had a Caucasian attorney then of course you would naturally ask the attorney to do whatever is necessary. But, if he had an attorney it probably... he must have known attorneys, but they're Japanese and they were gonna be relocated also. So you couldn't ask for that kind of help unless you went to... and if you were fortunate to know, know of an Caucasian attorney or friend... but by being introduced to this particular... in fact, his name was Raymond Nelson. I guess he was a well-respected attorney. And he was introduced to us and we asked him to take care of these matters, which he did. And the mailman that wanted to rent our house, live in our house, he asked to rent it, he said he would take care of it, when we got back, until we got back, which he did. So we were really, really grateful that, that we trusted people.