<Begin Segment 20>

RP: So you left camp in 1945.

SI: Yep.

RP: Before we leave camp, tell me a little bit about your, your brothers, your two older brothers? Did they work at Manzanar?

SI: Oh, yeah.

RP: What did they do?

SI: In fact, as far as I can remember, they were doing farm work. That was the extent of the two brothers. Of course, the younger brother was too young to work anyway so... my sister didn't work.

RP: Do you know how they answered the questionnaire?

SI: That I never asked. 'Cause my older brothers never went in the army. The second brother was drafted at the tail end of the Second War. And then he got discharged and then when the Korean War started he got recalled. 'Cause being drafted, he automatically goes into reserve. So he got recalled and then, but he already made a corporal when he was in the first time. And then he requested to go overseas. They denied it. They made him a cadre at Fort Ord. And then my youngest brother, he was lucked out, too. He, when the Korean war started, well, at the tail end of the Korean War, he went overseas but it was, the war's already over then so...

RP: Now your older brother, you said he, he went into the military out of camp?

SI: No.

RP: After camp.

SI: After camp. Yeah, we were all in after.

RP: How about your parents? What did they do in camp?

SI: Gee, I don't know. I don't know what they did in camp. I know my mother was working in the mess hall. But, I don't know what my dad did, though.

RP: Do you remember the day that your dad came back to Manzanar?

SI: No.

RP: And finally, your, the Yoshidas, did they live in, you said they lived in block...

SI: Block 10.

RP: Ten or eleven.

SI: I don't know, 11, I think it was, yeah.

RP: So many of the fathers of... you know, the fathers had been taken away, so there were a, many kids that didn't have fathers in camp. In... from Terminal Island...

SI: Well, not from Terminal Island, though.

RP: No?

SI: The only family that I know was the Matsunos. But, of course I didn't... well, they used to live not in the Terminal Island group. They were in what they call Terminal area which is a little further down there from, on the island. And I remember, all I can remember is one of my, one of the sister was my classmate. And there was a younger boy and the oldest brother, I think there was three in their family.

RP: Mary?

SI: Who?

RP: Do you remember Mary Matsuno?

SI: Yeah, my classmate, yeah.

RP: Oh.

SI: And there was a guy named Sho, the younger one. And there was an older boy, I can't recall his name.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.