<Begin Segment 2>

RP: Yeah, let's go back and, so where were you placed as a, as a child with no parents?

CT: Well, I was told, this is just what I was told, that I was at Shonien as an infant and I was raised there, and after World War II broke out then we were all transferred to Manzanar. And I was five years old turning six, about to turn six.

RP: Do you have any memories whatsoever of your time as an orphan at the Shonien?

CT: No, but I do remember the kindergarten class I was in in the public school, and when they said I had to leave the whole class and the teacher gave me a big party and gave me a rubber doll, which I'd never had, and they told me I could bathe it and all that, and it was just wonderful.

RP: This was when you found out you were going to Manzanar?

CT: We were going, they all found out all the Japanese were gonna leave and I was the only one in kindergarten, so the rest were Caucasians, and they all gave me a big party. I says, oh, how nice. It was nice.

RP: How, how soon did, or how early in your life did you realize that you were different in the respect of your ancestry, being Japanese and also Chinese? Did it occur to you early in life or was it until Manzanar?

CT: No. That I, you mean when I was first discriminated against?

RP: Actually, when you --

CT: That's when you first know that there's a difference.

RP: That your different.

CT: It was after, after Manzanar, in the fourth grade and this was, the wounds of World War II and the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor was still very fresh, so I remember my girlfriend says, "You know, Celeste, I want to invite you to my birthday party, but my parents says you can't come because you're a Jap." And of course, oh, that hurt terribly, but you get over it. But it was, I liked the kids. I liked my peers, wherever I was I liked them and I adjusted very well in the school system.

RP: Do you remember anything about your life at the Shonien relative to where you stayed? Did you have your own room or did you, were there a lot of kids in one large room?

CT: Now, that's at the Shonien?

RP: At the Shonien.

CT: I don't remember one thing. Not one blessed thing, except my kindergarten class. That's all. I don't remember anything. I must've been well loved because they had this caregiver, Ruth Takamuni, who was at the Shonien and then she was transferred to Manzanar. Now, the first six years of my life was under her care and she was very loving, I keep track of her family and everything. She recently died of Alzheimer's, but we became very good friends with her family, 'cause I just tell them how wonderful Ruth was. And I think that helped me a lot in later life because I had love and she used to teach us religion, about God. I think that's what saved the day in my late teenage years, not to be committing crimes or ending in a mental institution or something because you just pick a path. It's either constructive or destructive, and I believe that Ruth was a big factor in this, my life.

RP: So she kind of filled the void of not having a mother? She was kind of like a mother figure to you?

CT: Yes. Oh yeah, she did and I bonded very well with her, 'cause I remember her name, I remember everything that went on in Manzanar, and I, I have nothing but good things to say about the orphanage. Whereas I'm hearing some of my colleagues, they didn't have such a good time. They said that they were locked in a closet and beaten, but nothing, I never had those experiences.

RP: At Manzanar?

CT: Yeah, at Children's Village. I was shocked to hear this, but I believed them because that's what they experienced.

RP: Did Ruth, did Ruth have her own family at the time that she...

CT: Oh, no. She was just a young person, I guess in her early twenties. She wasn't married or anything, so she just came along with Lillian and they decided not to go to their families, wherever they were stationed at. She decided, and the other caregivers decided, according to Lillian Matsumoto, to come along with the children that they had nurtured all these years, so I thought that was wonderful.

RP: There was quite a discussion about making sure that the people who had loved you at the Shonien loved you at Manzanar too, to keep the staff intact.

CT: Right.

RP: It was very important for the children's welfare. And in your case, Ruth was that person.

CT: Ruth was that person, yeah.

RP: Anything else that you remember, special about Ruth, made her really special in your eyes?

CT: She was just very loving and she would teach about Jesus and, as children and not in a fanatical sense, but she would just teach us between right and wrong and give us a superego, so she just saved me. She saved me from myself, let's put it that way, as I became a rebellious teenager.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.