<Begin Segment 4>

RP: So were your closest girlfriends girls in the village or in the rest of the camp?

CT: Well, probably from my class in the rest of camp.

RP: And you were, were you at this time third, fourth grade?

CT: No, not fourth. I would say second or third. Yeah.

RP: Do you remember some of your closest girlfriends?

CT: I don't remember a name or anything, and the only reason why I know Annie Sakamoto is because we both moved out of camp into a foster home together. I don't remember anybody's name. I do remember one girl. Her name was Florence, and she was eleven and I was six, and she, one Christmastime they gave us a box full of nuts and cookies and candy, and she stole it. She did. So here I'm only six and she's eleven, so I went up to her and I says, "Florence, I know you stole the box of goodies," and I says, "and God's gonna get you for that." [Laughs] But the thing of it is she died an early death, not there in camp, but I says, oh, you're kidding. I couldn't believe it.

RP: Why? Is that karma?

CT: It's karma. I don't know.

RP: Sounds like you had a sense of right and wrong at that age, too.

CT: Yeah, I mean, you don't do things like that, steal. One thing we did have, a orange crate, cubicle by our bed and we kept all our private things in that orange crate, and of course I didn't know it was an orange crate. I thought it was a dresser, with a curtain on it. And nobody was allowed to go into each other's private, and that had to be respected. So she didn't respect it and I didn't care if I was six and she was eleven. See, that makes a big difference. I mean, she could beat, beat you up if she wanted to, but...

RP: Yeah, you mentioned that this popular conception amongst some of the orphans that were very restricted in their movements to the Village, and maybe for some of them it became their, their center of their life.

CT: Yeah.

RP: Because they had all their friends there and everything else, but for you it was a completely different experience. Were there any other places that you remember visiting in the camp, that --

CT: Yes, I visited the Catholic church because I liked the -- well, I am quite dramatic, to say the least -- and I loved the ceremony of the Catholic church and so I used to visit them a lot. I visited Protestant church and I visited, I think the Buddhist church, but I don't remember too much of that, but I do remember the Catholic church. They were very nice.

RP: What do you remember about the ceremonies or the rituals that affected you?

CT: Well, the altar and, well, this is all very primitive, but his robe and I don't know, it was just very dramatic and I think I enjoyed the show more than I took in the religion.

RP: The message.

CT: Yeah. Yeah, right. So, but they were always nice to me and went to catechism class and everything like that. This was on my own. Nobody in the orphanage knew I went to catechism class.

RP: They didn't, nobody encouraged you to go there?

CT: No, but we would have a kind of Sunday School classes, I think, in the Village itself. And, and then we would have, but we were free. I was free to walk all over that camp and visit everything I could, and Peter says each town that we went to, or if we visited Turkey or Greece or something, I always insisted I had to walk all over town, because I says, "I cannot get the feel of the, the environment by a bus," so, but I start thinking back, maybe this kind of comes back from my childhood 'cause I was always walking, curious. Remember going to the movies, the outdoor movie, and they said, and there was a lot of gravel. I could hear the crunch, crunch, crunch of the gravel. And, but I'd go there by myself and sit with whoever was there, and they permitted us to go, at least I thought they permitted us. I just went. I had no idea whether I was supposed to have permission or not. I didn't know rules or regulations, if there were any. I wasn't told of any. I don't remember any.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.