<Begin Segment 9>

RP: Do you recall, Russell, ever seeing anybody trying to sneak out?

RD: Yeah, one time, I'd seen a shadow going out of the, one of the towers on the back end back there, and like I said, we didn't have any ammunition and everything else, so I said, "What the heck? Let him go and we'll catch up with him anyway." I think it happened once or twice. And they eventually caught him anyway. We had phones in the tower, but I didn't bother with it.

RP: So you were pretty lenient about...

RD: Oh, yeah. I wasn't very happy about the situation there anyway, the people that were in there, they were all real, seemed real nice. Maybe some of the older ones were a problem, but the young people who was in there, they were all very nice. Got along with them very good.

RP: And, you know, Robert talked about that a little bit when we interviewed him, and he said that there were some different attitudes between folks like yourself who had grown up on the West Coast and knew what the situation was as opposed to the guys from back east, who he characterized their attitudes as, "These are just dirty Japs."

RD: Well, yeah, they were, they come there, and they had that Boston accent or New England accent back there and everything else, they were kind of cocky when they first got there and everything else. But they kind of calmed down after a while.

RP: So you, did you, would that be... would you characterize them as having that attitude towards Japanese Americans?

RD: No, I don't remember them having any kind of attitude like that. Like I said, most of us, as far as I can remember, seemed to get along pretty good with 'em. There might have been some guys in there expressed some opinions about it, but whether they did or not, I don't remember.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.