<Begin Segment 24>

RP: This is tape three of a continuing interview with Yo Wakamiya, and Yo, can you describe your feelings the day that you got on that train to leave Rohwer, Arkansas?

YW: Being kind of young, I wasn't sure what was happening. But I knew we, we got to back to L.A., so I asked my dad how long's it gonna take and he said about three and a half days. So I found another playmate on the train and we ran up and down and raised hell on the train for three and a half days. [Laughs] What else can you do? There's nothing to do. So we visited each other and the parents of each side said, "You go visit the other parents," 'cause we were raisin' a ruckus. [Laughs] So for three and a half days we went up and down the train, lookin' at sights and got to see some empty spaces when you crossed places like Oklahoma, Nebraska, nothing there, right? And then we got to the heat of Arizona and the vendors at the train stations, that's where we saw -- and El Paso. It was hot, and then it started cooling down as we got toward California. And we ended up at Union Station in L.A. And before we left camp they gave each family a stipend, a small amount of money, I don't know, twenty-five, thirty-five dollars or something. It was not much. And when we got off, then we took a red car train down to Long Beach and Mr. Mizumoto picked us up and took us to our trailer court, and that started our few years there in the trailer courts.

RP: And what was life like in those trailer courts?

YW: Pretty confining, 'cause the room was small. Twenty feet is not much. And my dad said, after he started working as a gardener for a while he was able to save a little more money, he said, "I got extra cash. Why don't we go buy a house?" He says, "This is awful." So the problem that he faced was lot of people weren't willing to sell homes to Japanese. So one day he was able to find this house, but it turns out he found the house in a neighborhood in west Long Beach where Japanese used to live before the war. He didn't know this 'cause he didn't know Long Beach, but the person was, the family that sold us the house had a plan of their own. They wanted to move about five, six blocks north of that house. They had a new house built, so as soon as that house became available then we moved into their old house. Now, that house doesn't exist anymore, because it used to be, it was located at the intersection of the Harbor Freeway and Pacific Coast Highway, and when that freeway went in my dad had to sell his house the freeway people. Eminent domain took over my house, so we had to go buy another house, right? But when he found out what the previous owner had he went over there and asked if he could take a look at their house. He hired a local contractor to build him that house. And that was an elderly couple. There's just two of 'em. But my dad said that would be, it's a two bedroom house, "That'd be adequate for what we could use." So we went and checked in with that builder, my dad says, "I want to go find a lot," so he found an empty lot, bought the lot, had that builder build that same house. So that house is still there, but it's two blocks north of where we used to live, and my brother still lives there. My parents are all gone now, but he's still living there. He's single. And I think he's one of the few Japanese living on that block now. All the others moved out. I don't know where they did, but they, what happened to them.

RP: And you went on to college, as you said, at UCLA?

YW: Yes.

RP: In engineering.

YW: Yes.

RP: And then from there you, you...

YW: I worked at two companies.

RP: Went into a career in aerospace?

YW: Yes. I started out as a summer student when I was going to college, Long Beach Douglas was hiring students for the summer, to be gophers, if you will. So I got hired in, and with a bunch of other college students that I met, there was about five, six other college students that were hired in. And I worked there for several summers until I graduated, and I asked the personnel manager if I could work part time. He said, "Why?" I said, "I want to go back to graduate school." He said, "Well, I guess we could work that out for you." He said, "You can work here part time and go. Schedule is easy to negotiate with you," he says. So he did that. He was very compliant that way. So I worked part time and went to school part time and finished my Master's degree, then I went back full time, working there full time, and I decided I want to go back to school again, so, "Don't you ever stop going to school?" [Laughs] I said, "I want to try the PhD program, so," I said, "I want to take a leave of absence for a year." And so I took a whole bunch of classes up there, then I came back and I said, "That PhD is too tough. I'm gonna work." So that's what I did. I decided to work from then on. But I had all kinds of courses under my belt. But that next step was really grueling and I saw how a lot of people were failing. I said no, I think I'll just drop it here.

So I stopped going to school for a while and I worked full time 'til January of 1959, then I transferred over to STL, Space Technology Laboratories. And the way I got that job was one of the graduate courses I was taking was being taught by a professor and an assistant, and the assistant was a section head over at STL and he would cover for the professor when the professor had to go run off somewhere. Well, this guy wrote letters to all his students who graduated from that class and it said, "In case you're interested in hiring onto our company, we got openings for you, 'cause you guys are takin' the kind of classes we want our people to have." So I stayed on 'til December of '58 and decided, you know what, I think I want to change companies 'cause Douglas was firing people. They had lost a big contract. They lost a proposal. They weren't, they were not doing very well. I said last hired, first fired, "I better get out of here," so I wrote back a letter, I said, "Back in July you sent us a letter about inquiring about employment opportunities," and back came a letter, said, "Come on, I want to talk to you." So in December I interviewed them, in January I was workin' for them. And I stayed with STL, which eventually became TRW when they expanded, and so I stayed there thirty-two years and I retired in 1992.

RP: You kind of got in on the space race there, right at the ground level.

YW: Oh, it was wonderful. Yeah, what happened was while we were working the Russians, thank goodness, started a space war. In 1957 they launched the first satellite. I think they scared the heck out of the U.S. government. "Good heavens, they got a capability we don't even have and we can't even get near it. We have to catch up." So as a result, from '57 on 'til today, they were pouring money into the industry and they were pouring money into different companies who had different specialties, and we, we got on that bandwagon and TRW was formed and continued on and helped with the government's contracts. We also did our own contracts. And it was a fun time. It was a good time, had interesting jobs, money was not a problem. It was, it was a good kick in the pants we got from the Russians. It was really, if it wasn't for them I think we'd still be meddling around and doing all the wrong things. But that, that focused our attention on the right things, and as a result, things that came out of our industry are, like this miniature camera, right? Calculators, miniature telephones, all that came out of that industry, so we not only made weapons, we made some interesting other things. I don't know what the next wave is gonna be, but we're gonna need some help.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.