Densho Digital Archive - Yooichi Wakamiya Interview (denshovh-wyooichi-01-0026)

<Begin Segment 26>

RP: Have you attended reunions?

YW: Sure. I have attended several of the Rohwer reunions.

RP: Where are they held?

YW: Huh?

RP: Where were they held?

YW: One was held in Rohwer.

RP: Was that the --

YW: I shouldn't, I shouldn't say Rohwer. It was held in Little Rock.

RP: Was that the program through the Japanese American National Museum, "Life Interrupted"?

YW: Yes. I went to that one. My wife is, was incarcerated in Amache, which is southeastern Colorado. They had a gathering. [To wife] In Las Vegas, was it?

Off camera: Denver.

YW: Denver. Denver, okay. Denver, so we went to that. She has some friends that live back east who didn't come back. What happened is they went from Amache, they worked back east, and then when they heard this was going on they came out and so we, they thought good time to get together. So she saw some classmates at the reunions.

RP: So what was it like for you to go back to Arkansas? I imagine you visited the camp site?

YW: Several times before, on my own. Yes, on the way, on the way back from Washington, D.C. I said, "I want to go back to my camp. We're on the way home, anyway. I say we just take a southern route." And went through places like Tennessee and across the, across the mountain ranges there, then went into Mississippi and crossed over into Arkansas. And I was able to find it first shot. I knew where it was.

RP: And what did, what did you find still left out there from the camp?

YW: The main thing that's left, the camp site itself is farmland. It's been turned back into farmland, like it was before, and instead of cotton they were growing soybeans. One of the biggest soy sauce factories is in Wisconsin. Are you familiar with that? Yeah, one of the Japanese companies started a soy sauce factory in Wisconsin because they can get soybeans up and down the Mississippi Valley. Yeah.

RP: How ironic.

YW: Kikkoman, one of the famous Japanese soy sauce companies, has a place in Wisconsin. Yeah, the thing, the main thing that you visit there, left now in camp is the cemetery, and I remember the cemetery very well 'cause it was on my side of the camp. Block 16 was on the end, the cemetery was, like, if I go back, it was One through Eight, Nine through Sixteen, I'd say maybe where Block 4 was, 4 or 5 on the outside of the gates, the fence there. The camp cemetery was built there. And what I remember about seeing there was some of the stone structures that were put up by the inmates. One was a, they made, using cement and concrete, they built an army tank, okay? And on the army tank they put a plaque up and indicated the names of the people who left the camps to go serve. And then on a, on another one, more recently -- this is back in the '70s, maybe, or something -- somebody put up a granite plaque, and there was another plaque that was there already when we left put up by the -- is that there? Oh, I don't know where this is. You have a picture of the camp, the military block? No. Let's see, I don't remember this one [looking at a picture].