<Begin Segment 5>

RP: I'd like to talk a little bit more about the various social --

TI: Oh, uh-huh.

RP: -- committees that developed. Every, you know, a lot of folks talk about how close knit the community was.

TI: Uh-huh.

RP: It was kind of like, as one person described it, one large family.

TI: Yes. It was just like one large family. The, I don't know, there was incident... I shouldn't say incident but the fishermen would come home, loaded and they'd have some extra fish that they set aside and bring that home. And the first thing they do is they call their friends or relative, farming, you know, around San Pedro. And the farmers would come over to pick up their gift of the fish. And they'd bring box and boxes of the greens that they had harvested, more of less exchanging, you know, greens for the fish. And then what happened is naturally we'd get boxes and boxes of greens. We can't consume it all so we'd give it to our friends living around us. So it's just like a large family.

RP: You mentioned, you know, the schools you went to in Terminal Island. But there was one particular teacher that stuck out in your mind.

TI: Well, there were, they were all good teachers. The principal was named Wallenzer and she was a beautiful woman. And she led everything in school and I guess she knew the condition we were Japanese kids, not knowing the English language, and brought up with the Japanese language.

RP: Was she, she went on a trip to Japan.

TI: Yes. The, the people there in Terminal Island, they all chipped in I guess you would say, and they sent her to a trip to Japan. And I believe she enjoyed it because there were many students that, that were in Terminal Island but had gone to Japan with their family. And they all came to see her and she was well treated.

RP: And you went to Japanese language school on the island.

TI: Uh-huh, yes.

RP: And where was that?

TI: Well, the one I went to was sponsored by the Baptist church there, Japanese Baptist Church. And it was known as Seisho Gakuen. And well, we could speak Japanese quite well but reading and writing was something else. But we did do quite well thinking about it because when the war broke out many of us went into the army and we were in the army where we acted as the interpreters and translators. Yes, I did the same thing too. I went to, there was a military school in Monterey and at that time I think they were teaching Japanese and Russian, if I'm not mistaken. But I graduated, oh, in a very short time because I had the foundation for speaking and writing Japanese, learning that in Terminal Island.

RP: So when did you speak English on the island?

TI: Well...

RP: Or did you?

TI: We, it was mixed. We'd speak Japanese and mix it up with English. But, of course once we went to school it was all English.

RP: You said during recess when you spoke Japanese...

TI: Oh yeah, except recess and especially lunchtime, we'd all gather together and uh-huh...

RP: One of the characteristics of Terminal Island was that it was so isolated, you know, as a community and physically. Did you get a chance to go off the island at all when you were growing up? Did your dad take you anywhere or...

TI: Well, this is one thing. With all the people living on Terminal Island there were very few cars owned by the Japanese people. So if you wanted to get out of the island you had to get on the ferry and go to San Pedro and get on one of those red train or whatever they is that'll bring you to Little Tokyo here.

RP: Do you remember any of your visits to Little Tokyo?

TI: No, I don't think I ever rode on the red train. So, the only time I did come to Little Tokyo was some farmers would bring vegetables and if they had time, why they'd bring it to Little Tokyo to do a little visiting. But we were talking about the language. We went to Japanese school and it wasn't a very strict school but we did learn enough writing and the reading and the speaking that well, I'm just talking about myself, I was able to graduate from this school in Monterey, the language school run by the army in Monterey, in a very short time. And I was sent to Japan. I did quite a bit of translation work there. Reading newspaper and translating that into English and the newspapers, it's all printed in English. And it came from all over the world where the Japanese people had immigrated, they had their newspaper there. And these were all sent to the headquarters in, the army headquarters in Japan. And we'd have to translate all of that. Now I wasn't the only one. There were others doing the same thing. But shortly after that ran out, I was sent to Yokohama where they were having the war crimes trials. And I sat there as the interpreter and didn't do much, though. [Laughs]

RP: We'll talk about that in a little bit.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.