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DF: So can you talk about your life now and your family?

AT: Well, we have, in retirement, we do a lot of, it's a very comfortable life. We do all the gardening that we, we have two acres here, so we do all the gardening here which keeps us very, very busy, and we do some traveling. We do a lot of traveling. And my husband and I both play tennis. We still are able to play tennis, so that keeps us very busy. And we have grandchildren who live very close by, just a mile away, so we see them quite often, and that's a real joy. That's the most joyful thing in our lives.

DF: What's your biggest worry at this time?

AT: Worry, I suppose getting old, Alzheimer's, illnesses, just as it is for every elderly person having to move out of a house that you've loved all your life. This has been the best thing in the world because for once, we've not had to move, I've not had to move every year of my life. As we were growing up, we moved almost every year of my life because we had to move as we were moving through the mainland and then moving in Japan. Even in Japan, we moved to seven different homes while we were there, so we've never been really settled. So once we moved here and I was married, I said I'm not moving. Once we buy a house, that's it. I'm staying there and we have. We lived in this house for a long time, and we don't plan to move unless we absolutely have to. Unless we can no longer take care of it, then we'll have to move.

DF: That must be nice to have family close by.

AT: Very. It's very nice. Jim has lots of brothers. He still has two brothers and a sister who are still living, and it's wonderful to have family here. My brothers both live in Hawaii, but we see them quite often. We're able to go over to Hawaii or they come here, so that's very easy, and the telephone is easy.

DF: So how often do you talk with your brothers about camp, and how much does your family know about your experience, your grandkids?

AT: Oh, probably not at all. We never discuss it. We never discuss camp because we don't think about it. My older brother remembers everything about camp, but my younger brother and I don't remember a thing about it, so it's not important to us to bring it up. It happened and it's over. For us, it is. For me, it is.

DF: If there was no war, what would your life be like?

AT: I would probably be barefoot living on the beach in Hawaii with a zillion children, zillion grandchildren, and zillion aunts and uncles all around us which wouldn't be so bad either.

DF: So are you active at all in the Japanese American community?

AT: Not very. My husband is. Jim does work with, goes to the Legacy Center and he does the tours and he does the talks there. I don't do that. I don't want to. We helped when the Legacy Center was being rebuilt. We helped then and that I was happy to do. But as far as giving talks and... I don't need to do that.

DF: How do you see your experience fitting in with the, America's history?

AT: It's always a part of history, and we do now have that part put into our history books for the children to see, and there are lots of books about it now where there weren't any. There was no mention of it for many, many years. It was a small part of history, a big part for me, for the Japanese Americans who were caught up in it, but I don't see that it's any more important than anything else that's happened. Our grandchildren, of course, are very young, and Jim, my husband, has gone to speak to their classes about internment and what he did. But really he told them that as a child, actually, it was our grandson's class, and he was exactly the same age as the children that he was speaking to. So he told them what kinds of games he played and what they did in camp and that was, of course, much more interesting than knowing that they had very little of, that they were in a barbed wire area. He just told them that he went swim. He played football. He played baseball and the same things that they would be doing except that he was in a barbed wire area.

DF: If you were to give advice to the young people of today, what would you say?

AT: About?

DF: About current events, about the state of where we're at now?

AT: I guess I would say they should get involved. We sat back because that was our nature to do exactly what someone tells you to do. You didn't question it. You just did it. Now you can question things. Now you can say, "Why? Why am I having to do this?" But in those days, you just did what they told you to do. And being Japanese, you do that even more.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.