<Begin Segment 7>

AC: So your sister went from the "assembly center" directly to Nyssa to the work release.

SS: Uh-huh. So she was able to come out to our place to live. So that was our... and then our cousins, too, I think, came out. I think they came out, too. But I can't think of what happened, but I remember going to the Nyssa camp to visit friends, and the young people would have dances and things. It was fun for the young kids, but for the parents I think it was hard.

AC: Why?

SS: You know, just being uprooted and without their possessions, without community.

AC: So was this... it was a camp or was it a farming type...

SS: It's a rural area, it's just fifteen, twelve or fifteen miles from Ontario. And I don't know why they chose that place, but the government built a camp there at, oh, tent-like places, and later they built little houses, much like the labor camps they have now. I don't know.

AC: Were there guards at this camp?

SS: No.

AC: It was just a tent city?

SS: Yeah, it was just a work camp. No, there were no guards. But that was where I was telling you that Miss Pete and Miss Finley came out and conducted church. And Reverend Shaver from Caldwell was a Methodist minister from... was probably sent out here, and they all spoke Japanese, so they all helped us.

AC: So how was it going to high school in the middle of a war?

SS: Well, you know, there were a lot of evacuees that came in, and we felt different than they, because we didn't experience what they experienced. We grew up in Vale, in the Vale Hills, isolated and not knowing too much of anything. And these... oh, even our school principal would call my brother and I in the office and say, "What shall I do? What shall I do?" This one, I remember this one kid, Nihonjin kid had a crush on one of the real popular girls, and she resented it, and Mr. Conway didn't know what to do, so he called me into the office and said, "What shall I do?" And I didn't know what to do. [Laughs] But anyway, and my brother was on the baseball team, and this baseball team had a strike because they didn't want to play ball with these two. They were two Kibei boys that were on our team. And they didn't want to play with them. Well, they didn't speak good English, and they thought they were different. Anyway, they said, "Well, what about Shingo?" They said, "Well, he's one of us." So they thought of us differently. And then those kids who came in, for a while anyway, at first, maybe. But I don't know.

AC: So this real popular girl, was she Caucasian?

SS: Uh-huh. And, you know, another thing I was thinking about, the Methodist minister's wife, her name was Mrs. Cowdrick. But we lived way out in the country, and there was some school event that I wanted to attend. So my girlfriend that I started first grade with, Donna Jacobson was her name at that time, we were juniors in high school, I think, and we had to stay overnight in Vale. So Mr. Cowdrick said we could stay at her, the parsonage, because Donna was a Methodist and I was a Methodist, so we knew her and everything. So our folks said, okay, we could stay in town if we stayed at Cowdricks'. Well, Mrs. Cowdrick got the sofa ready, and then she had a double bed in the spare room, and she told Donna to sleep there and for me to sleep on the sofa. And Donna said, "Well, why can't we sleep together in that double bed? Then you don't have to make the bed on the sofa." And Mrs. Cowdrick said, "Oh, I'll just have to tell the Ladies Aid about this." She couldn't believe this hakujin girl would want to sleep with this little Japanese girl. And we didn't think anything of it because we were friends from first grade we're still friends.

AC: So did you sleep in the bed, or did you sleep on the sofa?

SS: We slept on the bed. And so Mrs. Cowdrick was just going to tell her Ladies Aid Society all about it, 'cause she thought it was so wonderful. [Laughs] Because we didn't think of it as wonderful, we just thought it was natural.

AC: So getting back to the baseball team strike, how was that resolved, or was it?

SS: You know, I can't remember the results. But I really probably shouldn't talk about it because of the local people, you know. Anyway... because those fellows still live around here, so cut it out. [Laughs]

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.