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MR: So I'm wondering during the war when you had people working on your farm, had they been in the camps, some of the people on your farm?

AS: Only in "assembly center," very beginning. We were all herded into that stockyard.

MR: So did you have any contact with people who were in camp?

AS: Well, unless you had relatives or close friends. My mother and my sister from California were there in Minidoka, and so I stayed in contact with them, yes. And also the whole, my brother, his wife, my mother and father, and my two sisters who were not married yet, they all stayed with us during the war in Eastern Oregon.

MR: So did they go to camp for a while and then they had --

AS: Yes. They were in Manzanar, and then they got permission to come to our place.

MR: When the war changed, or ended, when the war ended, did anything change much for you since you weren't in camp in the first place?

AS: You know, in Eastern Oregon, you don't even know a war is going on is the impression I got. Everybody's so busy working, working so hard in the hot sun, you know. Winter, it's so cold, you stay inside. And one year, the Snake River froze up. It went way down to 20 below, and there were rocks standing, ice cakes standing up like that. Some people attempted to cross to Idaho side but very dangerous because underneath, the water is running, and very deep sturgeon live in there.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2005 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.