<Begin Segment 19>

Off camera: Actually, just for the record since the camera is rolling, you mentioned that you'd actually gone to Camp Livingston?

EO: Yes, I went, and it's not where the map shows. It's in the northern part of Louisiana, we found out. They have it wrong. Tetsu Kashima, he has it wrong, 'cause in his book, he has it at the tip, going towards the toe, and that's wrong. Because we went there, and it wasn't there. [Laughs]

VO: So you've visited a number of the camp sites.

EO: Just the two, Missoula, Fort Missoula, and Camp Livingston. I've never gone... Crystal City has reunions. In fact, down in California, they meet every year, they're very close-knit. I went to one, couple of reunions. I haven't gone to the Minidoka reunion at all. Have you been to the pilgrimage?

VO: Uh-huh, twice.

EO: I haven't been there. I would like to go sometime, just to see it. Yeah, when I went to camp Livingston, the fellow that was in charge of the museum there didn't know anything about it. It was really strange. So when I told him, he started digging into his files and he found information. And so this other soldier took us to the remains of Camp Livingston, we just saw the foundation. There's no camp there anymore. It was good to go. We were in New Orleans, and I said, "I want to go try to find Camp Livingston." People gave us all these misdirections. "Oh yeah, there was a camp here." So we'd go over there, no. Oh, it was over there? We went all over, we finally went to the State Library, they had a file, and they told us where to go. Because there's a county or a town called Camp Livingston, or Livingston, and it's not anywhere near where the camp was. So I think people got the wrong idea, and when they draw the map, they put it to where Livingston is right now, and it isn't there.

Off camera: You've mentioned that the guestbook, the actually furniture that the guestbook is sitting on was made by a camp inmate?

EO: Right, it was like a podium, beautifully made. And when I looked down below it, there was a Japanese Suematsu name on it, so it had been built by an internee, and they didn't know anything about it. So then I did some background check, and that family had gone back to Japan, so I don't know what happened to them. It was beautifully made, he must have been quite a craftsman. And that's where they had the guestbook. I saw it, the minute I walked in, I saw this beautiful podium with a guestbook, and looked down, and hey, that's a Japanese name. There's a story about Camp Livingston. The reason the Japanese had to move was because they brought in more POWs. And they had the... but the POWs got along, and there's a story about the Japanese and the Italians would have baseball games against each other. It was really something. It just goes to show that people can get along. Why is it that we have to have wars, right? On an individual basis, people get along fine. We got along fine with the Germans, except when we played basketball. The German girls were so tall, six feet. And I was trying to guard this German gal, she slammed the basketball right on my fingers, I still have a sprain here. Never got well. Sprained my finger. They were real tall and athletic compared to the Japanese girls. But we got along fine.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2013 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.