Densho Digital Archive
Oregon Nikkei Endowment Collection
Title: Kenji Onishi Interview
Narrator: Kenji Onishi
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: March 21, 2014
Densho ID: denshovh-okenji-01-0017

<Begin Segment 17>

TI: And going back, you said the food was all organized. Like at meals, did you eat with your family, or did you eat with your friends or your siblings, or how did that work?

KO: Well, it was mostly eating with friends almost from day one. The three years from 1942 to 1945, about the only time we saw Mother and my sisters, too, was when we came back home to bed. Almost all the eating was done with friends.

TI: Now, was your younger brother usually with you, or was he with his friends?

KO: He was with his friends.

TI: So that really changed -- and I'm thinking from a fifteen year old's standpoint, you probably didn't mind that. That was probably an interesting time period for you to wake up and you're off and you're on your own pretty much.

KO: And I'm independent, I have no allegiances to any one group. And even with the group that I played baseball with, I was still independent. So I might have eaten some meals with my teammates, but I also ate some meals with other people. One of the... if there's such a thing as a wonderful thing about the camp experience, is that I at fifteen was able to make friends with and meet people much, much older than I, and some younger than I am. And just went from here to there and observed all kinds of people. I was not stuck with my own group, and didn't do anything else other than. So today when I... I lost a friend who was older than I was. But when he and I would go to lunch, he'd talk about his friends. But I was able to join his conversation and say, "I remember doing things with him also." But I had found myself learning about life, about all kinds of people. Because generally speaking, I am an observer. I'm an outsider kind of thing, but I was curious and interested in other people, too.

TI: That's good. On the other hand, were there, you mentioned things... sometimes I think you as a fifteen year old had lots of independence along with other teenage boys. Did you or the others ever get in trouble because you guys do something that because of that lack of, perhaps, parental supervision, did things that maybe weren't appropriate?

KO: Well, the other... I don't say the others did, but I was independent enough to say, "Count me out. I'm going to leave you guys, and you can do what you want, but I'm not going along with it." So I found myself doing things like after the baseball practices, if you can picture twelve guys going to the canteen at the same time, and then browsing around the store and some picking out stuff to pay for at the counter, and the clerk is so busy with this crowd of people, that a few of the other guys are pocketing the candy bar or package of gum or something. And I found myself after baseball games not going to the canteen with them anymore.

TI: Because you saw that happening?

KO: Yeah. And I would tell them that, "Not right, but you guys do that," or individuals who were doing that, and the guys would kid of joke on me and say, "Preacher, just cut it out. Go if you want to." But I learned to play golf in camp. I didn't need somebody else to be there, so a lot of times after baseball practices, I would pick up a golf club and go out and hit golf balls in the sagebrush.

TI: Okay, so you could essentially self-select in terms of what you decided to do.

KO: Yeah.

TI: I've interviewed other people from the Portland area, and they talk about when the weather got hot, there was a problem with black flies and things like that? The smells and black flies has come up. Do you recall the black flies when you were there?

KO: It didn't bother... I didn't really pay too much attention to the black flies. But it was a real hot summer; it was a record-breaking hot summer.

TI: That's what people said. So it wasn't... for some people, they said it was not very pleasant staying there. So after the Portland Assembly Center, people were then moved to another camp. So where did you and your family go?

KO: We went to Minidoka.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.