Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Yoshimitsu Suyematsu Interview
Narrator: Yoshimitsu Suyematsu
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Ontario, Oregon
Date: April 22, 2014
Densho ID: denshovh-syoshimitsu-01-0015

<Begin Segment 15>

TI: Now I was doing interviews in California, in Southern California, people who came from Terminal Island, San Pedro area. So for them, they were the first group to go to Manzanar. So were they, were they the ones who were moving in to Manzanar?

YS: Yeah. Almost all, mostly all California.

TI: But in particular, they were coming from this sort of fishing...

YS: Yeah, Terminal Island. They're the ones that are bad. They want to fight all the time.

TI: Yeah, they were a pretty rough group. They would talk about how they almost had their own language, their own dialect of kind of pidgin, Japanese, English, that they said that they spoke.

YS: Yeah. You know, funny thing about that, too, is that when I went to California a couple years later, and I was in the Miyako and I was coming down the stairs, there were those Terminal Island guys downstairs, "Oh my god, how are you, how are you?" [Laughs]

TI: So now they're your best friends? So they recognized you?

YS: Yeah, they recognized me and I talked to 'em. I said, "Hey, how you guys doing?" But get in a bunch, they want to fight. Because, hell, they were next block from us. We were in 3, and 9's right across the street. And 4 was this way, but 9 was right across the street. Heck, them guys, they always play basketball, they want to fight, play baseball, they want to fight.

TI: So why would they want to fight? Because you didn't do anything, right, you were just...

YS: You don't sound off to 'em, really, you know. This one guy says, "Take it easy." Poom, he just hits somebody. What chance you got? Them guys got so many guys. So just like when, was playing basketball, was going to leave, and, whatever, double-A, triple-A, whatever it was. And we were, both of us were undefeated, and they wanted to play us. [Laughs] We knew what they wanted to do, they wanted to fight. So we said, "No, we got to move, we got to move, so we don't want to play." But we knew what they wanted to do, they wanted to fight.

TI: So did that surprise you? Because you grew up with other Japanese, and even Seattle Japanese, and probably didn't see that kind of behavior. And so this was a very different...

YS: Yeah, it was different. Well, then we knew some of them freshmen and stuff, they were, by themselves, they were pretty good. They visit with you and everything. But get in a group, and they were... they call 'em pachucos, that's what we used to call them.

TI: Yeah, it was funny because I asked some of the Terminal Island people about the Bainbridge people, and they said, yeah, they thought the Bainbridge Island people were a little strange, they were a little, they were a little too quiet and to themselves. [Laughs] That's what they thought. Because I was curious. So, yeah, they thought you were kind of more like farmers, more country people, and they were more of the city people.

YS: Well, just like this one island family had a cousin from Terminal Island, and then a few blocks away, they come over all the time and stuff. They get the men involved, they just...

TI: Well, it's kind of interesting, because I've done interviews around the country, and the Bainbridge Island people were a pretty close-knit community and got along. And then the San Pedro, Terminal Island people, even in California, had a reputation of being pretty rough. And so it was like this clash of two different cultures that were very different that happened. Did you ever, were you ever able to make friends during that time?

YS: Oh yeah, we made friends with some of them. Some of them used to come over all the time and play ping pong or whatever, so there were some. San Leandro, we had San Leandro people in our block, too, and they were pretty good.

TI: It's just that sometimes for that, when they got together as a group for sports and things. Now were there ever any big fights between the two groups?

YS: Oh, yeah, there was sometimes a pretty good fight.

TI: Now, did you ever get involved in any of these fights?

YS: No, we didn't. We stayed away from them.

TI: [Laughs] That sounds pretty wild. So after you were there for a while, I mean, you don't really start school until the fall, right?

YS: Yeah, we didn't go to school for seven months.

TI: Yeah, so what did you do during that time? How did you keep busy? You had, like, seven months of no school.

YS: Yeah, see, from March 'til October we didn't go to school. And then when we started school, we sat on the floor.

TI: Oh, so they had no desks or benches or anything?

YS: No.

TI: How about books and things like that?

YS: Yeah, I guess we had books, but I remember sitting on the floor.

TI: And so, for you, was that okay, or did you miss school?

YS: Well, no. I guess we were having fun, so we probably didn't care about school. I think it was October they started.

TI: Now during those early months, what was the security like at Manzanar? Were you able to, like, leave outside the fence or anything like that, or did you have to stay inside?

YS: Yeah. They said that was for that, people to, keep the people out, but it's what they... they shot, I think, a few.

TI: So you were being guarded, you were being, like, a prisoner.

YS: Oh, yeah.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.