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RB: Since we're talking about Seabrook, why don't we pivot more to your childhood in Seabrook and your parents? Maybe we could start by, can you tell me the names of your parents and what they did for work?

MN: Yeah. My father was Kenzo Nakawatase. My mother was Aiko Hamashima Nakawatase. They were married, they actually met in camp. So it was maybe one positive thing that came for us out of the incarceration experience. And they married in 1942 and then I was born the following year. They, along with approximately, I think, 2,500 people of Japanese descent, they moved to and worked at Seabrook Farms, Incorporated, and lived in housing provided by the Seabrook Farms Corporation. My father was a mechanic at what was called the plant. This is where the fruits and vegetables were cooked and frozen and shipped. My mother was on what was called the packing line, which was after products were frozen, you have these little waxed boxes, they packed them and then closed them, and then they were shipped, I mean, put down the line and then wrapped in waxed paper and with labels, and all of that, of course, so people would know what they're eating. [Laughs] And then in turn, the produce was shipped all over the country, probably all over the world, actually, at that time, initially. So that... now the question, you were you were asking more about their work. Did you want to...

RB: Yeah, if you have more information about what they did, I guess that's what they were doing initially at Seabrook?

MN: Yeah, that's pretty much what my mother did. My father had tuberculosis, so he was out beginning in the late '50s. He went to a sanitarium in Glen Gardner, New Jersey. It was a state facility for people who were tubercular, and I never analyzed it, but there were probably a disproportionate number who were Japanese Americans. I mean, I can think of about three or four others who were in that sanitarium. And my father was there for about... all together, about five years, I think, five or six years, though he'd be, over time, would mean he would be home more often. But his work could no longer be as strenuous physically as it had been. So it was a good period, though, for me. And if not for him, in the sense that I got to know a little bit more about him or what he felt about things. He was very much, he read a lot, he knew a lot. His English was heavily accented. And he and my mother spoke in Japanese to each other, but not to us. I think it was sort of keeping the code so to speak. And in that period, this was now the early to mid-'60s, I discovered that he opposed the war in Vietnam, for example. Now, I think that comes with a couple of caveats, or maybe at least one caveat. He was essentially a Japanese nationalist. So I think he didn't feel that that any outside country, I mean, any Western outside country should be mucking around in Asia. I mean, if any outside country was gonna be mucking around in Asia, it should be Japanese. I mean, I think there was that dimension to it. But he clearly felt that the war was wrong, so in that sense, we shared a very strong position. He was also, I think, thoughtful about other concerns. I mean, he, when I left to go south and work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, I mean, there were no, there were no statements of alarm or despair. I mean, perhaps part of that was just resignation, in fact, I was gonna do it anyway. But I remember when I got back, I had kind of a snippet of a conversation with him. And his position was, you know, it was important that Black people -- I don't know if he used that term -- organized. In other words, he didn't necessarily buy the line that, you know, they had to do what people under the boot, so to speak, should educate themselves and wash themselves and all. Not that he didn't think they should, but the important thing was being organized. And of course, he was right. So he had some sense of, I think, social dynamics of the time, more than I had thought he did at the time.

RB: It's pretty remarkable for a man of his generation. I'm wondering, so one, one short question, and then maybe a longer question about him and sort of his journey to the United States, because you said he was Issei?

MN: Yeah.

RB: So the short question is, do you know if he contracted tuberculosis in camp, or was that after the war?

MN: Well, it was, all I know is it was diagnosed after camp in the late '50s. And, you know, my family had been out of camp for, what, ten, twelve years. But the fact that there were other Japanese Americans from our community, who also, you know, had tuberculosis. And then, I mean, at a later time, I'm sure this is the kind of thing you investigate and explore. And the CDC would probably check it out as to why the numbers. But we did, or at least other than noting it, there was no research done on it. I don't know the effects long term, I mean, where its origins were. As a result of it, of course, every family member had to take a TB test every year. And there was, it was later and there was also medication. So he was able to leave for the sanitarium. I mean, it had impact on him in terms of other physical effects, difficulty breathing, you know, issues about his and that sort of thing. But I mean, cause and effect. I know there was some, but I don't know how you can, how it would be tracked.

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