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LG: So what happened after that?

TM: I think at the beginning of 1946, my parents left the labor camp in Caldwell, Idaho, and went back to Auburn, Washington. And when they left Auburn, Washington, in 1942, they were renting a house, and the landlord said, "Well, we'll keep the house for you until you return." And he was true to his word, so they were able to live there, and I guess they were able to store their wedding gifts in that house, and they were still there when they came back. My cousin, I was asking him about their experience because he was his father was the owner of a pottery... and they went to Minidoka. And I said, "So did your parents have to go to the labor camp?" he said, "No." He said, "My dad had a business," I said, "He had a business?" And he said yes, that a neighbor in Auburn had said to them, "We'll keep your trucks," because they had these big trucks to deliver the pots and to get the clay, et cetera. "We'll keep these until you are released." And so at some point, the neighbor brought the trucks to my uncle in Minidoka. And so my uncle started a business which was delivering produce et cetera, I think, to the canneries or to the factories that needed it so they didn't have to go to a labor camp because he had a business which was kind of interesting, I thought.

LG: So when your family returned to Washington, does that mean that the pottery business...

TM: No, the pottery business continued, it was still intact, so my dad went to work there and my parents lived in the house that they were renting from their landlord. It's interesting because I think a couple of years ago, one of our neighbors, who was our playmate who's probably now in her sixties if not seventies, she decided she would gather all the information about all the kids in the neighborhood and find out what they're doing now And she said there were fifty kids in that neighborhood, and we were the only Japanese Americans who lived in town. There were other Japanese Americans, but they kind of lived on the outskirts or on farms, and anyway, we were one family amongst all Caucasian families in this neighborhood. And we basically got along and played hard, et cetera. So we had a good, happy childhood.

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