His mother’s money belt

Getting measles at the camp His sister’s reaction to the camp His mother’s money belt Differences between Parents His father’s American Dream Allyship after camp Coming back from camp Being an outsider Running Japanese store Starting out in Art About Orange Crate Label His mother’s experience of the camp “I did what I wanted to do”

Transcripts available in the following languages:

We were inland a little bit so there wasn’t a big Japanese community there so the people in LA I think got to Manzanar and they sent us to um, to Poston Arizona.

Literally they had to stuff um, straw into mattresses to make a, you know, to make the mattress. My mother uh, really was quite brilliant, alright? She took a money belt, made it herself, put a thousand dollars in cash in it, and wore it for three and a half years.

Without that money, we come back from camp, we could not start the store and luckily, my mother was a citizen. If she wasn’t a citizen, people understand this, she could not, we could not own property.

Date: September 8, 2011
Location: California, US
Interviewer: John Esaki, Kris Kuramitsu
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

incarceration Nisei Poston WWII camp