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Loss of happy-go-lucky adolescence in Puyallup Assembly Center

During that period was there an experience I had that was very revealing to me. One day a messenger came and said that there was someone who wanted to see me, not a Japanese, someone from the outside. And so I was curious, and I'm thinking gee, could it be Norm Peterson, could it be Tony, could it be...?

So I go, and here it is, my teacher. And I, we shook hand and kind of walked. And he is still quiet, and he says, Is there someplace we can sit and talk? And I said, Yeah. And I'd been up on the grandstand with some date, girls. before, there's, on the fairground, the grandstand still exists. So we went up there, and all of a sudden I just feel that the atmosphere has changed. All of the sudden I had a perspective view of the whole camp area and I never dreamed the rows of barrack that was there. It was kind of a shocking view. Because in the other area there's no, we're all ground level, and all of a sudden you get up in this grandstand and you look and you see all the rows and rows of barracks. They were built in this area where they would have the horse racing and all that.

And this guy, the teacher said, he was telling me about his experience during World War I. And he's German and his father was interned. And so he went through a similar experience, and he said that it was a dirty rotten shame that this kind of thing had happened. And for the first time I really felt the impact of what was going on. It made quite an impression on me. Just prior to then I was a happy-go-lucky, carefree teenager.


Puyallup temporary detention center temporary detention centers United States Washington World War II World War II camps

Date: August 18, 1997

Location: Washington, US

Interviewer: Lori Hoshino, Stephen Fugita

Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.

Interviewee Bio

Nisei male. Born 1923 in Seattle, Washington. Spent prewar childhood in South Park and Belltown areas of Seattle. Incarcerated at Puyallup Assembly Center, Washington, and Minidoka incarceration camp, Idaho. Refused to participate in draft, imprisoned at McNeil Island Penitentiary, Washington, for resisting the draft. Resettled in Seattle.

*The full interview is available Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.

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Conditions of assembly centers

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Camp as a positive thing

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Yukio Takeshita
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Involvement in JACL

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Roy H. Matsumoto
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