Oh, night and day, just night and day. For one, our family was back together. That meant a lot to everybody in the family. So my mom was out of bed. She was happy. She was just great. My father, he was not -- he never turned into the stern man my mom said that he was going turn into. [Laughs] One of the first things that the kids did was open up his suitcase and found that he had comic books, and that was so delightful because my mom says my father is so serious. He's not going to tolerate us reading comic books anymore, and he had comic books. [Laughs]
The entire atmosphere was different. There really was a sense of community. There was all kinds of activities. We had sumo wrestling. We had shiginkai, we had... I was involved in Japanese shibai, plays. The schools were involved in stuff. The churches were involved. My sister used to wake up at 5:00, 5:30 in the morning, and go to taisou classes where they would exercise and keep their body fit. It was, my memory of Crystal City actually is a happy, happy memory. The family was happy, everybody, the surrounding seemed to be functioning. There was no gloom and despair and ugliness that there was in Minidoka. To me, it was a fun time.
Date: May 27, 1998
Location: Washington, US
Interviewer: Lori Hoshino
Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.
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