John and Betty Ochi Interview, 25 Aug 2006

Abstract

Betty and John Ochi discuss their stories of life in California following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Each recounts the paths their lives took as they were forced to leave their homes, take what they could, and relocate to internment camps. Life within these camps is discussed in detail as well as the process of readjusting to life on the outside. They paths and stories finally joined after separately coming to Cleveland.

Interviewee

Ochi, John (interviewee); Ochi, Betty (interviewee)

Interviewer

Ziemnik, Sara (interviewer)

Project

Japanese American Citizens League

Date

7-31-2006

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

89 minutes

Recommended Citation

"John and Betty Ochi Interview, 25 Aug 2006" (2006). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 906001.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/287

Related Resources

Japanese American Citizens League @ Cleveland Voices

Transcript

John Ochi [00:00:00] Okay.

Sara Ziemnik [00:00:02] Today is July 31, 2006, and I’m here with John and Betty Ochi, and they are representing the Japanese American Citizens League. So I just have a few questions for them. So first question I have was, can you just maybe tell me a little bit about the town you grew up in on the west coast, and what town did you grow up in? Just a little bit about that.

Betty Ochi [00:00:27] I was born in Sacramento, California. We lived on a farm. We leased 12 acres of land, and my parents grew strawberries. And there were seven of us in the family with my seven children and my mom and dad. That’s what we did. We worked on this farm.

John Ochi [00:00:55] I was born in Santa Ana, California, which is Southern California. Family consisted at the time of December 7th was mother, father, a brother that was 15, sister that was 18. Myself, I was 13, and my sister, who was 13. We were farmers. They called it truck farming because whatever we harvested, they loaded on a truck and took it to Los Angeles or market and sold it there. And that was where we were at the time of Pearl Harbor.

Sara Ziemnik [00:01:41] Was your extended family, did they live in the area? Did you get to see them often, or is it just mostly just your siblings and your parents that were in the area?

Betty Ochi [00:01:51] We didn’t have any other relatives in America. It was just my mother and father had. Well, my father came first and then went back and brought my mother and then had seven kids. And that’s all there was for our family. We didn’t know what cousins were or aunts or uncle.

John Ochi [00:02:18] Yeah, we were in the same type of thing where we had no relatives, although my grandfather came to the United States, and I’m not really sure what he did, but he traveled as far as. I know, as far as Utah, Idaho, that way. And then he came back to Orange county and started a farm, and he sent for his son, which would be my father. And the day that my father arrived in Seattle from Japan, my grandfather died. So my father took over the farm, ran the farm for I don’t know how many years. And I guess he got lonely or whatever. He went back to Japan, got married and came back. And that’s how our family started. We had no other relatives in the United States at all.

Sara Ziemnik [00:03:25] What was your favorite childhood memory, growing up on the farm before the war happened? What do you remember? And like most about it?

Betty Ochi [00:03:34] Well, I was 11 when the war started, so I didn’t do a whole lot of manual labor. My entertainment was playing with our animals. We had rabbits, and we always had cats and dogs, so they were my companions. While the rest of the family was out, you know, working. And I would take the rabbits to the farm and I would play with them out the farm and they would run away and I’d have to chase them. And that was my sort of entertainment. You know, that time of the century, there was no TV or all we had was radio. So that was the extent of my amusement.

John Ochi [00:04:23] I think my childhood years at that time was about the same. We didn’t have any close neighbors. So if you wanted to go see somebody that you met at school, it was like two miles away. We didn’t have a car, did have a bicycle, but we never went. Ventured on the street that much and more or less played among ourselves and helped on the farm. As young as I was, I used to drive the tractor and the truck and couldn’t see over the windshield of the truck, but I used to drive in. And that was about it.

Sara Ziemnik [00:05:11] How do you remember the events of December 7th? How did it affect your family on that day? What do you remember exactly from that day? Being as young as you were, I’m sure you still have some vivid memories.

Betty Ochi [00:05:24] Well, our neighbor was going to be married shortly. I’m sure they didn’t know that December 7th was going to be the day. But I remember on that Sunday, going to the city of Sacramento. We were in the farming area, the rural area, and then my brother and the bride to be went to the dressmaker in the city of Sacramento, and I was to be her flower girl. So we went for a fitting, and on the way home, then we were stopped by the police. And I told my brother that hadn’t you heard that Japan had bombed Pearl harbor and there’s a curfew and we’re supposed to be in our homes by sundown and all this? And my brother said we hadn’t heard, so we hurriedly came home. And then after that, I don’t remember much else. I don’t know whether the family were panicking at home or not. I don’t know. But by then my mother and father were deceased, so it was just seven of a sibling. And like I said, I don’t know. I can’t remember what the reaction of the rest of the family was. It was my eldest brother that took me to the city, you know, for my fitting. So I never got the dress. I never saw it again.

John Ochi [00:07:00] Well, my day, December 7th. I really don’t remember who said the war started or they bombed Pearl Harbor. And I think if they had said Pearl Harbor, I wouldn’t have known where that was. Anyway, but evidently it really bothered my parents because they said we had better start gathering up anything that reminded anyone of the fact that we were Japanese, which meant books, pictures, records, whatever. We started to destroy them, burn them, things that we could not burn. We had dug a large hole in the farm and buried the things. Things like my brother and I were into martial arts and we had the judo gi, which is the uniform. And we also were taking lessons in kendo, which is a fencing type of thing, Japanese. And there was gloves and masks and breastplates and so forth. And we buried all that. And ever since then, to this day, I always wondered if anyone ever dug them up anytime for some reason, because I’ve been back there a few times and the farm isn’t there. There’s just nothing but housing. And I’m sure when they were digging up for building the places that they might have run into, and I just always wondered what they thought the thing was. But anyway, the thing that I remember December 7th is that evening, I guess it was getting sort of dusk, a car drove up and out came two people. And somehow I kept thinking, God, I must have been 8 foot tall or something, because they were big, but they’re normal sized people. And one was a sheriff of Orange county, and the other one was his deputy. And I knew he was a sheriff of Orange county because he was a neighbor of ours who happened to be a farmer also, and he was also the sheriff. And they came inside and I vividly recall they walked in the house, they didn’t knock, they didn’t say, can we come in? Whatever. They just walked in like they owned the place, started looking around and they saw that we had a shotgun that we used to. I didn’t, but my father used to scare off birds and such. They took that. We had a small box camera, they took that. And they also took our radio, which had a short wave band on the thing, which is relative, just a receiver. You can’t transmit with the thing. But they took the whole radio, which happened to be a fairly large thing at that time, and the deputy put it in the car and he walking around the house and he saw that I had a trombone there. And I don’t know if he knew what a trombone was, but. But the case is about the size that you might be able to put a machine gun or a shotgun or something in there. He says, what is that? I said, that’s my trombone. And he says, open it. So I opened it and showed him that it was a trombone. And I guess that satisfied him and that was into that. But. And then he said, told my father to grab a few things because they’re going to have to go with him with the sheriff. So my father, I don’t know what he took, but he had a small bag and he went. And then for the next, I don’t know, it was over 10 days. We didn’t know where our father was. Here we have all this thing going on. We have farms, things to take care of and we don’t have the head of the household and we don’t know who he’s at. Called the FBI, called the sheriff’s office. No one seems to know where they were. Well, we finally found out after about 10 days that he was in a federal detention center in Bismarck, North Dakota. Now, I don’t know how. How fast they got him up there, but that’s where he was and was to be there for the next year at least. They moved him to Montana. Event part of the way. And that was the way the start of World War II was. And some of the things I remember very vividly, other things I hardly remember. And I remember because some of my sister or somebody told me that this happened. And somebody said, well, maybe it’s your subconsciously trying to forget certain things. And that may be true.

Betty Ochi [00:12:11] I know.

Sara Ziemnik [00:12:12] Betty, you said you were 11 on 1941.

Betty Ochi [00:12:16] I was 10.

John Ochi [00:12:17] 10, okay.

Betty Ochi [00:12:17] And how old?

John Ochi [00:12:18] 13. 13.

Sara Ziemnik [00:12:23] You sort of touched upon this a little bit. But how did you and your family deal, try to deal with some of the paranoia and the racism that was directed towards Japanese Americans during this time?

Betty Ochi [00:12:35] Well, like I said, my parents were already deceased, so it was just us second generation kids. And my eldest brother who became the head of the household just decided that we weren’t going to keep any of the things that denoted Japaneseism. You know, like we all went to Japanese school mainly because our parents, I think, wanted to come to this country and make their, you know, they assume that the United States was the land of plenty. So they would make all this money and then take all of us back to Japan. So consequently then they wanted us to be able to speak the language and go to school. So we all went to Japanese school. So then like our Japanese textbooks and things my brother said we just had to get rid of them. Like John says, we. We burned all of that and anything that denoted, anything that had to do with Japanese. And the school that I went to because maybe there were so many Japanese people there, we weren’t really bothered with prejudice or hate or any of that. Maybe in the city they did. But I don’t ever remember experiencing such in the elementary school that I was going to. In fact, when we were in the camp, one of my Caucasian girlfriends came to visit me in the camp and spent the day with us. Unfortunately, I never kept track of her, so I couldn’t in my older years, I couldn’t ask her what her thoughts were of us being in the camps or any of that. But other than that, you know, we just- I guess my brother just wanted us to be, quote, Americans and got rid of everything that pertained to Japan.

John Ochi [00:14:55] Yeah, I think our experience was basically the same. We didn’t really meet anyone. We’re on the farm, we don’t go anywhere. We didn’t go into town for probably a week because we were probably afraid to go. And we didn’t go. I think once we went back to school, I recall one person saying, hey, you dumb Jap, or something like that. And I didn’t pay much attention to it. And first of all, when you’re 13 years old and you don’t really make an issue of racial taunts and that type of thing at that age, I don’t. You know, I’m sure I must have heard of Japs. And we used to call Chinese people Chinks, but then we had good friends that we used to call Chink, but not because he was Chinese. It was just a name that we used to use.

Sara Ziemnik [00:16:05] How were you informed that you would be relocated? How did they do that and what camp were you sent to and how did that.

Betty Ochi [00:16:15] Well, they posted signs on the, I’m going to call it on the telephone poles, and they had specific dates as to when this area would be relocated. We were given like three days notice to pack up and we were told that we were going to go to Marysville assembly center, which is central California. And I just remember them coming to pick us up with a flatbed truck. When I say they, I don’t know whether it was military people or whether it was some government administration people or what it was, but they came to pick us up in this flatbed truck. We put all our belongings on it and we all stood up in the back where they had the sides up and we were standing. And I remember taking the last look at the house and they took us to Sacramento and we all had to get shots, Diphtheria shots. I think it was before we boarded the train to take us to Marysville Assembly Center. Once we got there, we were assigned to our barracks in our, quote, apartment. And seven of us were Assigned this one little room that had these seven canvas cots. I remember we didn’t have mattresses. We just had those folding canvas cots that they used like camping and things. And there was no running water in there or anything. We had what they call latrine. And then they had the special place where we did laundry, and then we had the mess out where we went to go eat. So that’s how camp life began for us. It did have barbed wire fences. It did have a watchtower with the sentry people with the rifle. And they were always making sure that we were kept within boundary. My brother and his friends were playing catch, and we happened to be on the end barrack where the barbed wire was right next to us. And the ball had gone over, and instinctively he was going to go and retrieve it. His friend said, well, maybe you better go talk to that guy with the rifle, because, you know, he might just take aim at you. So he went and said, can he go and retrieve the wall? And the guy said, well, we better wait until he radios all the other sentry people around the camp, because he might know, but then this guy over here might not know that he’s going to go and not escape this camp. So he waited for them, and he was given clearance to go over and get it. So then after that, my brother and their friends decided, well, that wasn’t the place to play ball, I guess. So anyhow, that was the start of going into camp. After that, we had gone to two other camps, but that was the start of our camp life.

John Ochi [00:20:00] As far as the government letting us know what was going on. Most of it was done through posting signs on various places around where we lived on telephone poles. The first one, I think, was from the Western Defense Command, saying that in the near future, they didn’t name a date, set a date, that people from the coast states, Washington, Oregon, and California, and actually parts of Arizona, too, that they divided the area into Zone A, B and C, and that they were going to move people out of Zone A on such and such a date that if you wanted to voluntarily move, you can move into Zone B or C. Zone A was along the coast, where they thought that there might be an invasion or something. That later proved to be about as far from the truth as you can imagine. By that time, the Naval Battle of Midway decimated the Japanese fleet, and they hardly had enough ships to do whatever they had to do in the South Pacific, much less trying to invade the United States. But anyway, they did that, and then they eventually posted evacuation Notice that Betty talked about and they said to be at such and such a place. I think it was a school with only what you could carry, not carry with a car, not carry with a wagon, physically lift and carry it yourself. That was a- All you could take. And each family was assigned a family number. This is an example of. This is actually our family number. And we had to have this thing hanging around our neck, which is better than I guess, having serial number tattooed on your arm like the Nazis did. But we had to have that around our neck all the time when we went to the area that they were going to take us to Kent. So we mainly they said that we were going to go to. When they say they was a rumor or misinformed that people living in that area was going to go to Manzanar, which is up in Northern California. And people said, oh, it gets cold up there, you better get some warm clothing. And somehow we got leather jackets and warmer clothing. I don’t know where we got the money because we didn’t have very much. And then next thing we heard, we’re going to Arizona where it’s hot. So well, we don’t have to buy too much clothes to go to Arizona. So that, that saved us, I guess. And we said to take, they said to take cooking utensils, dishes, personal things, and that was about it. So my mother and older sister made these big bags that we put all this stuff into. And we made sure we could cart the darn thing because it was pretty heavy being only 13 and 11 years old. My older brother was 15 years old, broke his ankle and he couldn’t do too much because his foot was hurting him. And then my father was gone and that was it. So we went to the appointed place, which I think was a school. And they had buses there. They were all manned with. I guess they were regular army people with rifles. I’m not sure what they were. They put us on the buses and we started out east and they said we were going to go to Arizona. And they told us to draw all the blinds on the bus, which we did. Because you don’t want to say, I’m not going to do it to someone that’s holding a rifle. And to this day I always wondered and asked people, I said, why did they draw the blinds? They didn’t want us to look out to see where we were going. Or was it the fact that they didn’t want people to look in the bus to see who was in there? Well, anyway, we finally arrived in Poston, Arizona. Which was one of the 10 internment camps in the United States and was also the largest camp of all 10 of them. And that’s how our life in internment camp has also been called a concentration camp, a relocation camp, whatever it is. It was a place where people were confined behind barbed wires under armed guard. And we were there. We had no court process, due process of law. Our constitutional rights were taken away. All of this happened. And as I said, you’re 13 years old, you don’t really know, you know, what the Constitution was, but you certainly don’t know all the provisions of the thing. And later in life, as I went to school, I studied these things, and it was real revealing that things like that happened here in the United States.

Sara Ziemnik [00:26:09] You mentioned that you had buried some of your things, but what happened to your house? What happened to everything you couldn’t carry? You know, like your animals, for instance? Like what happened?

Betty Ochi [00:26:20] Well, we gave our dog to a Caucasian friend of ours, only to find out later that his neighbor had shot the dog because he knew that they had gotten it from a Japanese family. And then, like the cats, we just let it be because we knew that they could fend for themselves being on the farm. They could catch critters and things and stay alive. So we left the cats there. I don’t know what we did with the rabbits and things, but the house, while we were in the camps, somebody had burned down. So there was really not much to go home to. We had stored, you know, the china that my mother had brought from Japan and things that my sister had treasured that she wishes that she could have had. We stored in the shed of our landowner. And he promised us that, you know, it would be safe. And of course, it wasn’t his fault that someone had broken into the place. And they took all of our nice things from the shed. They only left us with chip chinas and things that we use for everyday wear. But all the better things were all gone. After the war. My brother had gone back to see if he could retrieve some of those things, and nothing was left. And found out that somebody had broken in. So we had nothing. I mean, we just had to start all over again. So we just didn’t go back to California after the war. We just stayed, you know, out. We came out east, but we never saw our house again. We went. When I did go back, I looked where our homes, where our house was, but it was all built up with, you know, it was like track homes. They had used that land there and build those track homes and things. So that’s- It’s only memories of what we lived in and what we had.

John Ochi [00:29:05] Well, we had a house. Houses in that area weren’t built like houses here. They didn’t have basements in most cases. Some houses had cellars and like our house was built on stilts. Foundation must have been about two feet high. So. And if we had to move, which we did originally, I think the house was built in Garden Grove and then it was moved to Fountain Valley and then moved another mile or so towards Santa Ana. And it was very relatively easy to move because you didn’t have basements to worry about. I really don’t know for sure what happened to the house, but I believe it was moved someplace else that we didn’t know about. And I really don’t know what the rights or property things that we had. The landlord that we rented the land from was a kind person and he had a store, large barn like building that he let us store our household goods, a car, refrigerator, tractor and all that. And most of it before the war ended and we were allowed to get things like the radio that we got back. Actually car was sold in California. I don’t know. We had a truck also and we had a tractor and we had a horse and these things. I don’t really know what happened to them. And I believe we also had a dog. And as I say, I don’t recall what we did with it or what happened to them, but that was how we left California. And as I say, I went back there a few times and didn’t see the house there. And that was about. We couldn’t own the land because they had a law in California that Asians could not buy the land no matter what. So we had to lease it. Unless you’re a native born person. Like some of our friends had children that were old enough to be legal citizens and they were able to buy the land. And some of them did in that area that we lived in was very high and was very expensive after the war. And some of our friends that had older children made out quite well. And since we were all too young to do that, we couldn’t do that. And then I don’t think we had any money to buy anything anyway. So that was that.

Sara Ziemnik [00:32:31] Was there anyone in your family, maybe brothers or sisters or parents or neighbors or anything that said, I don’t want to go and tried to say no when the government moved you?

Betty Ochi [00:32:45] Well, none of us did because I think the Japanese upbringing is not to rebel and, you know, to abide by Whatever rules that were given to you. So like I said, my eldest brother just wanted to prove to the world, I guess, that we were going to be American citizens. I mean, which we were, and that’s how we were going to abide by. But there were people that were wise enough, that were educated already, that did rebel. And I guess some were put into prison. But for our family and the people all around us just abided by the governing law that the US government said, well, this is where you’re going to go. We just went. But like I said, there were several people that were in prison because they did rebel. And I guess they were like pre law students. So they knew the legality of what rights that they had. I cared less. I mean, you know, I just went with the flow.

John Ochi [00:34:07] Yeah, I think there were three Nisei, or Japanese Americans that actually resisted. Two of them were lawyers. And under constitutional grounds, they petitioned the court saying that it was unlawful for the United States to remove citizens and so forth. And the court denied their plea and they were sentenced to jail for disobeying the evacuation order. The third person was a welder. He worked in a factory and he even had an operation on his eyes to make him look like he was a Caucasian because he had a Caucasian girlfriend and he didn’t want to leave. And that’s the reason he had that. And he tried to disguise himself as a Caucasian, but then he was found out and he also went to prison. And other than those three and all the court cases were eventually overturned. And things like that can still happen because what happens is the case went as far evacuation thing went as far as the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court had declared at that time that it was legal for the United States to evacuate or move all these people. And later on after the war, when cases are brought to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court said that they were wrong at the time. But the Supreme Court does not overturn any law that they say is lawful. They I don’t know what it is that they made a mistake the first time, but they’re not going to make a mistake by changing anything. So you can go fight the Supreme Court all day long and all year long and nothing’s going to happen because they’re not going to change their thing. And this is the way that things go in the courts. And in some way it’s good. Others seemed very unfair.

Sara Ziemnik [00:36:38] What was a typical day in the camp like for you? Did they try to. Did people in your family try to kind of normalize it and, you know, make it try to almost make a home in the camp. Or was it never really felt like home. Or, you know, what was this typical day like?

Betty Ochi [00:36:58] Wait, got up and we had to go to the latrine to wash up because we had no running water in our little apartment, which is what it was called. And when it was time for us to eat breakfast, the chefs would let us know that the food was ready. And they would either hit a triangle like the western movies, or they would hit the garbage can lid or something to let us know that it was time for us to go eat breakfast. And we would do that. And then once it got to be September, then school would start. So then after I ate breakfast, then I would go off to school. And because there is no running water or cafeterias or cooking facility at the schools, we would have to always return to our home base, our apartment, so that we could come back and eat lunch. And then we would go have probably an hour or so, and then we would go back to school again and then stay there until I don’t know what time our classes were over. But then we would come home and then we would wait till our meal was ready again for dinner. And then we would go eat in the mess. On the evening was our own. We could do whatever we wanted to within the confines of the camp. And usually we stayed within our block, mainly because that’s where you made your friends. And we would sit and listen to the radio. Or I guess I was supposed to do homework, but I oftentimes didn’t do my homework. This camp thing, I don’t know whether. Because it became like an adventure for me, because I had never traveled before. We had gone to San Francisco to see the World’s Fair or something one time. But that was the extent of my travel in the- By the time we went to camp, I was 11. So it was like a great adventure to be away from our own home. And I guess it just never settled in where, gee, I’m in school again now, and I had better find a routine to study and, you know, rest and then go back to study. I just didn’t do homework. I mean, it was like, oh, this must be vacation. I mean, I don’t have to do any work. And oftentimes what I would do is have my brother help me with my homework early in the morning. And then I would run back off to school. But like I said, in the summer when we didn’t go to school, we just. We had organized baseball teams and we had one barrack was always open where it was like a game room where you could go play ping pong and you could play cards and things that you could socialize with people within your block. Not to say that you couldn’t go to the other blocks, but like I said at the beginning, we usually stayed within our own block because we. That’s where you made your friends. And then once you went to school, then, you know, you met people from all over the camp. So you would kind of roam around. And there were no buses or any means of transportation, so everything had to be done on foot. And like when we went to Tule Lake, that was the first time. After Mary’s real assembly, we were moved to Tule Lake, which is at the border of Oregon and California, because it’s so high up there. It snows a lot in the winter. And that was the first time that I really saw any accumulation of snow. So that was kind of fun. You know, the first winter you would play in the snow and all that. And in Tule Lake there was a mountain called Castle Rock. And we were given permission to leave. This was outside of the perimeters of the camp, so we were given permission to go outside of the boundary and climb the mountain. So the people in the mess hall would pack us lunches and then we would take. And we would stay probably from after breakfast till later in the afternoon. And we would climb the mountain, then come back down. And it was like the other side of the mountain had like an Indian reservation. So we weren’t permitted to go on that side of the mountain. But we could see the reservation and things like that that we did as fun. And then we had movies within these barracks that were recreation rooms. And we just took blankets and we sat on the floor and I don’t know how much they charged us, but we would see rather current movies. And we would see the movies we had in Tule Lake. They had a big outdoor stage and they would have sumo wrestlers. And we would go and that was kind of entertainment for us to see the sumo wrestlers. And then they would always have like a talent show or something. And you know, we would go and see all the talented people and things. And I took tap lessons for a while until the teachers quit. We had two teachers and I. I think I took it for two weeks and then they quit. So I don’t know whether I was the one to. They couldn’t tolerate my inability to catch it or what. But anyhow, we had things like that. And I remember one lady had a piano. I don’t know how she got it from her home before the war to camp. But she had a piano in her apartment and she would give piano lessons. So for a while I was taking piano lessons and I could remember she said, okay, we’re going to have a recital on this day, so you know, be prepared. And I had this whole thing, whole piece memorized and came time with a recital. I sat there and I couldn’t even play the first note. And there weren’t that many people, you know, other parents there or I don’t even think my sister was there. But anyhow, I just, I guess I was just so stage struck that I couldn’t strike the first note. Anyhow, those were fun times. And then they had. Like when we moved from Tule Lake, we went to Topaz, Utah and- And I was seventh and eighth grade, I spent in Topaz. So it was like a high school group and they had a choral group. So I remember saying after school for a choral group, for just fun, something else to do. And that’s the kind of things that we did in camp because you just had to kind of make your own fun because there wasn’t anything really that accessible from when we were in Topaz. We were given one day passes where we could get on the bus and we could go to a neighboring town. I don’t know how long it took us on the bus, but we would go and we could go shopping if you had money enough to go and shop. But my sister and I used to go and we would either go to a movie or go look around to see what, you know, stores really looked like instead of the canteens in the camp. And we could have our lunch there. You know, we would go to like a drugstore or something, get a little snack, change, eat, and then come home in time for we had to be back by 4 o’clock or something. And the bus would bring us back and we would check in at the administration building and we would have to walk back then to our apartment. But those were kind of the things that I did. And it was. Since there was nothing else to do, it was ample for us at that time. I think kids nowadays would probably be bored to tears, mainly because they would have to walk so much. And then, you know, we didn’t have any electronic things at that time. Talk to kids about, you know, not knowing even that the war started because we didn’t have TV. If you didn’t listen to the radio, you wouldn’t even know that. So it’s an entirely different era. When we speak to kids, even in junior high age or elementary age, if you tell them that we didn’t have TV or anything to communicate with, they look at us like we’re from another planet. Because they just can’t fathom not having any of the electronic things that the kids have now. You know, we didn’t even know what a telephone was. I don’t even know where a telephone was in camp. I don’t know. I guess the only communication we had was to run over to whoever you wanted to speak to or send the message to. That was my kind of amusement.

John Ochi [00:47:54] Well, my experience in camp was more or less basically the same thing, except we were never allowed to leave camp once we got there. It wasn’t that we couldn’t leave. There was actually a single strand barbed wire around the perimeter of the camp. And it wasn’t no big deal to walk under it or jump over it or whatever. But the thing was, where would you go after you left it? It wasn’t any place to go. You’re walking out in the middle of a desert and the temperature is over a hundred. So not many. I don’t recall anyone ever escaping, as the word goes. I don’t- I think the best way would have been to- We used to walk to the Colorado river, which was about. I think, about five or six miles. And people could make a little boat or a raft or something and raft down the Colorado to Yuma, Arizona, or someplace along there if they wanted to. But I don’t think it’s too hard to. If you walk into any city and you look like you do, then you know that darn well that the people there is going to know that you don’t belong here and something is going to happen. And one of the stories, as far as fences go, was that as a bus approached this camp, I don’t know which camp they were talking about. But anyway, one of the evacuees asked a guard on the bus, why do they have machine guns up there? And this guard says, oh, they’re there to protect you from the people. And this guy said, why is it pointing outwards, inwards toward the people if they’re there to protect us? And the guard had no answer to that. But this room is about 25 by 20, basically. And this is the size of what was called an apartment. It’s more like a compartment than an apartment. It had no interior sheathing. It was bare walls. You could see the framework. And there was a rough board on the outside. And tar paper, no shingle, black tar paper around it. And there was no ceiling. It was just rafters. The area between each compartment, which up to the roof from the edge of the wall, was bare. So you could hear everything that went on in the next room. And if you wanted to, you could climb up there and peek into the next room. But that was the way it was. When we went there, I think it was mentioned that they had. She had canvas cots. We had metal cots. We also had sacks that we filled with straw. That was our mattress. We had one army blanket. There was one bare light bulb dangling from the middle of the room, and that was it. There’s no carpeting, there’s no chairs. There’s no table. There’s no water. Bare walls. If you wanted to sit down, you had to sit on the bed. And there was no table to eat off of. Well, that we didn’t have anything to eat in the room anyway. But that was the beginning of how we started in camp. As I say, we had to go to the latrine to wash up. To do our other business. We had to go to the mess hall three times a day to eat, if you wanted to eat. And then I tell people or these school kids that some high school, some college, that it’s not like now where if you don’t like what they’re serving, you can’t just turn around and walk down the street and go to a McDonald’s because there just wasn’t any such thing. And if you didn’t eat what they offered you, you just went hungry. Unless you were lucky that someone from outside sent you a box of crackers or something like that. We had school, which was very marginal because they just didn’t have qualified teachers. A lot of the courses were taught by evacuees. And they had been to college and they knew a little bit, but books and such was in short supply. And because it was so boring, I used to not go to classes. I would leave in the morning to go to school. And then we used to go out and play and do whatever. And eventually the school sent, I guess he was a truant officer or something to my mother and said, how come John doesn’t come to school? And my mother said, he goes to school every day. Well, they don’t have any record of him coming to school. School. But anyway, I did pass and moved on. Also got a job. I don’t know how I got a job when I was only at that time, 14. But anyway, I did. I was making adobe bricks. I think you’ve seen movies in, like, in Egypt, when they’re building these temples that you would put adobe and they put straw in there and you stomp on it and mix the straw with clay and then leave it all in the sun and turn into bricks. Well, we made bricks for building the Posen High school in Camp 1. Poston had three camps with a total of about 18,000 people there. And we built this school in a large auditorium. And today that is the only thing that’s standing in Poston, other than a memorial stone thing. And one thing I recall was one day the this guy said, we have to go into town, which was Parker, which was about, I don’t know how far it was, maybe five, ten miles away. And we went in the truck and we went into Parker. And Parker was a small town that had one general store which sold everything from fertilizer to food to whatever. And they had a Coca Cola. It’s not a dispenser, it’s a large box like thing that has ice in it. And the bottles of pop are in there and the temperature must have been 100 degrees. And I drank that pop and I still remember how it tasted. That was the first pop I drank. And since I went to camp. Not that I drank much pop before, but it was really something that I really recall and wanted to get back there, but I never did. But the food was all right. I mean, we didn’t go hungry. I have here a menu. Give an example of breakfast. This is during the week in 1943. One breakfast is one orange coffee, sugar, two donuts, bread and butter. Another breakfast was rice flakes, coffee, sugar, canned sliced peaches, bread and butter. For lunch they had two pork sausages, half a cup of mashed potatoes, quarter cup of peas, one slice of bread and butter, 1/4 cup of chocolate pudding, one cup of tea. Lunch chicken and liver stew, beet and onion salad, bread, butter and tea. Slice of Spam Napa, which is Chinese cabbage type of thing. Sliced daikon, which is a large radish. Bread and butter and tea. That was lunch for supper. These are examples. Two cups of fried rice, one bowl of soup, one half cup pickles, one cup of tea. Another day, a slice of fried fish, rice, peas, tea, applesauce, another one rice cabbage, carrot stew, bread, butter, tea and canned blackberries. Now these are menus taken from the records that they had. And the thing was run like in the army. They made some adjustments to the food, like having rice more than they normally would. And I don’t really, you know, near 13 or 14 years old, if you’re Hungry. You don’t mind that the thing isn’t exactly gourmet grade food. And I don’t ever recall going hungry, although people complained that it was too salty or not enough or whatever. But as I say, I don’t think anybody really starved at all. But that was the way camp went. And in 1944 we were allowed to leave camp if we had a job someplace. Well, I inquired into the employment division or whatever it was and got a job as a houseboy for a family in Winnetka, Illinois, which I applied for and got. And so in ’44, early part of ’44, I left camp and got on this train and rode all the way to Chicago. From Chicago I caught the interurban train and went to Winnetka and went to work for this family for $7 a week or dollar a day and room and board. And I was allowed to go to 11th grade high school in New Trier Township High School in Winnetka. This lady that was hired me and also another person from another camp was national president of the League of Women Voters at that time. And so she was quite politically connected. Her husband was a corporation lawyer in Chicago. And they had among their friends Senator Douglas, the other Stevenson and people of that sort. And they would come and have dinner with this Mrs. Fisher and as a houseboy and this other fellow and I to cook all the meals. Although they had guests, they had a lady that was a cook come in and do that. And all we did was a serving during the rest of the time for the family. We would do all the cooking. The lady would go and buy the stuff and say, today we’re going to have this. Then she would have on the menu things like, things that I never saw before. I didn’t even know what they were. But if you can read and follow the directions, it came out all right. So that was how I left camp and was in Illinois for a year. And after in ’45, I came to Cleveland here because the rest of our family eventually made it out this way. So that was a very fast trip while I was in camp. And the other only other thing that we did was I eventually had my trombone sent to camp and they had a dance band. And this one fellow from Central California that was in Camp 3 had all his music charts sent to him. So we had music to play and we used to play for dances. And it was kind of hard to get together because each person was from a different all three camps to make this one band. And we had to get transportation through the Authorities because nobody had cars or anything at that time. But as I say, I didn’t suffer, I didn’t starve. I think I would have been better off not being there. But that’s the way things were.

Sara Ziemnik [01:02:26] How did you end up in Cleveland? You mentioned when you came to Cleveland, but why Cleveland? Why here?

Betty Ochi [01:02:33] Well, like I said, when we were allowed to leave, we stayed till 1945 and we were in Topaz, Utah. We were initially in. Before that, like I said, we were in Tule Lake. But they only wanted people in Tule Lake that were going to be repatriated back to Japan. These were the people that the Kibeis and all those people, they had a big riot and they wanted to all go back to Japan. So then we didn’t want any part of that. So we asked for a transfer to another camp. So that’s why they sent us to Topaz. And from Topaz we came to Cleveland because there was nothing for us to go back to California. And the people that did go back to California found that they weren’t being real receptive. You know, the Caucasian people weren’t being real receptive of the Japanese people. So one of my brother was in Chicago and then one was here in Cleveland and the elder one was here in Cleveland. So my sister decided that we had better come to Cleveland and be with the eldest brother. So that’s what we did. But because we. I think the people out in the Midwest and the east weren’t as prejudiced as the. The people out in the west coast because they didn’t have such a big congregation of Japanese people like we did on the West Coast. So when we came here, there was some prejudice. My brother tried to get a haircut and then in the barber’s window there was a sign that said no Japs allowed or something. And we tried to eat at some of the places. We stayed down in one of the hotels on Prospect when we first came to Cleveland. So we would have to find places to eat. And there were some restaurants that had signs that they weren’t going to serve the Japanese people. It’s much like how the Blacks used to be treated. I know for a long time Stouffers didn’t want, you know, to have Blacks as customers and things. And that’s how it was. But it was kind of short-lived as far as I knew. And then I went to- By the time I came to Cleveland, I was in the ninth grade, so I went to junior high and I had no problems. They accepted all my transcripts and everything. And all the students, the fellow students were real receptive of me and I had no problems. I didn’t feel any prejudice. And it was just kind of nice, you know. And finished high school here. And my sister and them had a little bit of a problem trying to find jobs. They had a War Relocation Authority office downtown on 9th Street. And my brother and my sister used to go there almost daily to look for an apartment that we could rent and also for a job for them. They would have list of names of people that were willing to rent out upper floor or something. I remember the first place we lived. It was like an attic suite, but we had cooking facility and then down in the basement was laundry facility and stuff. So we stayed there for a while until we found a larger place. But wherever we went, it wasn’t all that difficult for us. My sister then found jobs, very menial jobs at the beginning, like my sister was telling me the. That they worked at where they did shipping for some company. And I guess it got very boring. So they thought, well, they didn’t want that job. So eventually she sewed. So she went to a tailoring company and she worked there. My brother went to work in a factory where they manufactured windows and things and then settled and eventually starting to make whatever the going wages were at that particular time. But it wasn’t. I guess it’s as bad as you want to make it, if you want to make it. So that woe is me. Look at what I went through. I think you probably would have had that adverse feeling and you look at people a little bit differently. But at the age that I was, I had no reason for animosity. I didn’t blame the Caucasians for putting us in camp. It was just something that happened. And so you just accept it. And here we are, you know, in the process of all this. While we were in the camps, though, I want to say that three of my brothers were drafted out of these camps. So they served in the U.S. Army. The army was the only branch of service that the Japanese people could go into it at that time of the war. One didn’t go overseas, one just stayed in Minneapolis. He was a cook there. My second brother went to military intelligence school and went to Korea and was an interpreter there and then eventually ended up in Japan as an interpreter. My brother that was just above me, he was five years older than I wasn’t permitted to finish high school. He was in camp. We were in Topaz and he was a senior in high school. He asked that he Said that he would serve for the country and provided they let him finish school first because it was like, I don’t know, November or something. In the following June he would have graduated. And they said, no, Uncle Sam wants you now. They don’t want him in June. So he couldn’t finish high school and he went straight out of camp and then he was sent over to Germany. But. And I don’t think they even. Well, I shouldn’t speak for them, but I’m sure that they were proud to be able to serve for the United States. My brother that went to military intelligence school had a different view of camp because he was already into college by the time that war started. So I’m sure he felt denied of many of his rights because his education was terminated for that three year period and then had to go and serve into the service. So he lost probably six years of his early youth when he could have gotten his education. And I know that he wanted to be a doctor, but because six years of his life has been, you know, taken for other things that he just ended up being a pharmacist. But I think he, of all my siblings probably regretted the war and the way, you know, we were put into camps more than any of us, you know, the younger ones, like I said, we were fed and clothed and taking care, we were with our family. So, you know, I didn’t have any fears, I didn’t have any animosity towards anybody. And it was just an experience that we had to go through.

John Ochi [01:11:18] Well, I relocated to Cleveland, let’s say I was in Illinois going 11th grade. And in the meantime my sister got a job as a maid for a family in Cleveland Heights. My brother left camp to go to school. He went to University of Akron. Well, it wasn’t called University of Akron, it was called Buchtel College, which became University of Akron. And he went there. And while my older sister was working as a maid in Cleveland Heights, a lady of the house was a very nice person, a father and told her to go to college, which she enrolled at Flora Stone Mather College, Western Reserve University at that time. And I eventually came to Cleveland for my 12th grade. And about that time my brother that was at Buchtel College in Akron transferred to Fenn College, which is right over here. And he lived in that tall building that they’re renovating now. And my younger sister and my mother and father and my father they eventually released, they sent him from Montana to White Sands, New Mexico. And I don’t know why they sent him to New Mexico, when Arizona is the next state over. And that’s where the rest of his family is. And I don’t know if people know what that. White Sands, New Mexico. But that is a testing area for atomic bombs. And I always wondered if they didn’t put people out there and test fire an atomic bomb to see what would happen. Things of that sort I have heard of. My father died of cancer. He didn’t smoke, he didn’t drink. And I tried to inquire at different places if they did anything. And the answer I usually got was, the United States does not do things like that. Which I found lately, not to be sure that they did do things of that sort of- And I think- I don’t think it’s a national policy, but there were people in charge of certain things that did things like that. And I always felt that things like that did happen. And there has been things written about things like that. Anyway, he went to Poston eventually, and he came out to Cleveland. And he died at the age of 15 or thereabouts of cancer. My mother was here. She eventually became a citizen once they passed the law that allowed Orientals to apply for citizenship. And she was in her 60’s by then. My younger sister graduated from East High. She enrolled at Flora Stone Mather. And I started at Adalbert College after I joined, enlisted in the army after high school, served in Germany for a year, came back, enrolled at Adelbert College, which was the undergraduate men’s school at Western Reserve University. And on graduation day in 1948, my sister was graduating from Flora Stone Mather, I was graduating from Adelbert College, and my brother was graduating from Fenn College, all on the same day. And there were only two other members of our family left, my sister and my mother. And I always felt sorry for my brother who’s passed away. He had no one to come to his graduation and he died at quite a young age. So at Moore, I really felt sorry that it happened that way. And I started working for a company in 1950, and I worked there for 50 years at the same place. The boss was nice when the company grew up. We grew up together. I ended up as purchasing manager for the company. And we did. We did all right for the time. And I met her and we have two fine boys and she’s retired. I’m retired. And we try to take day by day. And the life goes on.

Betty Ochi [01:17:26] Come to Cleveland State to do interviews.

Sara Ziemnik [01:17:31] I was just going to ask now, how did you two meet?

Betty Ochi [01:17:35] Well, we were both active in the JAL and bowling became a big thing. And I was bowling and he was bowling and we just- Because the community is so small anyway, so then you just get to know everybody. And we were always seemed to be in the same circle of whatever we were doing. So that’s how that came about.

John Ochi [01:18:13] One other thing I like with my brother, he passed away before they signed the restitution thing. And you’ve probably seen this before, Rob, because he. He had died before they signed it. He was not eligible to receive any kind of compensation.

Betty Ochi [01:18:42] Though he was in the camps.

John Ochi [01:18:45] He was in the camp, but he died before. Actually Bill Clinton signed the earlier ones, the one before Bush, the elder Bush. And always felt sorry that his family couldn’t get some kind of compensation for the thing. But that’s not the way they wrote the laws. And I always felt sorry about that also. But there’s one thing that I would like to read. I think it sort of sums up what this all was about. Americans have a tendency to ignore the times they have done wrong. The average person knows little or nothing about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The hypocrisy the United States faced at that time was enormous. They were fighting persecution in Europe only to condemn it on our own people. The time in history may be able to be covered up with an apology or money, but that doesn’t erase the memory from those that experienced it firsthand. And those who learn about it in second hand or even third hand are horrified. The land of the free and the home of the brave is still some ways off. But if Americans learn from history instead of repeating its mistakes, the road to equality will be much shorter than otherwise possible. I really don’t know who wrote that, but I thought it was very appropriate to. It states what I’ve always felt about being incarcerated.

Sara Ziemnik [01:21:23] Yeah, that was my last question was what do you think are the most important lessons Americans can take from your experience? Is there anything else you like to add? Your stories are phenomenal. So glad we got to share them. Anything else you want to add before we.

Betty Ochi [01:21:42] No, I don’t. I don’t think- It’s just that, you know, it’s- It’s nice that people such as you are willing to, to do a project such as this so that people more and more were finding how little, even older people know of us being in camp. And it’s kind of nice to let people know that such a thing had happened. Not because we want sympathy, but more or less an education of what this country had gone through. You know, you wouldn’t think that in America, but I mean, it actually happened. And more Caucasian people that we speak to will say, oh, my gosh, was this in Japan? You know, they can’t believe that it was in the United States that this kind of thing happened. And I think it’s kind of nice that so many of the young people are so interested. You know, like, we go to high schools and places to talk to, and they’re just so interested, and they’re quite knowledgeable. They really ask some real interesting questions that you would never. You know, the adults that we talk to don’t even ask questions like that. So it’s really kind of nice that people such as you are, you know, good enough to go and do a project like this.

John Ochi [01:23:28] After we spoke at. Well, that one is from a few years ago, but junior high school, they all write letters to us, thanking us for coming and what impacted them and what they thought about. And I just took some out of the letters and they just ran it all on there, and I give it to people and they look at it and they said, there’s some hope for the kids in school yet, because-

Betty Ochi [01:24:01] Well, and we certainly don’t do it because we want kids to write to us, to tell us. I mean, it’s nice to know that they found some of it informative. You know, I keep thinking of ways to try to make it a little more humorous and so cut and dry and. Because the kids get kind of bored with, you know. Well, we had this and- Oh, but there, you know, there’s humor in whatever you do. So it-

Sara Ziemnik [01:24:42] Thank you so much for sharing this and these pictures. I definitely want to write down the state so I can look this up and maybe make a copy of it.

Betty Ochi [01:24:50] Oh, yeah.

Sara Ziemnik [01:24:51] And. And everything, really, your stories are.

Betty Ochi [01:24:54] You could even make a copy of this if you’d like. Do you. Do you have an access to a copier?

Sara Ziemnik [01:25:00] There probably is one.

John Ochi [01:25:01] Yeah.

Sara Ziemnik [01:25:01] Yeah, sure. Okay.

John Ochi [01:25:03] May I accept there weren’t things like that in the.

Betty Ochi [01:25:07] Well, in Topaz. Is this off? Okay.

Sara Ziemnik [01:25:11] Could you describe the picture that you’re looking at?

Betty Ochi [01:25:14] Sure. Yeah, maybe. Maybe just me describe it?

Sara Ziemnik [01:25:18] Yeah, you can describe it if you want.

Betty Ochi [01:25:21] Yeah. If you want to describe what’s different.

John Ochi [01:25:22] Too, as you’re talking about.

Betty Ochi [01:25:24] What’s different? Well, this. This is a picture of what our, quote, apartment looked like. And it’s got this potbelly stove in the middle of the room, and it’s got the metal cots. Now, in Tule Lake and Topaz, we did have the metal cots. It Was just the assembly center that we had the canvas cots. These cots have mattresses, not the straw mattress, but the regular mattresses. And it has bare walls. It doesn’t have the drywall. You could just see the whatever these frame framework. The framework. In Topaz, I think we had drywall because I could remember posting movie star pictures. I would get magazines. So each camp, I think was a little different. But the floor is interesting. It’s wooden floors. And then because they had used young lumber, it would shrink as the ears would go by. And so you would end up with holes in the floor between the boards. So when you swept your apartment, you didn’t need a dustpan because you could just sweep them between the cracks and you know, voila. No more dust until the next storm. But in Tule Lake and Topaz boat, because we had seven of us in our family, we were given two apartments. So then the guys had one apartment. My sister and I and my brother, the youngest brother, shared one apartment. But we would drape. I don’t see any here but blankets or sheets or something so you could have some sort of privacy between the guys and the girls. Everything was kept under the bed because we didn’t have closet spaces and things like that. So this apartment doesn’t show a table or anything. But my brother was a carpenter in camp, so he had made us a little like a card table sized table and we. I could do my homework on that and things. I don’t know where he got. We got the chair, but that was that. And this is pretty accurate.

Sara Ziemnik [01:28:15] Okay, well, thank you so much for sharing everything.

Betty Ochi [01:28:19] You’re welcome.

Sara Ziemnik [01:28:20] Certain to send you a copy of the CD ROM and that way you’ll have it.

Betty Ochi [01:28:24] Okay, so.

Sara Ziemnik [01:28:27] So I guess that’s about it. Is there anything else, Emma?

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