Interviews with Japanese in Utah: Ronald K. Wakabayashi

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Ronald Wakabayashi 3-11-84 s1:5 you don't know what to do with. L Tell me about that. What did you get? RW Well, I didn't - the experiences that you're usually, you know, because of wanting to - we used to do the shopping, buying rice and staples, Japanese stables. You go down with your family once a month and it's akind of spiritual cultural center if nothing else. And. As you walk down the street with your parents, one of the things you'll encounter is you'll run into people that your parents know . And your parents will introduce you. And the introduction invariably is tied back to a reference that's camp related. This is Mr. So-and-So. He was in the same camp as us. And he lived on such and such a block, which meant nothing to me. L You thought, yesterday when you were saying that it was like a RW Yes, what else do you think ca-- L Yeah. RW See, I was familiar with it at that point by most of the you know churches had some sort of summer camp. So I thought it was one of those kind of camps. You know, kids, one year we went to a one year camp during the summer. I thought it was something like that they had a common exper.ience. And they all talked about. But the camps all had Indian names as far as I --you know, Topaz, which I thought was an Indian name then. Manzana which is-- L What does Tepa~ mean?