<Begin Segment 6>

BN: And then you went to...

MT: Amache.

BN: No, the...

MT: Merced Assembly Center.

BN: Merced Assembly Center.

MT: And there were two. There was the Turlock Assembly Center and the Lodi people went there, Lodi/Stockton people were there. And they went to Rohwer, Arkansas, and Jerome, Arkansas.

BN: Yeah, and then Merced people pretty much all went to Amache.

MT: They went to Amache, yeah.

BN: Do you have any particular memories of Merced?

MT: The assembly center? Oh yeah. We got put into an area and none of the Cortez people were there. We were put in with a lot of Yuba City people, so I met a couple Yuba City people, and they were really nice.

BN: Do you remember which ward you were in?

MT: D Ward.

BN: D Ward?

MT: Uh-huh. And the barracks were unusual. I don't know why it was meant to be that way, maybe air circulation, but they built the wall up to eight feet, and then from the wall to the ceiling, which was peaked, it was open. You could stand at one end of the barrack and from the apartment you could say, "Hey, Larry, you want to go to lunch?" And come back and he'd be standing up there and said, "Yeah, I'll meet you in about five minutes." And everybody was just getting so upset that the young guys were yelling back and forth. [Laughs]

BN: And were all five of you in just the one room?

MT: One room, yeah. And then it was already in April and May, it gets really hot and dry in the country out there. And the food was terrible. We didn't know what it was, but we were served this meat for a couple, three times that week. Somebody finally said, "This is tongue." Well, everybody went, "Oh." [Laughs] Some people tried to eat it and it didn't have any flavor. And they looked at it and it had the little bumps on there. We had some spaghetti that was terrible. Jell-o was always, by the time they served it, it was all water, it was so warm there. No AC, hot. But anyway... and they had nothing organized because they didn't know how long we were going to be there. I mean, even the people who were running the assembly center, all they heard was they were building the camps where they going, they knew we were going to be moved again, but we had no idea when.

BN: Did you go to... I think they had established a summer school at Merced.

MT: I'm sorry?

BN: A summer school?

MT: No, there was no summer school, nothing yet.

BN: So you didn't have anything like that that you went to?

MT: Nothing. No organized activities. Once in a while they would have a talent show and I guess somebody would run around and find out people could just sing or dance or whatever. And they would go out to the... they had a field out there where the horses raced, and we would all sit in the stands. That was about the only thing. But they'd have singalongs.

BN: Did you know who Pat Suzuki was?

MT: Yes, very much so. Livingston girl.

BN: She's like a year or so younger than you.

MT: She was two years older than I.

BN: Older?

MT: Yeah, two years older than I.

BN: Oh, older than you, okay.

MT: Maybe one year.

BN: But close to the same age.

MT: Yeah.

BN: Was she known as a singer even back then?

MT: She used to sing in that talent show, and everybody used to clap, and I said, wow, she's got a great voice. She used to sing in Amache also.

BN: Right, right.

MT: And she ended up with the Flower Drum Song role, she was good. She was kind of aloof. Maybe she had every right to be. But the guys didn't like her. She was kind of on the chunky side, you know, but she had a pretty face, I thought she had a pretty face, cute face. But anyway, I guess maybe the guys were envious, who knows?

BN: And then do you remember the latrines, the toilets?

MT: Oh, yeah, that was terrible. They had one side, we could go downhill. So if you're standing at the bottom there, if there's a lot of people after lunch or something and a guy flushes, all that stuff comes down and splashes all over. [Laughs] You learned one time, and you just wait, you just wait. And there was one fellow named Bob Sueoka, I think it was Bob Sueoka. And he was about sixteen years old, and he didn't have any guys around his age and I didn't have any. A guy named Larry Nakamura who became a dentist in San Francisco, he was from Yuba City, he and I got to be pretty good friends. I used to hang out with his brother-in-law, so Bob used to take me aside and we'd get those, they would have peaches, and we'd cut the peach pits and we'd make... I was going to be in the Cub Scouts so he made this little thing you can put your scarf in. It's a beautiful thing. And we had no files or anything, and we used to have nails and punch a hole in there, and then used concrete and scrape it down and all this other stuff. He'd find some oil somewhere and oiled it down. He was like a brother to me. Went to camp, and when they accepted the 442, and into the army, he went in. I think he was one of the first Niseis to get killed. And I knew where he lived, in another block. I went by the house. All the people, families had a star, blue star I guess it was, if you had a serviceperson, and when they got killed, then they had a gold star. I went by the house, I wanted to go in to see the mother, but I didn't know what I would say. Boy, that just ripped my heart out, he was such a nice guy. And even when he was in high school, I used to see him and he would always stop and say hello.

BN: Yeah, it's sad.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.