<Begin Segment 14>

JY: But Okamoto... well, I don't know. I don't know how you want to phrase that, 'cause a lot of it I said on the Walking Tour, a lot of it you caught on the Walking Tour. Well, we'll go back over it again and talk about Okamoto. The oddity of the whole thing, Okamoto, actually he got shot and killed. And then one of the workers was hit with the butt of a gun, and was knocked off the truck. And you hear the talk, story about that. And time went along, it's ten, fifteen, ten, fifteen years or so after we got out of camp. Then my sister that's here, her husband's sister married Hisao Hido. Hisao Hido, yeah. He was the one that got hit with the butt of a gun, and he told me how it happened too, see, so it kind of all jived together. And he says, "Yeah, I was guy that they hit with the butt of the gun, and knocked to the ground." And then he says, "I almost got shot," himself, he said. "And Okamoto got shot right there, point blank." So talking to different people, all these things jives together how it all happens. That's why I emphasized today, on the Walking Tour, that that's where he got killed, and on the map I show the whole story. So that way there everybody can understand what, exactly what happened.

And that was a part of the problem, the farm strike. Like I said, before on farm there, the farm was just, all the crops were planted out there, but nobody to harvest it type of deal, and then hog farm got shut down. And I think what broke the straw, the straw that broke the camel's back for the army, they had to haul the garbage out there, pick up the... and that's the worst thing they hated, to come around and pick up our garbage. So first thing they did was release that part of it, to have evacuees haul the garbage out to the hog farm.

AI: So you were still under martial law, but they decided that you could handle that.

JY: Yeah, we could handle that. And then to deliver food, that was too lowly a job to deliver food, so the commissary was opened up. And then we were running short on coal, they said, "Hey, that's a dirty job, we don't want to shovel coal," so they had guys go volunteer to start loading coal up. So gradually they were breaking down, not us, because 18,000 people out there looking for something, but the food was getting bad, worse to worse. And it was so bad, at one time they delivered, I think, one crate of cauliflower per mess hall. That's 300 people, you feed one crate. And they cut the flower part, and they save the leaf. Now what the good is, what could you do with a leaf? You can't really boil it and eat the leaves. Ingenious, right, if the food is short, what you do with it? They chopped it up, made tsukemono out of it. Salt it up, put weight on it, had tsukemono out of it. All this is just like with the, the story about the fish, the salted herring. We had a week's supply of food gone down the drain. We couldn't eat it, right. Now, we screamed for food. They bring a little bit here, a little bit there, but they have to do something to feed the people. So only thing we had was rice. They had a lot of rice, so we had rice almost three times a day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And then what you put on rice? Nothing really. So they concoct something, just juice to pour over rice, that's all. That's what we had during the riot.

So that didn't sit too well, so that created more problem. The administration didn't feed us properly, so people got angry, and then the Hoshidan people got more power. Say, "See, these guys don't fight, these guys don't fight the administration, that's why they just treat us the way they do." So that's where they got a lot of strength, because the administration is getting weaker, and army was getting us lousy food, and they had good ammunition to fight to get more people in the group. They used that very well, so that's how they were able to pick up so many people in so short of time. Normally, when they started out, it was a small group. Those guys just running around morning exercise, that was it. Nobody didn't think nothing about it, but gradually they got stronger, and stronger, and stronger, bigger. Then when the five, six hundred went down to the front of Bess's house and start doing calisthenics, then things got a little worse, but still, I myself kind of shied away from it.

People asked me today on the Walking Tour, says, "Here you were riding on the (car). Didn't they feel as if you were a favorite of the administration, or inu," or whatever it is. I says, "No." I says, "That was my job, to get the water in the camp." They knew what I was doing. I wasn't just joyriding, and wave to them. I went down, take care of the water, let the water run down and whatever water is doing, and check the water and go back again. So I was working for the people, I wasn't working for nobody else. I wasn't working for the administration, I was taking care of my own camp people. So even... I checked my (car) and walk back, and nobody says anything. So I didn't really feel that I was overstepping my boundary or I was, say, being a favorite boy to the administration. No, I just doing my job. So that's the first thing they ask me. Several people ask me on the Walking Tour, "Didn't they feel that you were kind of special boy?" Said, "No, no." [Shakes head] So I had a lot of friends that had shaved heads, but we never had any idea that you were good, or I was bad, or that type the deal. It was no problem there.

AI: Well, during the time of the riot, were you actually on the site then, or did you, were you affected by that tear gas?

JY: Yeah, we were here. You see, the thing is, when they had the riot and all this and that, it was wintertime. See, even they throw tear gas, it doesn't do much good. The dampness was so damp and cold, and the only thing that... in November they came through with the whole army force. They started from Alaska side, they came through the, searched every building. They were looking for two people; the leader of the so-called group -- which group I don't know. And they didn't find 'em. So they just literally threw out stuff that... anything. They broke things, and that didn't set too well with the people too, see, so it was all this thing, culmination of all this stuff coming up. So meantime, people that went to work -- we still went to work, administration workers went to administration. But for awhile, nobody was allowed to go, then we will call in. There's only one telephone in the ward, but we call in and say, "We want to come in and talk to the boss." He said "Okay, we'll have a special pass to come in." So, gradually, people had pass to get in because the staff, they don't want to do menial work, or bookkeeping, time keeping, making payroll. They care less, right, so the evacuee had to do all that work. And so I finally went back, because there was a lot of maintenance problem. And then they didn't want to come into the camp to do the maintenance work, so we had to do the maintenance work. So I find, round up my crew, started up, started doing maintenance work. And eventually, the army just gave up because they didn't want do all the dirty work. And that's when the staff got increased to 550, because they were placing us doing the menial work, like delivering oils to the army quarters, delivering oil to their own quarters; because they had oil burning stove, but we had coal burning stove -- so they took care of their peoples. They had to do all those menial stuff.

AI: So eventually, it sounds like things as far as work life eventually got back --

JY: Normal, back to semi normal. Then, as you read many times, they picked up 200, 300 people here, 400, 500 people. Haul 'em all out so the camp will settle down. That's what they did, but the youngsters that were left behind, they still were doing it, but the main leaders, they took the starch out of them.

AI: And they were put in the stockade, and...

JY: Yeah, they were stockade and they were shipped to Bismarck, then Crystal City, New Mexico. They were all just, split 'em in... they didn't want to put 'em all in one place because they have a problem again, so they just split the whole group up all over the country there. So this way here, the WRA won't be responsible, it'll be the Justice Department, because that was Justice Department; it was not the Department of Interior. So that way they got away with the problems.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.