Densho Digital Archive - Gordon Hirabayashi Interview V (denshovh-hgordon-05-0005)

<Begin Segment 5>

TI: Good. So let's go, so you visited first Heart Mountain with Floyd Schmoe. So let's talk about that first trip. And even before you get to Heart Mountain, I'm curious, what were you expecting? Because this would have been your first, your first personal visit...

GH: That's right.

TI: ...to one of the camps. So what were you expecting before you got there?

GH: Well, I didn't have very much in the way of expectation, except that I had letters from, not too many from Heart Mountain, but I had letters from Minidoka and Tule Lake 'cause my parents were in Tule Lake, and Auburn people from the valley were eventually at Tule Lake. So those who lived in Tacoma, for example, and Fife, people in communities surrounding Tacoma, went to Minidoka. They went to Puyallup first for the assembly center, and then when Minidoka was opened up, they went over there. Portland was included in Puyallup, Minidoka, whereas in the valley, with the exception of Tacoma, went down to Pine Lake...

TI: Pinedale, I think.

GH: Pinedale, yeah, Pinedale near Fresno, which was very hot, especially for people from Auburn. Hundred degrees, 120 degrees, no trees, and asphalted tents. You walked on the asphalt and it went down because it was melted, you know. And my mother told me that they got newspapers and got them wet as much as possible and moved the mattresses off, and then tried to lie down underneath the wet paper, psychologically feeling little bit cooler. But it wasn't very cool. And they got there, that was their first place from May until sometime in the latter part of July.

TI: So you got some of this information through letters. So was that sort of what you were expecting at Heart Mountain, or what were you...?

GH: No. I didn't, I didn't expect that 'cause it's further north. It's near Yellowstone, and it's more isolated. But these are things that I'm, I'm adding in because I know that the camps in general were in isolated areas, and they were selected for that purpose. So I'm, I didn't have a very detailed picture of what to anticipate. It was a camp of, gee, nearly 10,000 at both places, and they'd been operating for several months. One of the things we, we did was to show -- Floyd had pictures of Mount Rainier and Hawaii and geographic, National Geographic type of pictures that he had taken himself. And when he used to go lecturing, he'd lecture about an area that he covered in photograph before. And then each time he's traveling, he's taking new pictures, and he talks about that one when he's at some other place. So that was one of the things he did to pay for his trips, so that...

TI: Now, would he do things like this when he went to Heart Mountain? Would he show pictures or take pictures?

GH: Well, he, he took pictures. What he was, I don't know what kinds of restrictions he had. I don't think he had complete carte blanche to do whatever he felt like, but he had some advice regarding what, what you could take and what you couldn't. But he, he had that background, so he had a camera, and he would be taking pictures. And then he had, well, he had a 16-millimeter films with him, so he would show -- and that, that's one of the recreations, you know, in camp. They're seeing regular movies, Hollywood movies or others that were given along with lectures.