<Begin Segment 41>

JA: And what was your husband doing during this time?

MH: In Pinedale? What did he do at Pinedale? I guess he didn't do too much there, but to make sure everybody was comfortable. He made sure everybody was comfortable and just checked around because they kept kind of the Bellevue people in one area of the camp. So he kind of keep an eye on them and just made sure everybody was comfortable and everybody is okay, and few things like that is what he more or less did. He didn't have a job there or anything like that.

JA: So... and did, was that norm for most of the internees at that time?

MH: Yes.

JA: In Pinedale that was.

MH: Yeah, yeah. That's right.

JA: And how was the administration?

MH: Administration was fair. It was fair, not the best, but fair. But it was hard for all of us to see the military on the fence there with their guns facing toward us and things like that. It was really uncomfortable to think you're in camp and then that staring at you. And then if you go on the fence line, you find rattlesnakes, they tell us, and then that scared the daylights out of the rest of us. And so, different things like that. And they have big spiders in the bathroom. You had to watch for that or you get poison spider biting you and different things. It was an interesting experience in Pinedale.

JA: So when they say that they evacuated the Nikkei for their own protection...

MH: That was not true.

JA: The guns were pointed in the wrong direction, correct? [Laughs]

MH: That's right. That's for sure, yes.

<End Segment 41> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.