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GY: Other experiences... oh, yeah. At that time, there was a polio epidemic of some sort in the country and there was no, any vaccine at that time. And there was a Sister Kenny, a nurse in Australia, who had come up with an idea to provide therapy for people who had suffered from poliomyelitis. And we had two or three patients who had polio in Poston. They were in a separate ward. And a person who was familiar with this Sister Kenny method came to Poston to provide therapy. And what the therapy had to do was to have very thick material like gunnysack but really thick, in boiling water. It's hot, hot, and they would squeeze the water out and place it onto the muscles that were paralyzed and atrophied to, to try to restore the muscle and to provide a restoration that would help them to walk. And that was something I did in camp, too. That was kind of interesting. I don't know whether they recovered or were able to walk again, but that was part of the therapy in camp.

And the other interesting case was a young lady -- well, maybe she was about sixteen, seventeen years old -- and all she did was sit at the side of the bed just like this, all day long. I guess -- is the word catatonic, without any emotion? Said nothing. Expression did not change. Kind of like this. Obviously, a mental state, some dementia of some sort. And I was curious what had caused this. Apparently she, I don't know if it was something that happened before she came. We thought perhaps if we came before, that she would have been put into a different institution. Maybe it happened in the process of moving. Maybe. I really don't know. But eventually she was removed from her bed.

Another close friend of mine, relatively close, yeah. Same age, in his teens, early teens. Kind of liked to smoke, and one night -- I think he was smoking, he put about one. He'd light it. Put another one, put about three or four in. That's so strange. What are you doing? Just kept on doing that. It's was really strange, first time, and later I discovered that he had a breakdown. It was at the beginning of his breakdown. And so he was taken to the hospital, and then he was sent away to some institution, out of camp. So again, the stress and trauma of moving to camp was so very difficult for him. This is how he's reacted to it, I guess. Many years later -- that was the last I saw of him. And his sister was at camp, and she was okay. And, but I never had a chance to find out from his sister because she moved away out of camp.

One of our reunions not too long ago -- let's see. That was 40, 60 -- about 50, 70 -- about 50th reunion from camp, of the Poston camp, and there he was, sitting at a table. Same guy who was sent to some kind of institution, he had a beard. "Hi, how you doing?" "Hey, how are you," kind of thing. I thought, wow. Complete recovery. And I was just curious what happened to him all these years, yeah. But he was okay. That was kind of nice.

AI: He survived.

GY: Yeah. So it was kind of neat, that experience in camp, was good. Met a lot of new people. In fact, I met, we were -- the young Nisei girls who were trainees to the nurse program, one of them went out and became a nurse and had some training, well, there was introduction -- student nurses, I guess they were called. There was another -- there were two girls, at the time I guess we could use the word "girls" -- who were, had graduated nursing school or close to graduating, and they had uniforms already, caps, Olive -- don't know, they were Niseis, of course, Olive so-and-so and Sierra, and they came from a certain part of California, maybe Central California. And they were nice nurses who were advanced in the nursing profession but not quite registered nurses yet. And they'd provide service, but I know -- I remembered Olive. She was rather tall and dark complexion and so forth -- and Sierra, too. She had this strange -- they had strange names, Olive, Sierra. So I remember them well.

And that's the last I've heard of Olive until yes -- yesterday? Yesterday -- Saturday, when we had this book talk at the Nisei Veterans Hall, a tall hakujin man, a Caucasian man came up to me, "I'm Charles Hall." And he said, "I was married to Olive. My wife's name was Olive, a Nisei woman. And I came here to see, hello, say hello to you because I, I saw in your book -- that book -- that was in Poston. And my wife came from Poston." I said, "Well, Olive, I knew her, too. I worked in the hospital and worked with Olive." And I thought, whoa, how far out. All the little coincidences. I worked with Olive, and sixty-two years later, her name comes up as the wife of this man who was at that meeting. It's so far out. [He's] kind of an interesting man, because he's Caucasian. And I said, well, how come you, Olive, you're here? He said, well, he grew up in Tacoma, and used to hang out with Nisei kids, and [he'd] come to Seattle for, to dance, with those guys. So that was the connection. Now, I don't know how exactly he met Olive, though. But I never had a chance to -- so much to talk about -- but here he married this young nurse in camp. And years later, get this, all this stuff about their lives and about my life and how they connected again. And that was kind of neat.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.