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TY: That was when we went to Minidoka to film her, Nellie and --

MY: Mitsuye and Nellie.

TY: Mitsuye and Nellie. And we went to some of the, we asked them what happened to some of those barracks, and they said that some of the local farmers had bought it on a auction, and were using the storage area. So we went to some of those farms to look at those barracks, and that's where one of, the lady brought out this box of...

MY: Yeah, the farm that we used, I think the story that they told us was in 1946 or the year after, the end of the war, that the government had offered homesteaders two and a half acres of land, and that one and a half -- barrack, barracks --

TY: Like a homestead.

MY: Yeah, and that if they would develop so many -- five acres, or I forgot exactly how many acres of land around it, that they could have it for free. That if they would -- there was sort of the, the kind of deal that they used to give to the American Indians in that time. They were homesteaders. So then the house that they were living in was half a barrack, if I remember. Which they had -- by that time it was almost unrecognizable, because they had built onto, and electricity and water, and so forth, of course. And then the other full barrack that we filmed around there was, they used it for storage for feed and --

TY: Tools and things.

MY: Yeah, and I remember, but they didn't do any -- they just left the tarpaper outside, and it was pretty much intact, and because of the dry weather in that desert area, things don't disintegrate like they do in other parts of the country. They, it, so we, I noticed that the apartment, like A, B, C, D -- remember, there was a little white lettering? Apartment and, on the top there were these, the entrance, and there were six, six rooms in each barrack.

TY: I think so, yeah.

MY: And our, we lived in Room C, and so the sign on top said, "C and D," there were a couple stairs that go up to it, and then the door, two doors with the apartment C and apartment D. And --

TY: We were in C?

MY: We were in C, yeah.

TY: Block 4.

MY: And those signs were already -- were still there.

TY: Yeah.

MY: The signs were, they hadn't removed it. They boarded up the door, because they, and they used it as a barn, but you could see from the outside, the exact configuration of the, of the building as it was. And they left the stairs the way it was. And so Nellie and I were sitting, I think, on it when they filmed --

TY: You sat there.

MY: We sat there, yeah. At one scene we were sitting on the steps. But it was kind of interesting to see the buildings kind of, almost intact. And we, and then we, I think we went inside the barn, and there was some graffiti on the, on the wall. And Nellie was saying, "Oh, look. Must, some kids must have written on the wall," it was still there. And so that was quite interesting to kind of recall that specific period.

AI: It's interesting how much came back to you when you were there so many years later.

MY: Yeah, one of the things that -- it took time to film that, the scenes there, and I realized in retrospect later, that I, we should have gone the day before. I should have gone there the day before and kind of -- 'cause I hadn't been there for forty years, at that point -- to take in the scenery, get some of the emotional impact of being in that place out of my system, sort of, before we started filming. Because I just couldn't deal with it. I'd start reading my poem, and I couldn't get through it, and we did another take, and it was just kind of painful for them, because they had to keep using all this film. But I realized that it was more emotional than I real-, I thought, at that moment. I didn't think that it would become a big deal. You go there, just film, make a film and then leave. But it was, it took a lot longer than we thought it would.

AI: What about you, Tosh? Were you surprised at your own reaction at being back at Minidoka after so many years?

TY: Well, of course, only thing is, several... the cabin brought some memory, but other than that, there's nothing bearing, like a desert, there's nothing there. So, and I did bring back a souvenir from one of the barracks, just a piece of wood that I found on the ground from, that had broken off from one of the buildings. And brought it home as a souvenir. But, I don't know. Beyond that, I didn't, it didn't really, it just looked so different.

MY: Yeah. That was, one of the things that Allie kept -- the filmmaker -- kept asking me about it is, about the sense of how you felt when you first arrived, that the place felt like it was the end of the world. I mean, it felt like another planet, because you never, when we traveled, we never really went through deserts or desert areas. We used to drive to San Francisco or wherever. But, so you get off the bus, and you just really felt like it was Mars or someplace. Where there was no vegetation, it was just absolutely -- with all the miles of sagebrush around. And what was different at the time that we did the filming -- and they had a hard time trying to capture the sense of isolation, the sense of alienation that we felt because there was, all the trees by that time, and then the, and they were trying to avoid the, the telephone poles and the wires that were not there at that time. And so, in that respect, I think that you do, don't have that feeling of being in that place at that time. You don't recall that. It was only when I started reading my poems because I had written it there, that I, that the emotion started coming out. It was kind of interesting.

TY: Well, I was trying to think, the comparison from the, when we first got the impression, my impression when you first arrived to Minidoka, during the evacuation time, and that, when we went back in 1980, '80 or so to look at it. That, I remember when first got there, I remember seeing lot of sagebrushes, and that was it. That was the only thing that was there, it was very, like a desert. But this last, the second visit, sagebrushes weren't even there. Because farmers were farming the land. So it was just very barren. I mean, absolutely nothing there except for, I think we went there, time period where they just planted things, so nothing was growing, as I remember.

MY: Uh-huh. But it was green around the, there were trees.

TY: Just around the house, around their homes there was stuff. But other than that, there was nothing there.

<End Segment 52> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.