<Begin Segment 61>

AI: Excuse me, when you first arrived there at the Puyallup fairgrounds and you were getting off the bus, what did you see, and what was your impression at that time?

MY: It was just, they had constructed some temporary structures --

TY: Yeah, it was just temporary barracks.

MY: Barracks. And they, I think they were, they had these animal stalls that they had put walls -- I think they had these large exhibit halls, and they had put walls between it. And the walls were kind of low. I mean, they were, you could look, if you got on a chair you could look over. So they were only about, maybe six feet high. And I think the first thing they told us to do was to fill our mattresses.

TY: Yeah.

MY: They gave us these tick --

TY: Mattress cover, mattress covers.

MY: They gave us these canvas ticks. Were they called "ticks"? Yeah. And then they had a whole pile of hay.

TY: Yeah, we had to stuff the mattress covers.

MY: And we had to stuff our own, told to stuff our own mattresses, and then take it into the, our designated rooms. And the rooms had, there's a little, like army, are they army cots?

TY: Yeah, army cots, yeah. Army folding cots, if I recall.

MY: Where there were springs in it? Like iron, iron cots?

TY: I think they were canvas cots, originally.

MY: Oh, okay.

TY: But I don't remember.

MY: Isn't that funny? You kind of visualize this thing, because you've seen it later, but I don't, I remember that there was kind of iron cots.

TY: Well, if it was an iron cot, it must have had springs on -- it had those wire --

MY: Springs on it? Yeah.

TY: -- wire springs on 'em.

MY: But if they were canvas cots, they would fold up. The kind that folds up?

TY: I just don't remember. No, the area that we went to, Area A, B, C were part, former parking lots. And each section was walled off, and we went to Area C, and in -- you know, I didn't see any guard towers in those areas. Did you, do you remember seeing guard towers?

MY: I remember seeing soldiers.

TY: Soldiers standing at the gate, but I don't remember seeing guard towers as we saw in Minidoka, for instance. So I'm not, I do remember seeing a bunch of soldiers guarding the gates and what have you. And, but in these parking, the buildings were just barracks. Just nothing but barracks. And the main fairground they had converted the grandstand, and so forth, underneath the grandstand rooms, and there was -- but the, when we were transferred over to Area D because I started working at the hospital, they put us in similar barracks. Our rooms were barracks, and they were --

MY: Those were constructed specifically to house -- the ones that we were in, because I remember --

TY: It's just the one barren room.

MY: Yeah, because the, they were plywood or something. And there weren't, there were all kinds of wood. And I remember when we were in there about a month it was hot, and the wood shrunk, and you could, about a half-inch.

TY: And there were spaces in --

MY: Spaces in-between.

AI: So you arrived there in April, and then over the month that you were there, as time went on, it became warmer and hotter.

MY: Uh-huh.

AI: And so you all five stayed in one room?

MY: One room, yeah.

<End Segment 61> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.