Densho Digital Archive - Mitsuye May Yamada - Joe Yasutake - Tosh Yasutake Interview (denshovh-ymitsuye

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AI: Well, and what about school? Joe, did you recall having any kind of classes, or anything in Puyallup?

JY: There was no school that I can remember.

MY: In Puyallup?

JY: My -- oh, in Puyallup, yeah.

AI: In Puyallup.

JY: There were no schools.

TY: Well, I think there was, we kind of ran into summer vacation, right?

JY: Probably.

TY: So maybe they didn't, maybe they didn't even start it because of that.

JY: 'Cause we probably went there in, what, April?

TY: April, mid-April, so...

JY: So I, I was in the fourth grade at home, and so, in effect, that was the end of my fourth grade. And the whole time we were in Puyallup -- my recollection is that Puyallup is just, it's kind of a fun time, because --

MY: April, May, June.

JY: There was a, it was a fairground. So they had a fun-house kind of a thing, where they had mirrors that distort your face, and barrels that you could run in, and all kinds of stuff like that.

TY: That was a fun-, that was a fun-house.

MY: At Puyallup? They had a fun-house there?

JY: Yeah, yeah. So that was the first time I did kind of naughty stuff. Like sneaking in -- it was blocked off, of course. And we would, we found a little break in the, in the boarding-up that we could squeeze through, and then we'd run around inside.

MY: Gosh, you never told us that.

JY: Of course not. [Laughs] It was where I learned how to play cards. I'd never played cards in my life, at home. Somehow, somebody had a deck of cards, and I learned how to play poker.

TY: Poker at ten years old?

JY: Yeah.

TY: Oy. [Laughs]

MY: Mom would have killed you.

JY: [Laughs] I know.

MY: My mother was so anti-gambling. Remember, we never even had a deck of cards in the house.

JY: So that was sort of a branching-out time for me. [Laughs]

AI: Well, so in some ways, you had these activities that were kind of like normal life, but in --

TY: Well, yes, because in camp Puyallup is where I learned how to dance. Here I was twenty years old, and I didn't even know how to dance. And they had weekly dances, and I remember going to it, and Minnie Itoi showed me, taught me how to dance.

MY: Oh yeah, I remember that.

TY: Yeah, she showed me how to dance, taught me how to dance. So they had activities, and they had a Nisei band in Seattle. What was it called?

MY: Koichi... Hayashi?

TY: Band leader, band leader.

MY: Koichi Hayashi. Remember?

TY: No.

MY: No? Okay. That name just --

TY: Well anyway, they had a, so that band was activated when we were in camp, and so they played when they had dances.

MY: Benny Goodman?

TY: So, that was semblance of normal life.

MY: Benny Goodman music, and...

TY: But the thing is, I think if we hadn't been evacuated at that time, I probably didn't, probably wouldn't have learned how to dance until I graduated college, or something. [Laughs] I don't know. But I did, when I danced at, in Puyallup.

AI: But at the same time as you had these jobs and work, and some social activities, and playing with other kids, what else was going through your mind as far as being there against your will, really, seeing the guards, the soldiers there, and not really knowing what was going to happen next?

MY: I don't know when we became aware that we were going to be moved to another -- that must have felt very, very temporary, when we were, the way that we thought that the war was going to end any minute. But I think that the time that it really started to sink in, was we, when we moved to, from Puyallup to Minidoka, to the -- I think the, I remember getting this sense of foreboding.