<Begin Segment 19>
SN: Now, let's go back into Pinedale. If you could, can you describe the layout of that assembly center? How were the barracks laid out?
SH: Barracks were laid out in sort of block, so many barracks to a block.
SN: And do you know how many barracks there were?
SH: I don't know exactly how many. But there was enough barracks, and in the middle was a mess hall.
SN: So did each barrack area then have its own mess hall?
SH: Each barrack had about five so-called apartments.
SN: Okay.
SH: And there was around two hundred to a block.
SN: How large were these apartments? One individual apartment?
SH: My family of five, of four, family of four... the room was about 20 x 20. I know the building was 20 foot wide, and then just separated this way, about 20 x 20.
SN: For a family of...
SH: And four cots are laid around you... cot there, cot there, and cot on the side. We hung a rope across there one way and hung blankets, so my sisters and I were separated.
SN: Doesn't sound like a lot of room, 20 x 20, for a group of four or five.
SH: No. 20 x 20, it's not even an average living room.
SN: This closeness, because I would, being so close to your family physically, did this somehow impact the relationship you had with your sisters and your mom?
SH: I imagine it did. My mother and I, we had no problem. I didn't have any problem with my sisters either. We didn't have any problem. But in households that had, prior to maybe evacuation, maybe brother and sister didn't get along, they would've had trouble. I, I never came across or I never heard about 'em if there was, but I'm sure that there was in some cases. We had no problem there.
SN: So, there were, I'm sorry, how many apartments to a barrack, you were saying...
SH: I think there was five.
SN: So you would live in one barrack with, maybe four or five other groups of people?
SH: Right. And, the gables weren't closed.
SN: The gate was...?
SH: The gable, goes through all this way. It was open all the way across, all five. So a baby crying on that far side, you could hear it on the other end of it, too. Or some baby or child fighting and cried in the middle of the barracks there, well, both sides you could hear it 'cause there was nothing to stop that noise coming through. And, in that short time, the heat, extreme heat, they used green lumber, shrank, so there was cracks between the, that barrack, I mean, that apartment and this one. You could see sunlight through the cracks on the out, looking outside.
SN: So it sounds like that privacy may have been an issue, because you already said something about hanging the blankets in your own apartment to kind of separate it. What other things did people do to kind of deal with that issue about maybe not having the sense of privacy?
SH: There wasn't much you could do. We asked for extra blankets and cut some rope and, maybe one across this way and one across this way, and put it into four, four compartments inside of this 20 x 20. Bigger families, if there were six, seven, eight in a family, they got more apartments. If there was only family of three, well, they still got an apartment, what we call apartment, or room for each one.
SN: And were all these apartments same size as 20 x 20, in spite of how large a family it was?
SH: Pretty much, from what I know. Yes, if they had a bigger family they didn't tear out a partition, they just got the next door one.
SN: And you're also talking about the green lumber, and the gaps in the lumber and how the dust used to go underneath the doorway.
SH: Uh-huh. Dust used to blow in...
SN: What did people do to deal with that dust? Did they try to plug up the holes somehow?
SH: There wasn't much you could do. No. There wasn't much you could do about that.
SN: How did your family deal with the, with that? Did you just, constant cleaning? [Laughs]
SH: Sweep it up. There wasn't much use in doing it, but you kept it every day. You'd dust it off, and sweep it off, shake the blankets off. Go back, happen again the next day.
<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.