<Begin Segment 15>

AI: Well, tell me more now about what your parents had been doing in camp because you had gone out to Montana and then you came back and then you were working in the hospital. During this time, these months in Manzanar, what were your parents doing?

AO: I don't recall my mother working in the... let's see, in Manzanar. My mother worked, got a job in the hospital mess hall. She was a, so she was considered kitchen worker. And for the convenience of the kitchen worker employees and the nurses, they were, they had Block 34 which much nicer barracks. They were newer barracks in Manzanar. So the whole family was transferred to Block 34. And my father was the landscape gardener and he had the responsibility to design and make the hospital garden at that time. And Anna Tamura, who works for the Department of Interior, National Park Service, has... I met her in Manzanar, one of the Manzanar pilgrimage. And she said that she had been assigned to restore the garden in Block 34 and the hospital garden. And I met her at the Manzanar pilgrimage, it will be about two years ago.

AI: Well, I heard that the garden at the hospital was quite beautiful, very nice. What's your memory of it?

AO: At the time that my father created it, I didn't think anything about it, just another garden. And I do remember he had a crew and they provided truck for him. And he'd go out to the foothills of the mountain to pick up rocks and trees, shrubs to use in the garden. And before the war I used to go with him in Whittier and he would, we'd go to different places to pick up rocks to use in his garden at that Whittier house.

AI: So to you, this was a normal procedure and it wasn't anything special to you because you had already worked with him?

AO: That's correct, yes. And he likes to pick up rocks and place 'em in a garden. I would watch him and he would look at it. And I feel that his knowledge of landscaping, he wasn't licensed here in the United States, but there was feeling in placing rocks. And there is, in a Japanese form of placing rocks, there is a meaning for it and you had to have your own feelings to place it.

AI: Well, I think it's quite interesting that he was actually provided the truck and the transportation to go outside the camp --

AO: Yes.

AI: -- to obtain these items for the garden.

AO: That's correct. And I went one or two times, with him, just to get out of... go outside.

AI: So this was quite a project that your father was in charge of.

AO: Yes. And Anna Tamura used all that information and my interview in her thesis for her master's degree in landscape architect. And I had, she gave me, she sent me the copy of the thesis, so...

AI: Well, is there anything from, in fact about the landscape work there at the camp that you wanted to mention now, anything else that comes to mind?

AO: I think, just mention that my father has credit that he was the foreman to create the garden and Anna Tamura has been assigned to recreate the, all the, all the rocks are still intact. They haven't been damaged but the trees, some of the shrubs are not there, but the larger trees are still there. And when I walked with Anna at the site, there were some areas where you could sit down. And I think that the patients come there and sit and meditate because nature is that close. And my father, being a Christian, had thought of to sit and meditate.

AI: Well, for people who aren't familiar with that camp layout at Manzanar, maybe we should mention that the hospital, I believe, was in the far northwestern corner?

AO: Yes, far (northeast) corner.

AI: And you were saying then that your family also was moved to a barrack much closer to the hospital?

AO: Yes, it's right across the roadway, and as you cross the roadway will be the garden. And then the hospital would be set up, the administration in the front and the hospital wards to the back on each side.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.