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GH: But most people survived and, in fact in my talking with some of the Canadian Issei women, they say -- you know I have to say this carefully, because I don't wanna give the wrong impression to people inquiring. But when the war came, and we had to move into camps and, and be fed, well in Canadian, they did their own cooking. They didn't have this centralized camp mess halls and so on. They went into small little shacks rather than in dormitories with barrack.

BF: Right.

GH: So they, they had a better family continuity in that sense and controls. Lot of the Isseis lost control, particularly of women. Girls growing up, dating and going to dances and so on. Some of 'em never, the only time they went to dances were when schools had it. Or they went out saying, "I'm going out with my girlfriends." And then the girls would join up with boys. They had their ways of escaping the controls to some extent. I remember in high school, making group dates and saying, "Well, we'll come over and pick you up then." "Oh, don't come to the house. Go over to so-and-so's house. We're gonna meet there. That's where my folks think we're having a party," and so on. So that kind of things existed, so that this Issei woman said, "You know for the, for the average wives, Issei wives, the camp life was a picnic. For the first time we had a chance to go to a knitting class, and cooking classes and discussion groups. We didn't have time for that. We had to, we learned our knitting by, out of necessity, transforming older members of the family's clothing to the next one," and so on. They seldom had fresh, new clothes. And they said it was a real hard life, the Issei women. And so they, for the first time they didn't have to worry, they didn't have to worry about where their groceries were coming from and so on. And, "As bad as the restrictions were in camp, we women really had a picnic compared to what we were going through."

BF: Yeah.

GH: So that was one picture, and I can, I can relate to that.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.