<Begin Segment 19>

TI: And when this was happening, what was the plan for your mother? Was it clear what was going to happen?

MH: Well, that we could make no plan, we had to leave her there, and we thought that when she was able to come out, we would ask for her release. And my mother said it was a very frightening experience for her, because the nurses always kept saying, "If the Japs come, then we're gonna, we're not gonna take you with us." And Mother lived in fear all the time. They were not nice to her. So I kept appealing, saying, "Can't we get her out?" And finally, fortunately, they released her, and I had two guards with me, and went, drove into Riverton, and got my mother and took her back to camp. And she did pretty well in camp. It was after we moved to the, to the real center that she had problems again. So we did get Mother for a while.

TI: So you brought her back to Puyallup, and then eventually you're saying you then went to the Minidoka camp. And so how ill was your mother at this point? When you say she -- I mean, was she bedridden, or what, how...

MH: Well, she was okay by the time they released her, but we went into the regular camp, Minidoka, and Mother caught cold or something, and she was so afraid that she was going to be put into the, sent back to Seattle. She dreaded going to a hospital, but we had to put her in the hospital at the camp, which was ill-equipped and ill-serviced. And, but the director was a very fine, young Dr. Hasegawa, a Hawaiian, a Nisei. And so Mother was in the hospital in camp, and I used to go up every day from early morning 'til night to be with her, because the nursing, nurse was, services were nil. And meantime, my brother went off to war, I mean, went, joined the army and he left the camp. And my mother got mentally ill, and she had a mental breakdown. And I think a good part of it was she was over-drugged. She was a drug addict, and, medicinal drugs.

So I had to take her up to Blackfoot, Idaho, to the mental institution there, and there, too, the two guards drove the car, took us up there, and they put Mother in the mental institution there and I just couldn't leave her, so I rented a little room in this little town of Blackfoot, Idaho, and I used to go see her every day. You know you hear about snake pit? And that's exactly what it was. She was put into this huge room with a lot of screaming, yelling people, and my poor mother was quiet. She didn't hurt anybody, she didn't do anything, she just said funny things. She had to sleep through the night with these people clanging and stuff. And then finally they gave, they decided to give her electric shock treatments. And I wish they hadn't shown it to me, but they showed me her all with stuff on. They shaved her head and all that stuff. And they said it was terrible, this electric shock, electric shock treatments. And I saw her go in twice. I just couldn't stand it, so I asked them to release her. "I want to take her back home." So they released her, and I brought her back to Minidoka, put her in the hospital there. She was still hallucinating and all that. So I stayed with her again, and Dr. Hasegawa said to me, "May, if you stay here, you're gonna be just like your mother. Just too much for you." So he said, "Take your two younger sisters and remember your mother as she was before this illness, and leave." So we were able to get sponsors in Chicago.

TI: Well, while this was going on with your mother, where was your, what was your dad doing?

MH: My dad was there, and he worked in the hospital kitchen. My dad was there, but I got most of the responsibility.

TI: Did you ever talk with your father about what was going on with your mother and get his thoughts?

MH: We did, but there wasn't... my father isn't the most talkative person. And I don't remember discussing seriously what to do, but I did tell him that Hasegawa told me to leave, and he said, "Good idea, you go." I said, "But Mama." He said, "I, I take care of her." But he was taking her for a walk and she ran out in front of a truck and tried to, you know, get herself killed. And fortunately she wasn't, and so they had a, had to send her back to the mental institution. By that time, I was gone. I was in, in Chicago.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.