<Begin Segment 14>

MA: What was, when you arrived at Santa Anita, what was going through your mind at that point?

MH: You know, you really don't know what to think because you're just taking orders. That's all they, they ordered, "Now, you go do this. You do that." Whatever. "You go through here. You go there. Go through those doctors." And then they'll guide you out to the barracks, and then you're assigned to a barrack. And this barrack, I have a picture in that newspaper clipping, what the barrack looked like in Santa Anita. It had... one building had three units. And they assigned you to which unit happened to be. We were middle unit. Because there was two, two, four of us. So, and then next door was another family had, they were, they were raised in Japan. They didn't speak any English at all, and they had a little boy called Ben. They lived next door. And then there was another couple, elderly couple. She had rheumatoid arthritis, she was very crippled. And they lived next door to us on one side.

MA: So it was like one room for the four of you?

MH: About the size of this. It had a cot, three cots there, and a broom and bucket, and that's all. They gave us our bedding and cots to sleep on. And there's not much privacy. It was built, but it was built in a hurry so the wood is raw and it's still fresh and you can still smell the wood smell. And you know those knotholes, those knots, when they get dried up, they poke, there's a hole there. You can almost see anybody from the other side. So my mother would get something, a rag, piece of rag and put paste on it and cover it up. So you could hear everything saying. There's one wood wall and you can hear everything going on, practically. But we were lucky to live in a barrack. But my cousins, they had to live in a stable and it was terrible, it was terrible. They had to sleep on straw mats, we had a regular mattress, which was much nicer. But they had to sleep on the straw mat, they had to fill their own bags. And it was pretty smelly, no matter how clean you are. And so, then they had mess halls -- they used military terms -- mess halls, several in the area. And they lived in a stable, so that was red. They had colors, mess hall numbers where called red or blue or white, yellow. And I worked eventually, when we got settled, they start recruiting for kids to work in the kitchen or wait on tables or something like that. So we volunteered and signed up. I worked in the mess hall for being a waitress.

MA: Were you paid?

MH: Not there. Not at Santa Anita, that was temporary. That was just temporary. I don't remember getting anything. We just, because we were being fed and living quarters are taken care of, so we really don't need anything actually. But if you did want to have something to buy something important enough, you'd have to ask a friend to bring it to you, up to the gate, or something. mail order. Mail order was either Sears or Spiegel's. And in those days, we had, everybody had just enough to get by, I guess. But if you needed something pretty desperate, you'd have to have a friend or somebody to get it for you and bring it or mail it to you.

MA: Would that happen? Would people from town come to Santa Anita and sort of bring stuff? Did they allow that, the military?

MH: They allowed you to come in. Of course, there was the post there, military post. They all, security things were all, they had a tower. The light, at nighttime, the lights would be, the searchlights would be moving around. You're just like a prisoner. It is a prison when you really think of it. And it's all fenced in. And Arcadia town is right there. You can see all the lights and everything and the streetcars running. But you dare not leave. You cannot leave. You're in, placed in a camp, that's it. You had no privilege of ever going out. I had a classmate, the last year in my senior year, she didn't come to school. And I wondered what happened to her. And so one day, before the war started, I saw her coming across the street with, somebody was with her. And she had gotten married to this black person and I didn't know that. That's how I found out that she had dropped out of school. And then, I hadn't seen her since then for a long time, until the war started. Then we were in Santa Anita, I come across her. And she had two little boys with her. I said, "Masako, what are you doing here? You didn't have to come here, did you? Since you got married to somebody, outside Japanese." She said, "Somebody reported that I was Japanese. And they, and that's how I had to come here." She brought the two boys. Well, I said, "Is your husband?" She said, "No, my husband's not. But I brought the two boys."

MA: So she was separated. They separated her from her husband.

MH: They separated her. And I didn't know, then I lost track. Then I didn't see her after that. I don't know where she went, or whatever happened. She had two little boys with her. And it was, I couldn't understand that either. And then, as time went on, we found a lot of Caucasian women married to Japanese husbands, you know.

MA: Were they in camp?

MH: Uh-huh. They were in --

MA: Santa Anita.

MH: There were several of them. There were a lot of them. I wouldn't say, not a few, there were quite a few of them. And then you see them walking and they didn't, that person did have to be in there, 'cause she's a Caucasian, she's an American citizen. I assumed. In the first place, we're all American citizens.

MA: Right.

MH: As far as that goes, I mean, as you say citizen. But it isn't, I thought was kind of strange. But if they're willing to come with their husband, I think that was really very honorable for them, because as a couple, you don't want to be separated. She gave up her feelings of... she coulda stayed behind. She didn't have to come.

MA: That's interesting.

MH: But she did. There were several. And some of 'em had kids, too. And Benjamin when we... I was there six months. Or just about six months.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.