Densho Digital Archive - Mary Hamano Interview (denshovh-hmary

<Begin Segment 15>

MA: So you arrived in what month?

MH: I went in April.

MA: April of '42.

MH: Uh-huh, 'til September. Middle of September, we were transferred to Amache. But, the time that I lived in Santa Anita, met all kinds of people. You know, just daily you meet somebody. And then they recruited to work to do something if you wanted to work, you could work in the mess hall, or be a cook or wait on tables, wash dishes, whatever. We did, so I applied for that. My brother, he worked at the, they had what you call camouflage, they weave in these different colors and they had that at the stadium. And then eventually, there's so many kids that needed schooling, so they recruited anybody that's capable or had at least a high school degree, or not a college degree. I don't think very, very few that had college degrees in those days. They would ask if they would teach these little kids to be, to give them something to do. Either write or draw pictures, or whatever. And they had separate groups like, well, preschool wasn't too much. But first, second, third, they had them all in these stands in different areas. And so they can, we didn't have any books or papers or anything of that sort. But anything that would help them to not forget what they had already learned in school to keep them intact with that, that's what I assume. They had classes inside the stadium. And then other things had to be done, like this camouflage stuff was going on. But Catholic, Maryknoll, Catholic priests brought in a movie for us to watch sometimes in the evening. And they helped us, keep us entertained that way. And other than that, if you didn't have anything else to do, you just walked around the campus in that, Santa Anita tracks. They had a track that you could take a walk around. That was our exercise, to walk on the tracks. You can't go anywhere else. Then your daily stuff, and then there's always washing. Well, the washing was okay, too. They had a place where you could do your laundry. In those days, most people had, I'd say, ninety-nine percent was white sheets. Everything was white. Nowadays, we have colored things, you know, materials are different. And they're colorful, they're not all white anymore. It was white. And everybody's laundry was whites. Sometimes, people take your laundry without knowing. They think that... so my mother had to mark all our laundry with initials on it. As much as she could to take care of. Then you had to stay there and watch your laundry, because you couldn't leave it, Because people walk off with it without knowing it, thinking it's theirs. So my dad, my folks, when it was laundry day, they stayed and watched until it was all dried. And that was their daily work, whatever.