Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Mary Hamano Interview
Narrator: Mary Hamano
Interviewer: Megan Asaka
Location: Denver, Colorado
Date: May 14, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-hmary_2-01-0019

<Begin Segment 19>

MA: So people, you were saying earlier, people were able to go into town, into Granada?

MH: Yeah, well, as long as you got a pass. You go down to the office, down below and get a permit. And you can leave at sunup to sundown. You come back by that time. And you could either walk to Granada, or take the train and go to Lamar, or take the mail truck and come back.

MA: Did you ever go into town?

MH: I went once to Lamar on the mail truck. And I went to... they had a Safeway there. And your limited to buying certain things, because a lot of things were rationed, like sugar, flour, the basic food.

MA: How did people treat you? Townspeople treat you and the rest of the...

MH: Well, we had cash. So we would buy a lot with cash. But it sounded like the people there, later on, as we, I heard, that they appreciated us buying with cash, but when we buy, we buy everything out with it. And they want to save some of their stuff for the people that didn't have money, they traded with things as they came, like eggs, or whatever. And they needed to give them the business, too. So they kinda wanted us not to be spending too much money buying it directly with cash. Which they would rather do. But I just didn't take any chance of going anywhere around there, because "No Japs are allowed" signs are here and there, you know. So you just don't want to get involved in too much of that. So I just stayed around and looked, just walk up and down the streets of the town. And I spent one day just to see what it was like to get out, for, at least you're shut in for so long, you want to see what's going on.

MA: Did you ever hear of any instances where people had trouble with...

MH: No, I didn't hear anything. Then I came back in time to help serve with the supper. It was seven days, three days a week. Three times a day, seven days a week. And towards the end, we decided we need a day off to do our own things. So there were four or five of us, we took time off for one day off. We scheduled our timing so that everybody had a time off out of the week, so, not that there's a lot to do in camp. But then, you know, you want to go shopping or something. You want to have a little time for yourself for the whole day. And that's what we did. I eventually, we start having mochitsuki, we had New Year's. Fish was coming in, Granada Fish started their fish market in town. And they brought in fish so we could have sashimi and things like that were getting little better as time... and New Year's everybody wants to have their mochi, so we had mochitskui and the young girls and the boys all help mold things. And then divide, everybody had a share of mochi for the New Year's. And that was part of our fun thing that we did. It was traditional thing, also fun for, not to forget what we had for New Year's, you know. That was nice. And then we had our own entertainment, too. Each block had something to do with their own, figure out some way to entertain at least once a month or once a week. Of course there was, the young kids had their dance parties and their recreation around the end of the block there was a recreation center. So they could have their doings, whatever they like to play cards or dance with. I happened to have a portable record player, and so whoever had records in those days, they brought their records and they would have dance parties going on. And then we had crafts stuff.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.