Densho Digital Archive - Mary Hamano Interview (denshovh-hmary

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MA: Going back a little bit, you had mentioned earlier that your parents were very strict with you when you were in high school and after. How did they feel when you were in camp? Did that dynamic change?

MH: Well, they changed. Because there were so many of us, we're all Japanese, and we're not all Caucasian. It's strictly Japanese. So it was a different feeling for them. So they, I, well, of course, I was already twenty years old then. So, I had a little more freedom to do what I wanted to do. So then I had a friend that was in the same block. She happened to be one of the students at the sewing school that I used to see. And so we got real close and we went, we did things together quite a bit. And she was my best friend in camp there, and I have other friends, too, but she was my closest, and we were same age. And she had a younger sister that needed to go to school yet. And she hadn't finished high school. So when the high school was built, I have that picture there, she was one of the first graduates from that high school. And they had caps and gowns. When I went to school, we didn't even have caps and gowns. We had, we were lucky to have a formal, let alone, and they weren't never the same style. They were all different colors and different styles. And it was different. And they managed to rent white caps and gowns which was nice. We had a graduation and then we also had other... the auditorium was used for a lot of things. Of course, sports was mainly what it was for. We had basketball and baseball going on, too, for the young kids. And then we had a fair, whatever you made, or had grown, veggies or something that was unusual, you displayed it. And everybody did their share of that, which was very entertaining, because you'd be surprised how many gifted people were living in the camp. But they never said they knew how to do it or anything. They made furniture out of scrap material, lumber, and made a lot of wood carving and made furniture, beautiful furniture. And homemade, well, my father wasn't clever, that clever, but he put together, made benches. We didn't have any chairs or tables, so we had to do the best we can to do that and gather up material. We had a teacher that was a very, she was a craft teacher. Very good in making artificial flowers, knitting, and crocheting. And then we had another, was a professional dressmaker. And she sewed and she made clothes for those that could afford to buy material and have clothes made. And then this was before the co-op came along, so we had to use our hands, we didn't have a sewing machine. Eventually, the sewing machine came along, so that was nice. But we did a lot of sewing with our hands. And we had handmade stuff.

MA: As time went on in camp, how much did you hear of what was going on in the outside world?

MH: Oh, we got the newspaper. We got the Pueblo Chieftain and Denver Post was coming in so we know what was going on. And we had no radio, but word got around. People would come and tell us.

MA: Was there a sense of how long you would be in camp? I mean, did you know when you would leave?

MH: Nobody knew, nobody knew. As time went on, the war got progressively harder and deeper. And of course, Japan was conquering several areas, but then eventually it was taken away, you know. They would get news, but very little was spread around, because they didn't want us to know too much, I think. But what we read in the newspaper, all got our news, so we know what was going on the outside. And then we can go out to town, so we hear things from town, so it wasn't totally isolated either. So we were pretty lucky in a lot of ways, compared to the other camp sites. I hear that some places were pretty bad. Not as, as well as we thought from what I've heard since later on, after we start living in the town, we hear people that they come from different camps, and their stories are a little different.