<Begin Segment 32>

AI: What bothered you the most about being there, in Tule Lake?

TH: Well...

TI: Well, a lot of things.

TH: Yeah.

TI: Lot of things. For one thing, privacy. I mean, you didn't have your own bathroom, you didn't have your own kitchen, we all went to the mess hall. And then you have your laundry room, with your showers, and latrines and the -- things like that, where it was very inconvenient for one thing to have to go from your barrack to the centrally located laundry room, and then also to the mess hall. And, well, just the idea of being corralled in the camps with these full-mounted machine guns pointed inwards rather than outside to protect you. Well, it kind of tells you something about the situation, that they're prepared to maybe... a possible escape from camp by some of those people in there, rather than they protecting you from some other members of society on the outside. And that often bothered me.

TH: Yeah.

JM: Well, one thing, everybody's in the same boat so, we all felt the same way about the situation.

AI: And what was that?

JM: Well everybody felt the same way, but, and they were all, all together in one place, so you weren't picked out as one that, that you should go into camp. That way, why, it made it a little bit easier. But as a whole, it was not a good situation. People who are used to a more, a free life, even though it was kinda tight outside, discrimination and all that kind of stuff, why, it was worse in the camp... and so, you lost a lot of stuff that was, you took for granted. That was, it's pretty hard to get used to that, those kinds of things. But I think the Japanese are pretty resilient and so, they took it and stayed there, some of 'em stayed there 'til the end. But a lot of the younger folks became more restless, why, we all went out the first opportunity that afforded us.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.