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TI: So let's go to Hunt, or Minidoka. So what are your first, let's start with your very first impressions. What do you recall of Hunt when you first got to Hunt, Idaho?

KT: Just getting off the train and being bussed over to the camp site and seeing the barracks and going through the same process of filling... I don't think we had real mattresses at the beginning, but later, I think we were given real mattresses. I think the first mattress must have been filling it up again.

TI: So you mentioned you were in Unit B. Do you recall what block?

KT: Yeah, 36-8-B. It was Block 36, Barrack 8 and Unit B.

TI: Okay. And so you were just going to talk about some of the fun things that you did with, I think you said a group of seven of you or something. So were these seven or six others that you went around with, six or seven others, were they people that you knew from before, from Seattle? Were these people you met?

KT: Of our original seven, I think I knew... four of the seven I knew from being in school and whatnot, and then the other three were new friends. But we were all of the same age group, so we were a gang. There used to be a younger brother's group, they had about ten kids there, and our group that had about seven, and then my brother Tosh's group was another different group. It was all divided out as to age-wise.

TI: And so your group of seven, what were some of things that you guys did to spend the time?

KT: Well, of that seven, three of us are still here in Seattle, alive, so we just used to go swimming, camping, camping out there. And then we, when we were able to go out for the summer month, we were, I remember as a group of two or three, we would be working as laborers out there. I remember helping to build all those ditches around the camp, you know, the water canals and whatnot. I remember we were working with a group up, a mason that he was a really good mason. He knew how to build brick walls and whatnot. And I remember a time where we had a hole in the wall, and he would look at it and then we would go over to the rock pile, and he'll call us over and tell us, "Okay, that's the right rock, and carry it over." And so we would carry it over and then I would look at the rock. No way is that thing gonna fit into that slot, you know. And he would tell us to hold it and turn it around and keep turning until, "Okay, push it in." And it goes in. I said, "Wow, he could just go to a boulder pile and look at a rock, size it up mentally and go to the wall and get it in there." And I remember when we went back to visit the camp later on, I went to, made it a point to go to the old gatehouse, and I happened to speak to a person there, and I mentioned this mason's name, I can't remember it now. But he said, "Oh, he died last year," you know. And I remember him really good, chatting with them around the farmland. He showed me where the hospital area was, and all the different area. And we drove through the camp site and just saw the concrete foundation of the mess halls, that was the only thing that could see from different area was the concrete foundation for the mess hall and the community center and then the barracks. You couldn't see nothing like that.

TI: So this mason was a local from Idaho that you worked with.

KT: Yeah. And he stayed there and they made it into a farming community, and they had a real ongoing community there. And some of the old barracks were still there, they added a side and it was being used for warehouses and whatnot.

TI: But I want to be clear. This mason, was he white? He was Caucasian or was he Japanese?

KT: He was Caucasian.

TI: Okay, Caucasian. So you were on a work crew, kind of one of his assistants.

KT: Yeah, he was the foreman of the crew that we were assigned to.

TI: And you were talking about, you mentioned the guardhouse, so I've seen that. So you guys helped build that part of the...

KT: No. The walls were more the irrigation canal walls that was feeding the thing.

TI: Got it, okay.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.