<Begin Segment 20>

TI: And so you said you were there for about six days, and then what happened next?

JT: Well, after six days, I think it was six days, we still weren't charged with anything. They says, "We're gonna move you, we're gonna take you to this CCC camp." Well, they didn't tell us that we were going to CCC camp. They said they were going move us out of the jail. So they backed the truck up again and we got on the truck, and next thing we know, we're over there at the CCC camp. And the truck driver came out and says, "Hey, don't run away, because your guards are not here yet." And then he said something about, you know, "This is your new home, so you're gonna have to clean up the mess hall and clean up the barracks so you can use 'em tonight." So we were cleaning up the mess hall, half the group, cleaning up the mess hall, and the other half, cleaning up the barrack. And the CCC camp, that stands for Civilian Conservation Corps, they had closed the camp, and we had to open it. I think the other group from Alturas arrived about the same time, same day, anyhow, that we arrived. And we were cleaning up the camp when the soldiers came in. And when the soldiers came in, we couldn't do anything. We had to go for something over there, well, the guy says, "Where are you going?" And to go to the bathroom or go to the latrine, you had to have a guard. We couldn't go. And this was a long building, maybe about thirty, forty feet long. The soldier would, or guard would go take you right to the door. You would go in and do whatever you had to do. And if you didn't come out in a given amount of time, the guy would say, "You guys been in there too damn long. Get of here." And he wouldn't come in, but at least he, you can hear him. Says, "Get your ass out of there." Anyhow, when that started, we couldn't do anything without permission or without a guard. If you had to walk thirty feet to go someplace, well, you had to have a guard. To get something, you had to have a guard. So we started making, mimicking what the guard does. Instead of one guy going, two guy goes, one guy's mimicking, he's the guard, and the other guy is going, and then we got the guard behind us. So we played it like it was a joke. 'Cause we didn't realize this is serious. This, we shouldn't, we shouldn't take it as a joke. Our main objective was that we were right and the government was wrong. They can't do this to us. So regardless of where it goes, if it went to court, we says, "Our Constitution says we have rights. Civilian, we're not aliens, we're citizens of the United States and the Constitution says we have certain rights. Each citizen has a certain right, and they can't do this, what they did." And that was the main reason that we didn't really take it serious.

TI: Well, part of it is the treatment, too. It was interesting how you talked about when you first got to the CCC camp, and the guy just says, "Hey, you guys clean up, and don't run away because the guards aren't here yet," it sounded like you guys were cooperating, working, cleaning things up. And then when the soldiers came, it was a very different feeling, that all of a sudden you weren't trusted, guards had to show you everything. At that point, I could sense the bitterness coming through in terms of this is a joke and why do this? So in addition to your rights, it was just the treatment that you and the other men got, and how that affected things, too. That's what I'm hearing from you.

JT: Well, you know, like I said, we mimicked what the guard did to us. We started, one guy going after whatever he was going after, he had to have a guard to go with him. So instead of one guy, two guy went, and one guy was acting like he was the, he was the guard, and of course the real guard was behind us with his rifle, and he walked beside us, behind us, and we got what we got and went after. And we did things like that. Even though that, they were trying to, at least trying to make us mind them. I don't know what the right word is, but we were still not realizing that, how serious this was. We were still thinking, "This can't happen to us." But it was happening.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.