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TI: So this is now where, at Heart Mountain, or Pomona?

SY: No, Pomona. And because we had nothing to do but just walk around. In the evening they had judo matches and they had sumo wrestling matches, every Friday night they had a talent show, which we loved, but the sad thing about the talent show was we hated the Japanese shows, the dances and the kabuki and so forth, but we loved the band era, modern songs, which we never learned, but when we went back home, back to our barracks, we were out on the open field, and we had so much dust, you'd blow your nose, it's all dirt, but we didn't care because it was some type of entertainment that we'd look forward to, you know.

TI: Was that the hardest thing about Pomona, just the boredom, or just finding things to do?

SY: Well, there was no school at that time. They did register because this was, we got there in May, so June, July, August is summer vacation, so they really did not have any school, and so during the day most of the people were just laying around because it was too hot for these people. We'd go to the mess hall, every once in a while some of the seniors, it'd be a long line because the food would run out, of the menu, and you'd see a guy fainting and, next thing you know, ambulance come, pick him up and take him to the hospital, wherever, and I used to feel sorry for them, but then I used to wonder, why do they wear all this garment in the hot weather, but I guess they were used to that. And one thing that I always remember is that in the morning -- there was a sugar rationing, and they gave us a little piece of a paper bag that you see, find in McDonald's now, little sugar -- and there'll be a gentleman collecting, "Hey, if you don't use that for your cereal, can I have your sugar?" And he had a little gallon can, he'll fill it up, and I would say, yeah, we're not using it. And just recently I asked my friend, Tak Hoshizaki, I said, "What did he use that sugar for?" He says, "Don't you know? They make sake out of it." I said, "Oh?" and I just learned that this year, but whether that's true or not I don't know.

TI: No, I've heard other stories similar, yeah, that the extra sugar, they could do that.

SY: So it must be true. [Laughs]

TI: Well, I'm not sure about, I'm sure there was some of that going on. Other stories, Pomona, that you remember?

SY: Well, I had the worst case of athlete's feet, because we had an open shower facility, and one of the things that most kids, and I'm talking about a nine-, ten-year-old kid, yeah, we soap and rinse and so forth, and we neglect to dry between our toes. I'm not saying everybody, but I'm talking about myself, we're just too lazy to bend down and go between your toes, which, if you have athlete's foot, athlete's feet, it spreads. Well, my mother had a bottle of Listerine that she carried with her, and that was my medication to cure athlete's feet. And oh, it was itchy and cracks in the skin, and I thought, oh my gosh, why doesn't she take me to the doctor or hospital, but they didn't want to, she did cure it, ironically, but later on, not at Pomona, but when we went to Heart Mountain, they had these little tubs of, it looked like iodine or something, and we would saturate our feet in there, and they said, hey, there's more bacteria in that than if you didn't use it, so we start all wearing getas, with scrap wood, we all made getas, and that worked great.

TI: Oh, so to keep your feet away from all the bacteria, you'd wear that, because that was pretty common in the showers, for people to get athlete's foot?

SY: Well, nobody talked about it if they had it, because they were ashamed to admit it, and if they did have it, I don't know how they cured it, but it doesn't take much to have that spread, rampant, just everybody gets it, you know. So when you see that many people wearing getas, you know that it works. In those days they didn't wear that rubber zori, they had the kind of a woven, it looked like hay or whatever, but nobody went in the shower with that. But geta works good because even the men and the women and the children all wore it. You could hear 'em, you know, and they had different shapes and so forth. But I was mentioning about the toothbrushes. They would cut that and make little hearts and earrings, pendulum, and they made getas and so forth, and in Heart Mountain everybody made a Heart Mountain display, whether they painted it or what.

TI: Okay, good.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.