<Begin Segment 22>

TI: So what else did you see in Tanforan?

FH: Well, that's what made me feel that's so important for human beings to have something that's constant and it doesn't depend on wealth. Now...

TI: Well, let me ask you about your --

FH: Culture is so important in camp, Art. Like Chiura Obata had class always overfilled, and he was teaching them about art. He had art class. And my job, part of my job became working for recreation department when I was at Tanforan. After I did all these thing, now we're getting more organized. We've got our government going, we have block meetings, and each block has a manager. And then, eventually, eventually, we would have a right to self-government, which the government was smart enough to let us have. So we had our own self-government. And so I thought Japanese are pretty well-organized, and they're pretty good organizers, yeah.

TI: Now, when you had self-government, was there any friction in terms of who should be in charge?

FH: Always.

TI: Who should be making the decisions?

FH: Yeah. There was always friction.

TI: So describe some of that. What were some of the issues?

FH: Well, I wasn't involved too much in those issues. I was more involved in getting activities started. So like get the art people together. We even had, we even had girls selling favors for those tickets. We'd get tickets, rations, and it's good for a certain amount of dollars. And girls... well, they say prostitution is the oldest business in the world. It happens in camp, too. And so, 'cause I knew about this, but I said, "How'd they pay for it?" They gave 'em their rations, and the girls could sell it for money.

TI: And so when you found out about this, what...

FH: Nothing. I can't do anything about it. That's private life, right?

TI: So there wasn't a...

FH: But my job was to know what's happening and what the needs are. And we tried to do programs for different age groups, and we ran the treasure hunts in camp, we ran leagues, we ran horseshoe contests, we had boxing contests, every Friday night we'd put on a show. And Goro Suzuki was a good singer, and he was part of this, we called ourselves the Cosacks. We made a chorus line. [Laughs] And I did a stand-up comedy with Tora Ichiyasu, Haramaki was the nickname, and every Friday we'd get up there and try to do some kind of a... so did those kind of things. But it was kind of fun.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.