<Begin Segment 7>

MN: What other early days of Manzanar do you remember?

JM: A lot of it was the food, I guess. I remember standing in line, and you get this smell of boiling weenies. If there's anything that's kind of bad, it's boiling weenies and sauerkraut. I don't know where they got the idea that we, you know, that was part of our diet, but oh, that was an offensive smell. Combination of wieners and sauerkraut. If I was from Minnesota or something like that, or Milwaukee or something like that, I'd have been in my element. But most Japanese were horrified. And other than that, there was, there was just a raw, rugged aspect of Manzanar. The barracks and stark, starkness of the mountains, stark beauty of the mountains in some ways. The sagebrush, the dust, the smell, things of that nature. Everything was quite new. It was quite a jar coming from the environment I came from.

MN: Oh, yeah, you're a city kid.

JM: Yeah, I'm a city kid. If I was a country, country guy, that might have been a little different.

MN: Did you eat with your parents?

JM: Initially, but we kind of like, after a while, we just kind of ran wild, we just did what we want, wanted. I wrote this little short piece for the historical society, I entitled it, "Stray Cats of Manzanar." And we were like stray cats. We came back only when we needed something, but other than that, we were on our own. And it was, even when it came time to go to school, I mean, I think I went more when I wanted to go than if I decided I didn't want to go, I left. I spent a lot of my time down there by Bairs Creek, just roaming around there. And they had this so-called golf course they made later on. That was the biggest joke of... essentially it was holes, holes punched into the ground. That's all it was, in the hard desert land, but there were a lot of golf tees, and I would go around collecting those. When I got bored with that, I'd go back in and go to school. And I got bored of school, and I'd leave, and oh, when we would really act up in class. The poor girl, I felt so sorry for her when I think back on it. She couldn't have been any more than eighteen, nineteen, and how they ever talked her into taking on a teaching assignment into Manzanar, I'll never know. I understand that the, in Manzanar High School, they got a lot of volunteer teachers coming out of LAUSD. And these were professionals, but our teacher was like eighteen, nineteen year old at the most. You know, first, second grade. And she couldn't, there was no way she can handle us. And we would just go wild. I remember somebody hitting her in the back of the head with a book. And then she got so desperate she was passing out nickels to keep us quiet. She was paying us off. Then when she couldn't handle us anymore, she sent us to, like she would say, "You, go to the library." So I would be sent to the library. And guess who would be at the library? My sister. And they were afraid of me because I would say, "If you mess with me, I'll tear up your clothes." [Laughs] So they were glad to see me go. So bang, I would be gone. I was roaming all over. So in that article, "Stray Cats of Manzanar," that's what we were doing. Even in the evening, in the summer, we'd get flashlights and a pack of us would be roaming around. And yeah, it was utter freedom for us younger kids. But obviously it wasn't that way for the older people.

MN: Now, early on you mentioned you got the measles?

JM: I got the measles, and right, I was really sick. I had to, I wound up in the Manzanar hospital.

MN: Were you quarantined?

JM: Yes, uh-huh.

MN: In the hospital.

JM: In the hospital, right. And if you had chicken pox, you were quarantined, but not in a hospital bed, in your barrack.

MN: You got chicken pox later...

JM: Later.

MN: ...at Manzanar.

JM: Uh-huh.

MN: What did your parents do in camp?

JM: As far as I can tell, nothing. A lot of people did nothing. I don't know what they did with their time. I've seen a lot of artifacts that they made, little birds, and I think some people went to work in the camouflage factory. Some people were cooks, some people were, you know, service personnel. But as far as I know, I don't think my father and mother did anything at all. I think there were a lot of people like that, just sitting around wondering what to do with their time.

MN: And then you said one of your sisters worked in the library.

JM: She worked in the library.

MN: Because you went to detention there. [Laughs]

JM: Right. [Laughs] That was detention, uh-huh.

MN: What about your other sister?

JM: I don't know what she did. I don't recall her working in the library doing anything at all, really.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.