<Begin Segment 23>

TI: So tell me about Bismarck. What was Bismarck like?

HN: Funny thing. When we went to Bismarck, we got off the train outside of Bismarck. We never saw the town itself. We're taken from the train, covered train in the shade, we got off the train, got into a truck that was covered, so we never saw the town of Bismarck. Then when we enter Fort Lincoln, then that was the only time that we saw the sky. And the impression I had, my impression of Fort Lincoln was much better than Tule Lake or Heart Mountain or Santa Anita. They had a permanent type building, brick building, two story, two... yeah, two story, and we were put into those. And they had the latrine and shower, it was community for the building. It was much, well built. And we learned those buildings used to be occupied by the "enemy aliens" and, because we went in as a group with five, six hundred together, they had to vacate all the German aliens out and they put 'em into the barracks and we got the permanent type structure.

TI: Okay, so you're in this permanent structure, how large, I mean, how many people were able to be in there?

HN: Well, there were, there were three buildings, and the center building had two wings. The two other on the outside were one single building, so one, two, three, in four actual buildings, they housed five, six hundred Japanese Americans in there, with two story, you know... but, as I say, the facility was much better. And they even had an indoor swimming pool. [Laughs] Can you imagine that? We were surprised. We couldn't believe it at first. "You mean to tell me we can swim in there?"

TI: Tell me who the other prisoners were.

HN: They were German aliens who were, a lot of them were the seamen who got caught during the war, when the war started. And there were a lot of academics, you know, the professors who were researching in U.S. universities and so forth. There were some musicians. We had a lot of music. We used to hold a little concert during the evening, and so there were musicians.

TI: So these were all Germans?

HN: Germans, yeah.

TI: And do you know, roughly, about how many were there? Like, in terms of, relative to the Japanese, was it --

HN: Probably about four hundred. A little, a little less than the Japanese Americans.

TI: And describe to me the Japanese Americans. Like, age-wise, were there a lot of others that were about your age? Or...

HN: Predominantly they were younger. Well, they were older Nisei, but starting anywhere from eighteen to, if it were Nisei, probably up to about thirty-five, after that it's Issei. But predominantly it was the Japanese Americans there.

TI: So Niseis.

HN: There were probably fifteen percent Nisei.

TI: I'm sorry, Nisei or...

HN: Fifteen percent was Issei.

TI: Issei, okay. Fifteen percent Issei.

HN: Issei, yeah. That's my observation, guess.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.