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TI: So what were some of your other kind of initial impressions of, of Manzanar? So here you had this encounter with the MP, how about living conditions? What did you think about the living conditions?

HU: Living condition, you know, living condition, I don't know what other internee told you about it, but to me it was good because I came from a farm. We had outhouses, right? At camp they had high tech flushing toilet. We had furo, at camp they had this shower, and then also washbasin, it was a galvanized trough, but at least you had hot water, cold water while back home we only have cold water. In wintertime it got frozen. I mean, it wouldn't even come out. So living condition -- oh, and then inside the barracks, the, when we first got there it was bare, just a shell, but then about three months later they came and they plastered the wall and put linoleum, so that was much better than where I was living before the war. So no, to me personally, from where I was living and comparing with Manzanar the barracks and the latrine, everything, it was good. Camp was good.

TI: So was it better, better than what you were used to?

HU: Yeah, it was better, in fact. I mean, some people might not like me talking like this, but to me it was good.

TI: It's all kind of relative. I mean, what you know and what you're going through, so it all depends. How about food? What'd you think about the food?

HU: Food, the complaint I had for it initially was not enough. Because thirteen, back home I was eating about five bowls of rice. I was really consuming, and go to camp and you got a couple of toast and meat and potato and beans or something like that, so I was hungry. It took me at least two weeks before my stomach got used to it, but, but otherwise the food itself, I don't remember too much about the food because I guess it wasn't too bad or too good. I remember canned spinach I didn't care for too much, liver I couldn't eat at all, on Fridays there was fish, which I didn't like, and aside from that I guess it was pretty good. We had beef and veal and - oh, lamb stew, I didn't like it, but I got used to it later. The food wasn't bad, and when I went in the army during the basic training the first thing reminded me, I got reminded was that, hey, this army food is just like the camp food because it's, I guess the menu was the army menu at the time and it depended on the cook who cooked it. So initially a lot of people used to go to a mess hall that had good cook, a good cook and then they got wise to it and by the time we got into camp they had this guy standing by the door watching who's coming in and they recognized any outsiders so we couldn't go to the other mess halls.

TI: So even though the cooks essentially got the same supplies --

HU: Same.

TI: -- some people were better than others with the food.

HU: Oh yeah, absolutely, because some mess hall, they were fortunate enough to have a cook that had a restaurant in Little Tokyo, something like that, and they were good.

TI: That's good.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.