<Begin Segment 17>

TI: Any other memories of Heart Mountain you want to talk about?

BS: Well, when I was in the Boy Scouts we went to Yellowstone, in 1944. The camp director felt that we youngsters were too much under the control of the, our Issei parents with the Japanese ideas and so the camp director contacted Yellowstone National Park and found these empty barracks, and so five hundred Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts spent one week at Yellowstone.

TI: So five hundred all from Heart Mountain camp?

BS: Yes. I mean, that was one of the good things the camp director did.

TI: Tell me about this Yellowstone experience. What did you do? What was it like?

BS: Well, it was a beautiful place. We went on trucks and we came to this barrack and then we were taken for a tour of the, Yellowstone. I remember there was a place called Grand Canyon with a beautiful fall and we saw all those geysers, and so it was a pretty good trip. My father made me a fishing pole, something like a five foot pole, and so I, when I got to Yellowstone I dug for worms and I put it on the hook and I couldn't catch anything, so I left the worm in the water overnight, and the next morning there was a trout on it, so then I took that to the cafeteria. But then later on I found out that that's against the law to leave a line in the water unattended.

TI: That's good. So how long were you at Yellowstone?

BS: One week. So it was a, really a good trip.

TI: And did the, the camp, well, not camp, but park rangers and all that talk to the group and things like that?

BS: Yeah. I believe at night we did have a big bonfire and have some talks.

TI: And was it like a typical camp experience where there's singing and things like that, camp songs?

BS: I believe so.

TI: Okay. Yeah, I didn't know about that. That's a new one for me. Any other memories of Heart Mountain?

BS: We did all kinds of thing. It was snow country. First time we seen snow and we went ice skating, sledding in the snow, hiking all over, so it was a big adventure for the teenagers. We had no worries, no responsibility. It was a different world for us teenagers.

TI: And was, was it harder for your parents or for older Niseis, being in the camps?

BS: Well, I think it was hard for them to lose their properties and their homes, and they lost everything. But once, I guess, they got adjusted to camp life, my parents were going to all kinds of different classes. My father went to a singing class, a penmanship class. My mother was going to some kind of sewing or knitting class, and, and so it was a time, a sort of a vacation from what they were doing before the war. The word "vacation" is a bad word to use, but it was a forced vacation. We would have been better off if we had been left alone where we were at.

TI: Okay. So let's, let's now kind of move away from Heart Mountain --

BS: Oh, there's one thing I got to put in here. In 1945 -- my father is a drinker. He loved to drink, and he even used to make his own Japanese wine before the war, and so in 1945, I think when he went out to work in Colorado, he brought back with him some special wine rice. You can't just use ordinary eating rice, but you got to get this special rice to make wine, so he got this rice and I helped him make these special boxes to steam cook rice on the, top of the stove, and once you cooked the rice we would dump it in this big vat, and then he would let that ferment and after a while it'll start smelling and my, I remember my sister saying that she didn't want to bring her friends over because it was so smelly. And then once the rice was fermented to the right stage, my father put it into a big canvas bag and then we made a box, size of a apple box, and he got some paraffin wax and we got the wax and melted it on top of the stove and then we coated this box so it'll be waterproof, and then we got this canvas bag full of this fermented stuff, put it in that box and put a weight on that bag, and then this pure sake, the wine would come dripping out. And my father was pretty good in making that, so I helped him make that. I read in the newspaper later on that people were getting arrested for making wine, but that was pretty good of my father because alcohol was not allowed in the camp.

TI: And when he was all finished, when the two of you were all finished with it, how, how did he celebrate, or did he have friends over? I mean, how did he drink the sake?

BS: Well, he brought a few friends over and they would drink together. Other time I remember when he went outside to work, he would sneak in liquor because my father just loved to drink.

TI: Now, because you helped so much, did he let you try any of...

BS: No, I didn't even try. I guess I wasn't interested. I should've tried it.

TI: [Laughs] After doing all that work, I'd, I think I would be curious to try it. So anything else before we, we leave Heart Mountain? Anything else, any other stories or memories?

BS: No, that's about it that I could think of right now.

TI: If you remember something else we can come back.

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