<Begin Segment 25>

TI: Another big project was the barracks, the Heart Mountain barracks with the museum. Can you tell me about that story, how, how that all happened?

BS: I've been going to Heart Mountain and I saw these barracks, so one day I was here in Los Angeles at the JACL office, JACL office, and as I was going out I bumped into this woman I know who was at this newly started Japanese American National Museum. So she asked me into her office and I saw this huge drawing of the proposed new museum with a barrack inside it, so I told her, "Hey, Nancy, I know where there's some barrack," and so with that we started ways of getting this barrack into the museum. And it took couple years of planning and so finally we got a crew together and we were going to go to Wyoming, and then we had a meeting at the museum. And they said, "Well, we're gonna bring this one barrack without the tar paper, and then this other barrack with the tar paper, the owner will give us the tar paper to put on this other barrack without the tar paper and we would have to replace the barrack with the tar paper with new tar paper." And so that was a big surprise to me on how we were gonna go after these barracks, so I didn't think that was very good. So I remember I called the museum and said, "Hey, we're having problems with this barrack. Why don't we just get the barrack, make an offer?" But I guess the museum don't buy things, so somehow we replaced that barrack with something else and so that's how at the last minute we were able to get this barrack with the tar paper, otherwise we wouldn't have gotten it.

TI: And, and like where are you finding these barracks?

BS: Right there at Heart Mountain, just, just half a mile from that campground. It was sort of hidden away.

TI: So these were farmers who had bought or somehow got the barracks off the original camp and brought it to their farm?

BS: Right. When the camp was closed all those barracks were sold for one dollar apiece, and so those barracks were all over the countryside in that area. And this one particular barrack was not lived in and used as a shed, so it was really in good condition, so luckily we were able to bring that back because there aren't any more like that out there.

TI: Okay.

BS: So we had this group go down there and we took it apart and we brought it back, so it turned out to be pretty good.

TI: So that was, what, fifteen years ago? I think they're having celebrations now about the...

BS: Oh yeah, we just had a eighteen year celebration, I think it was.

TI: Okay, eighteen year celebration. Yeah.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.