Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Archie Miyatake Interview
Narrator: Archie Miyatake
Interviewer: Martha Nakagawa
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: August 31 & September 1, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-marchie-02-0023

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MN: I want to ask you a little bit about fishing at Manzanar now. Who did you go fishing with and how did you manage to go fishing from a concentration camp?

AM: [Laughs] Well, my cousin's husband, his name is Mike Nishita, and he was quite a fisherman and he loved trout fishing. He used to do that prior to World War II and he knew the trout fishing was very good in where we were, so he said he was gonna go fishing, so I decided why not go with him, because he could teach me a lot. So one morning, one day he said, "I'm gonna go fishing this weekend, so if you want to go we're gonna have to start about two or three o'clock in the morning." I said sure, so what we did was we went to dig for worms. Well, first of all, to get all these fishing tackle and things like that we had to order from Sears Roebuck and things and we got it through mail order. And Mike Nishita had some kind of connection, he was able to get his equipment. Anyway, we dug up some worms and got ready to go, and, well, we had to go while it was dark so we could crawl through the barbed wire and go, go out fishing, so we did that about two or three o'clock in the morning and we would hike and hike and go up the stream, and by the time we got to the foot of the mountain it was about five or six in the morning yet, so we fished downstream towards the camp itself and we would really look out for MP in case they see us, so we kept close to the creek in the area where we cannot be seen that much. So we fished and fished and we finally came back to the camp area. By that time we had quite a few trout, so this Mike had so many fish that he stuck it in his pocket and things like that because that was the only way he could carry it. Well, I only had about three or four trout. I wasn't that good. But this Mike was very clever fishing, so by the time we got back to the, near the camp it was still dark, so we were able to sneak back in. And then after we got back to apartment and got the fish out, and boy, my mother cooked the fish and it was so good. It was quite satisfying. And to think that we were able to catch these fish without getting caught was really quite a satisfaction. And then we decided to hike about, quite a few miles from where we were, in the place that we called Alabama Hill, which was pretty far away. We got there and we start to, we fished and we got, caught our fish, but coming back we had to walk in the middle of the hot sun and that was really hard. We would walk for twenty minutes and then sleep for about half an hour, and then walk again. We did that how many times until we got, finally got back to camp. It was, by then it was getting dark. But that was quite an experience, to be able to go that far and not get caught and on top of that fish, the fish that we were trying to get. It was quite a satisfaction.

MN: How often did you do this?

AM: Oh, only about once or twice a year, to go, well once a year, one time we went to Alabama Hill because it was too far, but the other closer places, the creeks were closer to where Manzanar was, so maybe about three, four times a year.

MN: The one that, closer to Manzanar, that would be Bairs Creek?

AM: Bairs Creek or Shepherd Creek or George's Creek.

MN: You know, when you went out to Alabama Hills and you're coming back in the hot sun, didn't the fish go bad?

AM: Yeah, you know, in fact, that time I don't know if I caught any fish, because I know this Mike Nishita did catch couple of, a few fishes, but we didn't catch that much over there because it was too hard to get over there and to be able to fish, too. But it was just the satisfaction that we got that far out of the camp to fish and come back, that was more, more of the pride than catching that many fish.

MN: And what did you do, did you pack a little bento?

AM: Yeah. Gee, what did we eat anyway? [Laughs]

MN: It's okay then. Now I'm gonna ask you about the camp dances. You and your friends played the records at the camp dances.

AM: That's right.

MN: And how did this come about, and what were some of the popular music at Manzanar?

AM: Okay, the reason that we got into this is because my friend was a record collector and he was always buying mail, mailing order for record, from the record company on Broadway, and I happened to like to get these equipment to play the records on, so he and I got together and he furnished all the music and I furnished the speakers and equipment. So we became a partner and we used to get hired by groups of people in camp to play music for their dance. So he, in fact, I had this system in my house, so we used to play this record all the time in my apartment and so when the next door people moved out I moved into their space and I made a little cubbyhole to go from my apartment to the next apartment where I was living. That's where I had all my sound equipment, and so my friends used to come to my apartment to listen to the music 'cause we had so much time and nothing to do, so I used to play the, lot of records, and then this friend of mine that collected records would bring his record and play it. And so that's how I got interested in playing these, buying these equipment for playing records. Now we call that hi-fi system.

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