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TI: Okay, so tell me about what thirteen year old teenagers would do with lots of time on their hands.

MT: Most, most of the kids, what they did, and which was a smart thing to do, they want to keep the kids occupied, people, so they wouldn't create a hostile environment as they become disgruntled, so they had a lot of sports programs. They had Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and Campfire Girls and whatever have you. They had all these things going on, and they had, and the older Isseis knew, Niseis knew that it was important to keep us occupied, so they volunteered for Boy Scouts and different things like that, and in the evenings they had sing-alongs and they had bands or something playing, they had performances by different talent shows, things like that, to keep us all occupied. Now they also had, made camouflage nets. What it was is a big netting, which, and they would weave in pieces of burlap in there. Now, unfortunately I was allergic to that burlap and I had very bad allergies, so I just had to avoid that place, although it was on the end of the grandstand and our school was on the end. And going to school for me was finding where the girls were and going to that class, so I took an algebra class. And the other day I was talking to a friend of mine, we were trying to compare notes how, this girl, how we ever met, and nothing clicked and she says, "Did you go to school?" Yeah. "What did you take?" Algebra. "Oh, I took algebra." Then we were in the same beginning algebra class. And I took algebra, not because I had taken algebra before and I was supposed to take it, but my sister had taken algebra and as she talked about algebra I picked up what, the principles of algebra, so it was easy so I went in, went into class. It was just to keep us occupied. It was not to learn. It was not for credit or anything else like that. And it was older kids, some kids in high school or people older that taught those classes. Mostly people that were older taught those classes.

TI: And this was mostly, boy, it was like in the summertime, so it was kind of like, not when you really had to go to school, but they just said we need to keep the youngsters occupied, so things like school activities --

MT: They didn't tell us that, but I realized that's what it was too.

TI: Now just exploring the, the confines of Santa Anita, what were some of the landmarks or interesting things that you would go explore?

MT: Well, of course the grandstand was there. That's where they had the races. And inside the grandstand they had some, they built some temporary warehousing to put some things in there, and they had, people that brought cars in, they drove their cars there, they had it in the infield. I don't exactly know what happened, but I assume that they sold those cars and they got the proceeds from those cars. They had those. But in the practice one, we called Anita Chiquita -- chiquita means small -- there was a practice, that's where the Boy Scouts used to have their outings, and all the sports, the baseball diamonds were there and kids that played football and different things that, sports that they did, they had it right there. And baseball was very big, and some basketball, but baseball was very big. Had a lot of teams in there, and some from communities and some from teams. The young kids formed teams. We, they had a stream. That was uphill from the parking lot, so they had a drainage stream that had water slowly trickling down into the, through Anita Chiquita and into the camp itself, which, the barracks were built on the parking lot of Santa Anita. Today Santa Anita's much smaller than it was then, but it had a huge parking lot. They built, well, it's smaller now because they have shopping centers built on the lot. And as population, or people attended, horseracing got smaller, they sold off pieces of it and they built, or developed pieces of it for shopping centers. And through, and through that area and down into outside of Santa Anita the stream, ditch with the water, would go down there, and that was an interesting part, interesting story about that too. Anyway, we used to do that, and I remember Girl Scouts had an outing in the evening and they were telling ghost stories, and I couldn't see so I climbed up a tree. I was watching. And they become scarier and scarier 'cause the guy was very good, and so I shifted my weight and the branch broke. I slid down and I said, ooh, and I pulled myself back up. And it was dead silence for, I would say fifteen seconds or twenty seconds or maybe more, suddenly the girls started screaming and running. [Laughs] It's a funny thing that happened. And I was stuck, I find myself stuck between a branch. I couldn't, every time I move I make a little noise, everybody look at me, so I can't move. [Laughs] That was a thing, that was in Anita Chiquita, right outside of grandstands.

TI: That's a good story. So it was almost like it was part of the overall story. You're probably the ambience for you to have done that. [Laughs] That's good.

MT: But anyway, these are the kind of things that, activities they had. They had these talent, talented people -- they were quite talented -- play, whether it was classical music or it was modern music. "Don't Fence Me In," they would sing that song and things like that. It's most appropriate for us, of course. And it was big band days, so they would play band and some of the people danced, would have dances and things for the older kids and stuff. But I didn't dance, so I didn't participate.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.