<Begin Segment 13>

AI: What, when you first were stuck in there, those first few days, what was going through you mind?

LK: Well, I don't know. We're just trying to do what we're supposed to and trying to conform with what the rulings they had given us and we, for our meals we had -- they had told us to bring tin cups and tin dishes so we'd all stand in line with our utensils and, at mealtime.

AI: What kind of meals did you get?

LK: Oh, for a while it was pretty bad. I remember once they gave us Vienna sausage, the kind in the can. And they gave it to us for several days in a row. So people got diarrhea. And I remember one night everybody was rushing to the bathroom and, you know, sometimes you had to go two or three blocks to get to the bathroom. And I remember the guards on top of the grandstand turned the floodlights on and their guns down at us and here it was, it wasn't a stampede, but it was just everybody had a problem.

AI: Oh.

LK: And most of us purchased chamber pots, what they called chamber pots, so we could keep it, so we wouldn't have to go out at night. And you know, it was our duty to clean out the chamber pots in the morning, you know. [Laughs] But when there was a run of diarrhea, you know, people had to go to the bathroom. So I remember that night, how terrible it was that day. They were pointing their guns down at us and here it was for our health reasons, you know.

AI: Right.

LK: It was no way were we trying to stampede, or rebel, you know.

AI: How awful.

LK: Yeah, it was.

AI: And strange.

LK: But we were the enemy, I guess. They thought that we were the enemy. Worried about our behavior.

AI: Right.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.