<Begin Segment 5>

TI: Good, that's... and so with that job you went down to Arizona. Do you remember what it was like when you first got to Arizona?

CH: Not really. I didn't know anybody there. I didn't know what I was going to do, so it was just completely unknown, what I was getting into.

TI: So let me ask you this question, when you first took the train to Arizona you got off at this town named Parker. Parker, Arizona. Do you remember that night, that first night that you arrived at Parker, Arizona?

CH: No.

TI: It was a nice little story where you came in at night, around eleven o'clock at night and you were the only one who got off the train and there was no one there to, to greet you, and so you went to the hotel, but the hotel wouldn't allow single women to get a room there and so you had sort of the gumption to just say, "Well, then I'll just sit in the lobby until the morning." And the clerk said, "Oh, we can't have you do that," so he made a phone call to Indian Affairs and they sent someone over to pick you up. And so it was a really nice little story. [Laughs]

CH: Sounds interesting. [Laughs]

TI: So let's, let's talk about the camp, Poston. Do you remember the camp that you worked at, Poston, the, where they had the Japanese and Japanese Americans?

CH: Well, I must have some memory of it, but from here I don't come up with anything.

TI: Okay, so let me see if I can help you with some, some names and places. When you first got there you had a roommate who was the assistant principal, and her name was Fran and she was someone that was older than you and that kind of showed you around the camp. Do you remember, do you remember Fran?

CH: Faintly. Trying to think of her last name.

TI: Well, I'm curious, just sort of some of the things, maybe, that she showed you or some of the things you did with Fran.

CH: Well, I think she was experienced as a teacher, which I wasn't. She was, she was [inaudible]. But more than that I can't come up with yet, if at all.

TI: One of the things that you wrote about was how with Fran you would walk around the camp and into some of the barracks where the Japanese were in. Do you, can you recall any of that, what the barracks looked like or walking around camp?

CH: No. If I put my mind to it for a while I might come up with some information, but offhand, no. Like I say, my memory is...

TI: No, you're, Catherine, you're doing really well. This is, every once in a while you'll remember something that's really a nice little gem, which is what I'm looking for. How about the other staff? Was there anyone on staff that you remember when you think of, at Poston?

CH: Well, if you mention a name I could probably come up with --

TI: Well I'm thinking maybe the Project Director, oh, let me think of his name...

CH: I need to reread that, [points to book]. It might remind me.

TI: [Laughs] But you mentioned, in camp, with the staff, there were some people who were, what's the right word, maybe closer to the Japanese or felt like they understood the Japanese, and then there was another group that perhaps had more stereotypical views of the Japanese? Do you remember any of that kind of tension or friction on the staff, in terms of how they thought about the Japanese?

CH: Offhand, no, but I'm sure there must've been some friction and ignorance on the part of some of the people in terms of what they were supposed to do or could do. Would take a lot of digging to come up with memories of that. I think I need to reread that and my problem is now that I can't read, visually speaking, and so like these are my, I'd be reading and show me, maybe try to ask questions as we went.

TI: Well yeah, let me see if I can find a passage about some of the people in camp and maybe that will remind you of some things. So one of the things that you did was you worked in the schools and you helped set up the school system in camps, and let me just read a little bit in terms of, about how there was really nothing there. So you taught ninth grade in camp and you write that, quote, "My kids, ninth graders, brought their own chairs to the classroom," and these chairs you had in quotations because they were just assorted boxes to sit on while they listened to, and you said "the teacher" in parentheses, because as you mentioned you weren't really trained as a teacher and yet you, you had to, you were put in a position to train them, and that you just had an empty room with no furniture, so your ninth grade students would bring boxes to sit on.

CH: News to me. [Laughs]

TI: Yeah, you had no books, no paper, and eventually things start coming in. One example you mentioned was how California scrapped their textbooks, and so you just got this big, like, load of books just in piles and then people had to sort through them to find textbooks for the students. And it was just a nice way of explaining how really there was nothing for schools and how you and the other teachers had to figure out ways to, to teach all these students who were there.

CH: Amazing.

TI: Yeah, so you have all that.

CH: You should've had this interview with me a huge number of years ago.

TI: No, that's fine. Something else happened when you were there, that your brother John came to visit you at, in Arizona, at the camp. Do you remember that at all? And let me set it up in terms of how you told it. John was working with the WRA as an analyst, a community analyst out of D.C., and so he was a pretty high level official in the camp administration, so he was gonna come visit Poston, but I don't think people realized that he was your brother.

CH: Probably not. Because there was a gap in our age. He was eleven years older than I was, for instance, so see, I was probably just a piece of furniture, of no importance, so I'm sure they weren't making the right deduction about who, who for what and so on.

TI: Yeah, so he came and I think the staff was impressed that, that this high level official was your brother.

CH: Yes, I think, sort of think they doubted it very much.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.