<Begin Segment 9>

MN: Now, one winter your family got a Christmas tree. How did you get this Christmas tree?

JD: Well, that one particular year my girlfriend and I, well there were four of us in our block that went to Desert View, two guys and two gals, and for whatever reason the school system board had, they said my girlfriend and I had to transfer to the Mountain View school, grammar school. I don't know why. But the two boys stayed behind, and my mother went to the powers to be -- my mother was very good at this, she would always go and ask why -- and she says, "How come the two boys aren't being sent instead of the two girls?" Because our camp, our block was kind of far from the mess hall, and so when the school board would not relent my mom says okay, she'll go to Block 8, which is where Mountain View School was, and she knew the head of the kitchen staff 'cause they were neighbors of ours in San Francisco before the war, and so she went and asked her what was happening and would it be okay for my girlfriend and me to eat in their mess hall so that we wouldn't have to come all the way back to our block and then hurry and eat and then rush back to school. And so she says, "Of course your daughter and her friend can do that," so we were there for, I don't know, maybe one school, maybe a half a year or something, and then we, then we got transferred back to Mountain, to Desert View, and we stayed there for the rest of the time. But anyway, while we were in this Mountain View, Christmas, we spent Christmas there and so they, somewhere they got, our class got a Christmas tree. And of course school was being let out for the holidays and they couldn't leave the Christmas tree there, so we did it by a lottery system where you picked the shortest straw or the longest straw, I forget what, but I picked the right straw, so I got the tree and I dragged it all the way home because I couldn't carry it, so I dragged it all the way home and we got it, I got it home and we, my mom and dad stood it up. Well, it leaned to one side because I had been dragging it for so long it wouldn't stand up straight, so it was kind of lopsided, but it was still a tree. [Laughs] It was still a good tree.

MN: How did you decorate it?

JD: God, I don't remember. I don't remember how we did it. I guess we had something, but I just don't remember.

MN: Now, I want to ask you about this Halloween party your block had one year. Share with us that story.

JD: Our block one Halloween decided that they would have a little Halloween party for us kids, and then the teenagers would help out by telling us stories and, Halloween stories and whatnot. We also saw a movie. The movie was King Kong. I was never so scared after that movie. It was like watching Fantasia all over again, but in a different perspective, and I was so scared of that when we finished to go home, it was really windy outside, but I ran to my unit and I got my pajamas on and everything, and I slid under the bed and I stayed under the cover. I was so frightened. And so I remember that movie King Kong -- I don't watch it too much nowadays, although I'm okay with it, but I don't watch it -- and yeah, but we had that Halloween party and that's what we were shown. And the older teenagers, or the teenagers, read us Halloween stories which were kind of spooky, so that coupled with the movie didn't help the situation at all. [Laughs] So anyway...

MN: So that night, did you go to the bathroom?

JD: No. I was too scared. I was too scared to go, so I just stayed. I just held it until I went the next morning.

MN: Share with us why it's an issue to go to the bathroom.

JD: I was too scared. I didn't want to, because it was already late at night and the wind was howling, and for us to go to the bathroom you had to go to another building. You didn't, each of us did not have individual toilets. You had a common toilet area, so you had to go out of your unit, walk a few, it was more than just a few steps, it was like walking a half a block or three quarters of a block from where we were to the, to the toilet, so I was not about to go out in that spooky weather.

MN: Now, your school had a May Day celebration. What was that all about?

JD: I don't know how that came about except that we did have it every year, at least a couple of years that I remember. And we would decorate the pole with crepe paper, and then we would choose a May Day Queen, and then we would go around the pole with this, because they had, we all, there were these streams of crepe paper, and so each of us would grab one of them and we'd go around the pole in a circle until we covered the, covered the maypole. So that, I guess that was just like an activity for us.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.