<Begin Segment 21>

TI: When you think of your research, your knowledge of Poston, what's the Poston story? What makes the Poston story unique vis-a-vis like the Manzanar story, Tule Lake, I mean when you want to capture or when people ask you about Poston, what is it that's special?

RO: It's the relationship with the Colorado River Indian Tribes and the fact that after the war or even before everybody was off the reservation... the Japanese Americans left, John Collier had all along planned to bring more Native Americans to the reservation because the reservation was huge and there were only 1,100, 400 Chemehuevis and 800 Mohaves on that gigantic reservation. And if they were going to develop that reservation they needed more Native Americans there. So Collier all along had been planning to bring the Hopis and Navajos down from their reservation 'cause things were hard up there for them. And he had planned to recruit families from there to come down and live in Camp II. And they moved in, the Hopis and the Navajos into Camp II and lived in those barracks in Camp II. There were a few Japanese American families still there so there was some meeting them. I don't know if any real connection happened but there was some overlap. And then the Hopis and Navajos lived there in Camp II for quite a while. Until finally they started to sell each of the barracks for fifty dollar apiece and so the Native Americans there, they started buying and so you'll find barracks scattered all over the reservation to this day. People don't live in them necessarily but they're there, storage, and I've found one barrack, the librarian -- I don't know if she's still there, the librarian in Parker -- I went there to do some research and I met her and she said, "You know, I live in one of those barracks." And I said, "You'll have to show me your place." And so we drove down just a few blocks down to her place and what they had done was they took the barrack and of course reinforced it but you could see the shape of the barrack. It's in my Sharing a desert home. I asked her permission to take a photograph of it. So there's barracks all over the place and converted in different ways like the librarian's home. But a lot of them, I think time has taken its toll because they were just slapped together unless you really took the time to build on it. There's one barrack there that we've been trying raise money to haul it to our restoration... to Camp I where with the tribe's approval and their money they fenced in Camp I where the barrack, where the school, Camp I school still stands, and actually the tribes used Camp I after the war. And they had a lot of community meetings in that auditorium so they were... this one council was very generous and put aside 50,000 dollars to put a fence around it so it's fenced in now because we had some vandalism happen. Actually, when I was working on something related to Poston, somebody lit a match to the beautiful auditorium and so it's just a shell now that we're hoping that we can do something. Either, well anyway, the project with the CRIT and the Poston folks, we're trying to work together to do something to preserve that.

TI: So what do you think the future is going to be of the Poston story?

RO: Well, the dream is to have an educational information center where the tribes could tell their story and the Japanese American story could be told. So we've been thinking of building some kind of educational workshop like place where teachers can bring their students, you know, that's one of the dreams that we have. And one of the buildings that was built for Parker, I mean, for the Poston camp is this huge warehouse where they were building all of the chairs and tables that were used in the schools in Poston. That building is still standing and so that's where we would like to see it reinforced but still have that look and use that as the visitor's center and educational information place where teachers could come, workshops could be held. So there's dreams, we're hoping that it can come true someday.

TI: And besides just funding, are there other barriers to making this dream happen?

RO: It's mainly funding because the tribe has approved and that building itself, we've been in conversation with the Bureau of Indian Affairs 'cause that's their structure, to be able to use that as an information center.

TI: Okay, and so 1999, so that was over ten years ago, or twelve, almost twelve years ago.

RO: Let's see. Today is 2010 and so twenty, isn't it? Oh, yes, you're right, eleven, twelve years ago. Oh, it takes so long to get things rolling.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.