<Begin Segment 12>

TI: But then after school what did you do?

RY: Well, we usually stayed in somebody's house and we'd listen to records and they taught me how to play pinochle and bridge and hearts and all that and we played a lot of cards. Some of the blocks had basketball courts and most of them had volleyball courts. And so all the people who were living in the block would come out and play volleyball and just stuff like that, but it got pretty boring. One of my recollections is one day we got bored and a couple of us guys decided that we were going to go hiking up to the Sierras which was against the law, right? So we found this one corner of the camp had a park and had a creek running through it and it eroded under the barbed wire. So about three or four of us went under the barbed wire and we spent the day hiking up to the Sierras.

TI: Now did you bring food or anything?

RY: No.

TI: Or like extra clothing or anything like that?

RY: No, just went out there hiking and we didn't even consider the possibility of getting shot if we got caught outside the barbed wire.

TI: And when you're out there, do you remember the feeling it was to be out there outside the barbed wire?

RY: It felt good, felt good and we wanted to go hike up to the snow line, which we did.

TI: And this was like the summertime.

RY: Summertime.

TI: So that's pretty high up, you'd have to hike pretty far.

RY: Yeah, it was pretty warm, too. Manzanar was hot and cold because it's on the edge of the Mohave Desert and then you had the Sierra Nevadas, and so in the wintertime we got snow and then in the summertime we got the heat from the desert.

TI: After you hike all day and you have to go back into camp, how did you get back into camp?

RY: Same way we came, under the barbed wire.

TI: And when you got back did people know that you guys were gone?

RY: No, nobody misses us in the camp, you know.

TI: And so you were talking after school you would sometimes go to someplace and listen to music or play cards or play basketball or volleyball, then I'm guessing you probably then at some point at dinner time would go back to a mess hall and have dinner.

RY: Yeah, they had the big ring that they clanged that each mess hall would... you'd hear the clang and you'd say it's time for dinner, that's our mess hall. But being kids, we would check out other mess halls which we weren't supposed to do to see if they had anything better. [Laughs]

TI: And were there better mess halls?

RY: Well, sometimes, yeah, they had better food but you had to sneak in to get it.

TI: And then after dinner what kind of things would you do? What would the next thing be?

RY: Well, they used to have movies. Of course, these movies were all Maryknoll approved and so they were all like Deanna Durbin and Bing Crosby movies and things like that. And they would send them to all the mess halls at night and so I think I saw Holiday Inn about fifteen times.

TI: So you've mentioned the Maryknoll several times or a couple times at least now, one in terms of teaching and then Maryknoll approved for the movies. Were they pretty prominent in camp, the Maryknoll?

RY: Yeah, they were because like I said, the movies, like we saw a lot of Deanna Durbin movies, you know, nothing exciting. And I know they were trying to help us 'cause nobody else would help us in the camp. But not being Catholic...

TI: And how about jobs? Did you ever have a job when you were in camp?

RY: Yeah, I wanted to get a job, I tried all kinds of jobs, but I was too young. And one summer I got a job at the hospital as a bus boy, I was a minor but they let me work. And I was a bus boy in the hospital and I would shuffle food from the mess hall into the wards. And yeah, that's the only job I ever had.

TI: And was that a volunteer or a paying job?

RY: Oh, sixteen dollars a month.

TI: Okay, so that was a nice paying job especially even though you're so young.

RY: Being a young kid.

TI: Because you're being paid as much as all the adults then.

RY: Yeah, if you worked you got sixteen dollars a month. If you were a professional you got eighteen dollars a month.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.