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TI: Going back to the Arkansas camps, what were the living arrangements? Did, was it, did you live with anyone else, or was it just your mother and the three girls?

JH: Yeah, it was my mother and the three girls. Yes, us three girls. The barracks were all uniform. If you had a family of four you probably had the one on one end, and then the one in the middle was two compartments, or a larger apartment for those with big families. Then the two on the end were supposed to be for bachelors, maybe two to an apartment. So I remember Mother making furniture out of, I don't know where she got the wood, and let's say that's my mother for you. She, I'm sure she had no skills at all on using a saw and hammer and I don't know where she got that, but she made tables, chairs, 'cause there were no, there was no furniture there.

TI: So she would just figure it out on her own, get some nails and a saw.

JH: She'd figure it out on her own, yes. Right. She did. She was quite resourceful.

TI: She sounds like a remarkable woman.

JH: She was.

TI: Any recollections of school?

JH: Well, we have pictures at home. We have pictures of classrooms, but nothing really memorable. I don't really remember any of my friends from school.

TI: Now, did you mother's brother and others in the family, did they also, were they also in the same camp?

JH: Yeah. She had one sister there whose husband was in Italy in the 442nd, and then that single brother that taught me to play cards. I don't know why he wasn't in the army. There must've been some reason why he wasn't drafted, and because the other brother was drafted. And so that single brother lived with my grandparents, and they were like in the next block over. And when my mother came to Chicago to go to school, I went to live with this, with my aunt whose husband was in Italy fighting. And my sisters went and stayed with my grandparents. And my aunt told me, I think it was, it was way after the war, she said, "You know, you used to sleepwalk." I says, "Really?" I said, "Wow, I didn't know that." I says, "Where did I go?" She says, "I don't know." I says, "Well, what do you mean you don't know?" She says, "Well, you would take the bucket of dishes or the bucket of diapers" -- she had an infant -- "and you'd go out, but you would only be gone like five minutes." And it would be like midnight or middle of the night. I says, I'm thinking to myself, my god, this woman, she used to let me walk around in my pajamas with this bucket of whatever and be gone and then not follow me? Well, I guess she didn't want to leave the baby. Anyway, she said, "Yeah, you did that a couple of times, but I never woke you up." I said, "Well, they say you're not supposed to, right?" So I don't know if I was very disturbed or what.

TI: And maybe that's a good lead in, so with your mother gone and you were probably around ten or so, how'd you feel about your mother leaving?

JH: Well, it was okay. My aunt, I think being a young mother and her husband she never knew from day to day what was happening, she used to do, I used to remember she used to do a lot of screaming. So maybe I was disturbed. I don't know.

TI: You mean screaming at you in terms of...

JH: Yeah, or, I don't remember how she directed, but I just remember she did a lot of screaming. So I would go over to see my uncle and grandparents a lot of the time, but she hadn't, I did the dishes and I did the diapers, and so I was only ten, but what the heck. I could do it.

TI: And so your mother, do you know why she chose Chicago to go to school?

JH: I don't know why. A lot of people came out to Chicago, and probably because other people said, oh yeah, you should go, and so she went to what they called comptometer school. It was like a calculator, like an adding machine calculator, one of those big machines. That's how they used to, bookkeepers used to use that to do calculations, and so you went to school.

TI: Was it similar to like a ten key type of thing? I'm trying to think.

JH: Yeah. Maybe a little more complicated than that. So that's what she did and that's how she made her living. She was good at it when she came out to Chicago.

TI: And so how long was it before you and your sisters joined your mother?

JH: Well, she came back for us, because then we were in Rohwer. And she was, I recall her being there in Rohwer, so I'm not sure if, at what time she came back, but we left in '45. We came here in August of '45, and I think I had my birthday here. I was eleven.

TI: Okay. Going back to your mother, did she ever, like, date when she was young?

JH: I know she had a friend, but he came from California to see her in Chicago, and I think that was maybe once or twice. And so other than that, no, she didn't date. I don't know, when I was seventeen she got remarried, and I don't recall, remember her even dating, but she must have. [Laughs]

TI: For her to get married.

JH: I was oblivious.

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