<Begin Segment 23>

MN: So you didn't go to assembly center.

RN: No.

MN: You went straight to camp.

RN: No assembly center.

MN: And which camp was this?

RN: Poston. Poston Number I.

MN: Camp I.

RN: Uh-huh.

MN: Were your family able to live together?

RN: Not exactly. There were, you've seen the barracks, right? They were divided into six sections. Well, we got one barrack and we, and we had five sections. One section was for a little family, but each of my married sisters had their own barrack, or one room, so there was one, two, and my mother stayed with one sister, my younger sister lived with another married sister, and my mother, she lived with one of my other sisters. My brother, my brother, and me -- we were still unmarried -- and my Seattle friends, they'd live with us. There was five of us in one barrack, all bachelors. My two brothers and my three Seattle friends. Then the other one was, it was another Japanese family. That's all.

MN: When you got to Poston, was Camp II and III already built?

RN: No. We were the ones, they were still building ours. It was built, but they had to dig the ditch for some, for some plumbing, I think. Then they start, then they were building Camp II and III later.

MN: So since there's a lot of construction there must have been a lot of lumber around. What did you do with the lumber?

RN: Well, when we got there, there was already a big, in the center of the camp -- the camp was like this [draws a circle] -- the center of the camp was empty, all empty, and right in the center of the camp there's a, this huge pile of scrap lumber. And naturally, as soon as we could everybody from everywhere went to the lumber yard to pick up scrap lumber to make makeshift furniture, 'cause there was not a stick of furniture in the place, not even chairs. You had to make your own simple chairs and beds and stuff like that. And nails, you got all over the place, scattered with all kinds of nails. And we were lucky because this family that came with us, they were from, they were from L.A., he was a mechanic and a carpenter. He had all kinds of tools with him. Everybody borrowed his tools. I borrowed his hammer, I borrowed his other stuff. Everybody was borrowing his stuff to build the furniture. And he was a nice old guy, young guy, but very friendly, you know, Japanese. He said, yeah, go ahead and take it, so we all, everybody borrowed his hammers and everything. But then, as we picked up the nails and everything, I think about a week later or so, or some period of time, they put up a big sign: "This lumber is not for sale. It belongs to," they said, what we heard was some Jewish guy, or company, bought all that lumber. That lumber belongs, is private property. But that didn't make no difference. Nighttime we'd all go there and get what we could. You had to. This is a great big pile of lumber. You should've seen that big pile, all scrap lumber. We'd go there and we'd pick up what we wanted. Jesus. [Laughs]

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.