<Begin Segment 6>

MN: So let's talk about your mother a little bit. What did your mother do in camp?

TN: Raise seven kids. It's a full-time job.

MN: You mentioned that your parents had three girls at Rohwer.

TN: Born in Rohwer.

MN: Born in Rohwer. What years were they born?

TN: 1943, '44, and '45. Boom, boom, boom, one right after another.

MN: So with so many babies, was your mother always running to the latrine?

TN: I don't remember.

MN: The little babies didn't have to go into the bathroom...

TN: They wore diapers until they were two or so. Besides, my father had set up a big bucket to use as a chamba, indoor toilet thing for the little ones. I guess it smelled bad, but I don't know. Beats going all the way to the toilet, wherever that was.

MN: And that was, like, set in a corner of the room, barrack?

TN: Yeah, far away from where we ate.

MN: You ate in our barrack also?

TN: No, but if we had snacks or something.

MN: Did your parents have their own garden near the barracks?

TN: Well, my father grew some vegetables in the back of the barracks, tomatoes and something, I don't know what else. I liked the tomatoes. Still like tomatoes.

MN: So your parents have three girls to look after...

TN: And four boys.

MN: Four boys. Did you boys get into trouble? Did you play with matches?

TN: My brothers, two of my brother started a fire in the awning of the barracks. Good thing my father saw it and put it out, or we could have been burned out of our home. I don't know how old they were, little.

MN: Did your brother get in trouble for that?

TN: I guess so. Parents can't be too happy about that.

MN: But it doesn't sound like there was a lot of damage from the fire.

TN: I guess not.

MN: So you're getting to be grammar school age. Where was the Rohwer grammar school located?

TN: Way at the other end of the camp from where we were. We had to walk a long ways. And when I was in kindergarten, in the winter my mother went to pick me up from school, and on the way home, it was raining a lot and the winds were blowing pretty hard, it blew my mother's umbrella inside out. And I think by the time we got home or by the next morning, it was snowing. First time I had ever seen snow. And I guess we made snowmen or something.

MN: And so when it also got really rainy, too, I hear that it was very muddy?

TN: Oh, yeah. It was almost like quicksand, only not very deep. And one of my brothers, he was trying to walk in that mud, and he got stuck and he couldn't get out. He would go about that deep, and he just couldn't get out. So my father had to come and pick him out, like a miniature quicksand.

MN: Did you folks also wear geta?

TN: Yeah. I don't know who made 'em. Some neighbors or somebody made geta for us so we could walk above the water, I guess.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.