<Begin Segment 10>

SY: And once you got in Poston, then do you remember the first things you did?

PM: I just remember filling the pillowcases with...

SY: Sawdust.

PM: Sawdust, and sleeping there. And of course the bathrooms, there were no partitions. It was in a building on the walkway, and then they have a cafeteria where we all went to eat.

SY: And how was, like, Baachan handling it?

PM: She took it in stride. Now, to wash our clothes there was another place, another building where they had water and soap, and we all went to wash our clothes there because we just lived in one room. But as the days passed, then people became more ingenious and thought of ways to, even Baachan started growing some vegetables in the canals and maybe feeding us once in a while some of the vegetables. But otherwise we ate in the mess hall. Lamb, which we learned to eat, and it wasn't very tasty, but we had to eat it.

SY: Your favorite foods, right? [Laughs] Yeah, it was a totally different diet, right, than we were used to?

PM: Yes.

SY: Or you were used to. So you, do you remember not liking it, how, what you felt about the whole thing?

PM: No. Being young and enjoying food, and really we, I kind of enjoyed, but Mom had two children in camp, so we had to help her. When the first one was born Baachan and I went to the hospital to watch over Mom while she was delivering the baby. And up to this time we had five girls, and so, and Dad was playing mahjong with his friends in a barrack. [Laughs]

SY: You remember that?

PM: Yes.

SY: At the time that the kids were born --

PM: Yes, the first one, and it was a boy, but we decided to go back and tell Daddy that, "Oh, it's just another girl," so he says okay and he kept on playing mahjong. We decided after a few hours we would tell him, and he jumped up, he was so happy 'cause this was the first boy after five girls. So he named him Victor because Victor with a Y for Yamato means "victory." [Laughs] And the Japanese name is Katsuji, which means to win, so he was very happy.

SY: He was very happy. And you remember him saying that, exactly why he named Victor that?

PM: And then after that we had another sister. Phyllis was born. So I was pretty busy washing diapers in the washroom, and I always asked the mess hall to save the grapefruit skins for us so that we could use it as kind of a Clorox, purifier to make it more clean, more white. And they had scrub boards there, so we did that.

SY: Wow.

PM: Then I could go out and play after that was over.

SY: Oh my gosh. And then, and Mom at the time was nursing them then?

PM: Yes, yes. She always nursed them.

SY: And were you the one who had to take most of the responsibility as the oldest daughter?

PM: Probably, yeah. And then Dad was working during the day. I think he was earning twelve dollars a month, because the highest paid was about eighteen dollars, the doctors and all of that.

SY: I think it was sixteen. That's what I've read.

PM: It was sixteen.

SY: I'm not sure.

PM: Yeah, it might've been.

SY: And he was working doing what?

PM: Probably some office work somewhere.

SY: So he kept busy. He, did he complain about camp?

PM: No.

SY: Never complained, huh?

PM: No, that I, not that I -- we were so busy. We were going to school, we were going to church, I was playing the piano at the church and also helping in the office for Reverend Kota, the minister there, so we all kept busy doing one thing or another.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.