<Begin Segment 10>

MN: So you know, you and your friends went out into the desert. I always hear these stories about rattlesnakes and scorpions, wasn't that some of the dangers?

Mo N: That was the exciting part. We always went looking for those things. We used to like to find rattlesnakes, because one of the things that we used to do in our block anyhow, I think probably all the blocks had it, but we used to have a big pit, and you could go out there and find rattlesnakes and land tortoises and turtles. You stick 'em both in the same pit and let 'em fight with each other and stuff like that.

MN: How did you catch these rattlesnakes?

Mo N: Oh, with a forked stick. You get a stick like that and then a fork on the end, a Y. And then when you saw the snake, you mess with it until it struck and stretched out. As soon as it stretched out, you just put the stick right behind the next and pinned the head down, and you just reached down and grabbed it, grabbed the tail and the head, and you got a rattlesnake.

MN: Who taught you that in camp?

Mo N: I guess the older guys. Well, you know, they used to have rattlesnake drives where people used to, everybody in camp would go out and go catch rattlesnakes to give to the hospital. I guess they used the venom and meat, and it's supposed to be real good meat, strong meat for recovering people. So they probably taught us. Yeah, I don't know who exactly taught us.

[Interruption]

MN: Now you have these memories, this incident where three of the kids in your block died. What happened?

Mo N: Well, they were building us a high school in the camp, and they were building the basement or the foundation or something, and they had dug down, and then I guess they were kind of slow in doing that, so all the local kids from the different blocks had places where parts of the pit were in your block's area, kind of stuff. And our block area was, they had caves going into the side into the hill, or into the side of the thing. Yeah, and then one day that sucker caved in and they came running back telling us that somebody was trapped down there, people were trapped, so we all ran over there. And when we got there, they were digging like hell trying to dig these guys up. My uncle was one of the people that got dug out, but three of the other guys never made it, three of the kids. So they stopped the construction on the high school, it was a bad omen. I went looking for it, the pit, when I went back this last time with my son, took him back there, and I couldn't find that area. But yeah... paid memories anyhow, paid tribute to all those people who passed away in camp.

MN: Now you have this memory of these two dogs in camp. What happened to them?

Mo N: Yeah, there was a... there was a whole lot of dogs in camp, but on our part of the camp there were two in particular. They're German police dogs, really good-looking dogs. One was a mutt and the other one was... I can't remember what the other one was. And they were black and white, or black and gray. And mutt died and we buried him in the block between 11-K and 9-K, that 10-K was an empty block, so everything that died, we took over there and buried there. And so, yeah, and it was real interesting, when I went to Wounded Knee, we came back, 1973 we came back and we went to camp, and I walked in that area, and this rush of memories came back so much, and those two dogs memories came back real clear and real strong. 'Cause I guess we used to play with them so much. Going to the mess hall, sneak food out to feed 'em and stuff like that. So yeah, I often wonder what happened to the dog that survived.

But yeah... yeah, there's another thing that I remember that sticks out in my mind, is that in the wintertime out there, these rabbits used to get together and they'd form these fairy rings, they'd form these big circles, and they'd have one big hole, I guess a he-rabbit in the middle, and these rabbits would dance, thumping. Yeah... and I remember one time watching them, a full moon night, watching them dance out there. But in our block, we had kind of a baseball diamond towards the empty block side, and they got out there in the middle of that field where there baseball diamond, they're all dancing, and they used to do that every winter. It was real trippy to see that, they did it or anything, I don't know. I've never read anything about it. But I know they'd do it 'cause I saw 'em all night. Yeah, that was real interesting. 'Cause these Ichikawa brothers lived in 12-K, I think they were from Terminal Island. But they were some rambunctious boys. And they used to go out to capture all these old, capture all these wild-ass animals out there. One story I remember clearest is that they captured three horned owls, big old owls. And so they put 'em in a cage and they were feeding them, keeping them. Well, something happened, and one day they got back to look at the cage, and there was only one owl left and a lot of feathers all over the place. So that sucker must have ate up the other two that were there. But these Ichikawa brothers were real famous after the war in Long Beach where they were shark wrasslers. Used to wrassle sharks in the water. Isn't that crazy Japs? [Laughs] Tough guys.

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