<Begin Segment 13>

SY: So Santa Anita I know was quite large.

CI: Oh, very large.

SY: So you, did you meet young other kids there?

CI: Not too much. But I had to go to school in Santa Anita.

SY: Once you got there. So a few months after you got there?

CI: Yeah, we went to the... what do you call it? You know, where you sit.

SY: In the facilities there?

CI: Yeah.

SY: Oh, you mean at the stadium, the seats in the horse...

CI: Yes. So you reported there and then you looked to see what classes they were offering. And the two classes that kind of interested me was -- and I don't know why -- was algebra and accounting. And here I am in the ninth grade, taking algebra and accounting. And then so... this is the grandstand, that's what it was. And so they said, "Report to this section," and we sat there. And a couple of seats away was another class going on over there. And our teachers were college students.

SY: College students who were also incarcerated.

CI: Incarcerated, yeah, Niseis.

SY: So what was the education like? Did you feel like you learned a lot?

CI: Well, you can imagine, you're sitting in the grandstand and down below are people making camouflage nets, 'cause that's something else that you could do for sixteen dollars a month. And they were all young guys, they were wearing masks and they were making camouflage nets. And then you looked farther down and people are walking around the racetrack. So how much can you pay attention to? So I do know a few things, I just couldn't, the concept of negative numbers is very difficult for me. That's algebra. And after we moved here, I don't know if you know Min Tonai, he said, "Christie, don't you remember? I was in your algebra class." So we talked about that.

SY: So how big were these classes?

CI: Well, it depended. Maybe ten, five, didn't matter. But anybody that was younger than... I think fifteen or sixteen, had to go to class.

SY: So it was required, you had to go.

CI: Yes. But I don't know if they took roll, it was very difficult for these teachers, I know.

SY: So if you were there for six months and you were in classes for a good portion of that, four months? Three or four months?

CI: Yeah. It didn't meet every day.

SY: Oh, it didn't?

CI: No, because you only have so many teachers, and they have to teach other things, I think.

SY: So you would go to school, and then on the off days, what would you do?

CI: Walk around the track. Lot of time to go walk around the track. What else did we do? Well, I was on the volleyball team, I do remember that.

SY: All kids, or kids and adults?

CI: No, no, it was just kids. We were the Keiki Wahinis, that means "little women." I have no idea who he was... I have a friend that still is alive that was on that team, volleyball team.

SY: So you had some other activities then.

CI: Yeah.

SY: Everybody sort of did it on their own?

CI: And a lot of it was young people who were just walking around. What else can we do? Walk around and see if you can... I know the boys used to try to sneak into other mess halls and eat whatever they could.

SY: And do you remember what your mother was doing during this time?

CI: No, I don't. Busy... well, you know, the place was difficult to keep clean. I think that every once in a while they'd say, "Today is," some kind of a day, and then they'd have to put lines out and put all the blankets, hang them, I think for sanitary reasons. They were trying to make sure that people didn't have bedbugs. I don't think that they realized how clean the Japanese people are. But I do remember that, that we had to string lines and hang those sheets or blankets. Of course, we had to do laundry. The laundry was very difficult for the women because you had to haul... that's why they had so many wagons, because you had to haul the clothes and linen and everything to the wash house, which wasn't necessarily close by. And then after that you had to hang it up somewhere. For the women it was very difficult, I think. And, you know, of course they had to keep washing, they had to wash the sheets once a week. Compulsive Japanese. [Laughs]

SY: So do you remember how you felt when you got to this place and thought, "This is where I'm going to be living"?

CI: Santa Anita, I think a lot of people my age thought Santa Anita was fun because we had college students, and in the evening they used to have songfests. I don't know if you've ever been to a songfest, but I learned all of the college rah-rah songs. You know, "On Wisconsin," we knew all of them because they had little sheets. And the college kids, they were really fantastic. They kept the morale up. And then we had girls that sang, you know the Songbird of Manzanar? That's how she probably started was singing in Manzanar. So we had ours in Santa Anita also. And then I think they had dances, but we were too young to go to dances.

SY: So there was plenty to do then in some ways. It was boring in other ways.

CI: And they had some sports, like the volleyball team. I believe that they also taught piano, because my girlfriend, her piano teacher was teaching there. I didn't take piano lessons.

SY: Do you remember having to study for your algebra, accounting class?

CI: Well, we didn't have books.

SY: So you didn't have to study too hard, you just went...

CI: No. But I do remember some things like negative numbers. And I do remember some of the principles of accounting, debit and credit.

SY: Did you have tests?

CI: I have no idea whether we did or not.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.