<Begin Segment 16>

SY: And you had regular classrooms? Like a regular school?

CI: Yes, uh-huh.

SY: So was it like a barrack that they converted to a schoolroom?

CI: Oh, yeah, it was a barrack.

SY: And this was your high school?

CI: I was still in junior high.

SY: Oh, you still were in junior high?

CI: When I got there it was A-9. And then, yeah, it was one semester there, and then to high school, which was on another campus.

SY: And you had to walk to that other campus. Was it far away, the high school?

CI: Well, there's nothing far in camp. [Laughs]

SY: All the kids went to one high school?

CI: Oh, yeah. There was only one high school, one junior high, and one elementary school.

SY: So it was... it served a fairly big area, though? So there were some people who didn't have as far to walk to high school?

CI: I never thought about that. I think there were about thirty-some-odd blocks, and we lived in Block 11. And the blocks were allocated according to where you came from. Like we knew that eleven is L.A. people, and twelve... no, ten was Stockton or Lodi. Because they sent people from Lodi and Stockton to Rohwer, and then rest of us were from L.A. or L.A. area. So you can imagine what kinds of fights there were among the boys especially. Lots of fights.

SY: Really, you remember that? The young kids?

CI: I don't remember that so much, but you heard about that.

SY: You heard about them. And it was kind of territorial?

CI: Yeah, especially older (boys). See, in L.A. they used to call them L.A. Yogores.

SY: Oh, so the L.A. people were the, kind of the troublemakers?

CI: Well, I guess. And then the Stockton people were the quieter, they're from the country, right? Stockton and Lodi, and so they really, it was kind of hard to get along at first. And pretty soon you're all there together. It's kind of like the 442. You heard about the story of the 442? How the people from Hawaii and the people from the mainland used to just knock heads together? They just couldn't get along. And then the colonel one day thought, "I've got to stop this." Because he needed a unit that was cohesive. And so he sent these Hawaiian boys to camp, Rohwer. Because from Camp Shelby it was the closest one. And the guys were on these trucks singing and having a good time and going to Rohwer, and when they got there, they saw the barbed wires, the guards, and then found out that the people in camp had anticipated the soldiers coming and so they saved their rations so they could have a real nice meal. And so they said on the way back, nobody said a word because they found out where these boys on the mainland had come from, the parents had been in camp and they had volunteered.

SY: Interesting.

CI: So when they went back, he said, "It was a fighting unit."

SY: Now was that Colonel Kim?

CI: No, no. It might have been Colonel Keegan, but wasn't even Keegan. It might have been Colonel Pence. But anyway, he was very wise.

SY: And that's a story you've heard from some of the guys?

CI: Oh, no, they talk about that. Daniel Inouye always repeats that. He was one of the soldiers that went to camp. He said, "Boy, we were singing and having a great time, but on the way back," he said, "nobody said a word." He said, "When we got back, we were a fighting unit." So it was kind of like that, I think, with Stockton and L.A. boys. They were territorial, and, "He's dating a Stockton girl." Anyway...

SY: So when you were in high school then, you started dating some of these guys?

CI: Oh, no, I didn't date. I was only sixteen.

SY: But by the time you got to high school?

CI: No, I didn't date.

SY: At all?

CI: No.

SY: Not at all during camp days?

CI: No, did not date.

SY: And that was because you were too young or your parents say anything?

CI: No, I just was too young.

SY: But you knew some of these older guys, the ones that were getting into...

CI: No. Well, we had boys in our block, but it was just not done.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.