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SY: So back to what you were doing in Santa Anita before all this started -- how long were you there in Santa Anita?

HS: From April to October. April 29th, I think, we went into Santa Anita, and we left on about October 27th, something like that.

SY: So you were one of the last families to leave.

HS: Yeah, we were the tail end of the people leaving.

SY: And you don't know why you were so late in leaving?

HS: No, the, they just chose by districts, and so most of our block was all from the Uptown area and so most of 'em got sent to Jerome. And then five hundred in this Uptown area were sent to Santa Anita, so most of the Uptown bunch was Father, Father John came with our group, but I remember a lot of my friends were in Jerome. And I don't know if you know Frank Omatsu. He's with the, pretty active downtown, and he was wonderful. I knew him from junior high school through high school.

SY: So when you, again, getting back to what you did for those six months, did you work at all?

HS: We worked, first they put us on a trash crew. All we'd do is get on a big truck and put dirt in one corner of the barracks and then pick some up and go around, pack it down. And then this friend of mine, Jimmy Kawasaki, we were working together and so then he says, "We don't want to keep doing this." So he found a job in the Orange Mess hall, and so we start making salads, and the two of us were choppin' lettuce and the two of us would race each other, got to learn how to handle a knife. And the Isseis would be watchin' us because we're having fun and chopping, so we did all the chopping, the two of us, for salads, and we'd put the big salad things together. We worked, I think that's, after the trash crew I stayed on the Orange Mess until we left for camp.

SY: And did you get paid for that?

HS: Well, you got, I think... this thing was eight, twelve and sixteen, I think, was the scale. And so I think we only got eight dollars. We were peons. [Laughs] The chef probably got about twelve or sixteen.

SY: And your parents, did they, did your father work while he was in Santa Anita?

HS: I don't remember him working in Santa Anita. I don't think he did. There weren't that many jobs for the Isseis. One, there's a block manager, and he was a, his son was a friend of mine in school. But I don't remember him doing anything in Santa Anita. Most of the Isseis, unless they worked in the kitchen as kitchen helpers or stuff like that, but there was no call for a florist, so... [laughs].

SY: Do you remember him, how he was feeling, being treated like this? Was he, did he show --

HS: He never complained or anything. He just took, took it day by day, went to the mess hall. Never, just... course, there was the neighbors. There was three families that were real close from before the war. The Yamaguchi family was the ones that we moved in with, but they lived, our three families, the Nishikawa family, were neighbors all through camp, all through Santa Anita and all through Gila, because they held hands when they signed up at St. Mary's and then registered one after the other. And so I remember it was (9360-9361-9362) was our family number.

SY: So there was, so you all stayed in...

HS: So we were all neighbors.

SY: And close, the parents were close.

HS: All through, all through Santa Anita and all through Gila, our three families were right next to each other. They lived on the front of one barrack, Yamaguchis lived in front of this barrack, and Shishinos were right next to that, so catty corners. So our three families, all through camp, were together.

SY: Wow. And so when you, so the six months, did it go pretty fast, or was it a, did it seem like a long time before you were asked to leave?

HS: Yeah, days go by fast. I mean, you just, you're socializing mostly. You never felt the impact of things, so I know three of us would have breakfast, lunch and dinner together. And sometimes you'd go to, like we lived in Block 33 and in Block 32 were some of my friends, so sometimes I'd eat in Block 32, Block 33.

SY: But mainly it was just talking to other kids and playing sports.

HS: Yeah. We never ate with our parents. We always ate with our friends. And so the ones that we used to hang around with, we had our own block baseball team. I didn't play, I never played hardball and in junior high school we had softball teams, so that's all I knew, but they had formed a block hardball team. I think I played one game, hardball. [Laughs]

SY: It was different, huh? So when you ended up leaving, you had no idea how long the trip was gonna be, where you were going?

HS: No. Well, what happened was we worked five months in camouflage, making camouflage nets. It was a government project, army project --

SY: This was at Santa Anita?

HS: Yeah, at Santa Anita, and it was a one year contract, but it was piecework. And so it was forty-five foot square nets, and so you had a forty-five foot thing and it'd come down and then you start weaving burlap, these little three inch wide, thirty-six inches long, and you wove that in the nets. And we all did piecework, so we finished the contract in five months. Then so, what, from January to May it was, and so when everybody else was getting' twelve dollars a month we did piecework, and I think I got, ninety dollars I made in five months, so I got four hundred and fifty bucks in the bank. And so when camouflage closed in June, why, six of the kids in our block were saying, "We're not gonna rot in camp," so we, they gave you, if you took a job... people in the office there, they had job openings. People were looking for laborers during wartime. So anyway, June 7th, why, some of the guys said, "We're gonna leave camp." So he says, "Why don't you just come along, take a look?" So I just went and signed up, and I didn't know what it was. I just says, "Okay, I'm leaving camp." And six of us, well, it was a summer resort job in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, and it was a summer resort job and so I actually, the summer resort, they had hired fifteen from camp and six of the boys were from our block. And so I signed up to work in the kitchen. Never had any experience except mess hall, but so one of the guys that happened on the truck that was leaving was a boy from Santa Maria. Turned out that my father knew his family and he used to go up to Santa Maria to take flowers every time some people from Kagoshima would pass away or get married. But anyway, so he saw Tok and he told, introduced and says, "I want you to take care of each other." And so Tok and I took the job on this summer resort. We worked together.

SY: So backing up a little, the job that you got with camouflage nets, was that at Gila, or was that at, at...

HS: That was in Santa Anita.

SY: That was in Santa Anita. So then in, from Santa Anita you went to Gila, and then from Gila you got the job in Minnesota.

HS: It was northern Minnesota. It was a summer resort job for two months.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.