<Begin Segment 19>

MN: Was the camp already occupied by people when you arrived at Jerome?

BT: Yes. Half the camp was from Santa Anita, so they were there before we were. In fact, the blocks that we were assigned to were not turned over, back to the army. The contract was 'til the end of the day that we were there, so we couldn't go into our unit until five o'clock that evening.

MN: So what did you do?

BT: Well, we stood around, and there was a couple of Caucasian carpenters that was cleaning up, picking up the scrap and this and that. We got to talking to them, and that's the first time I heard so much hatred of another, to another person. These two carpenters, I mean, I don't know what brought the subject up, but they really talked about the black people. Said, they said they would just as soon shoot them as they would a mad dog, stuff like that. It was kind of hard, hard to comprehend what the, what goes through a mind, that kind of... you know, like they said when you're walking down the street and the black person's coming toward you, he had to step off the sidewalk, stuff like that. It's, you might hear about it, but when you really see what's going on, it's, it's something that you really can't imagine.

MN: How long do you think you were waiting out there?

BT: I think about half a day.

MN: So when you finally were able to get into this new barrack, was it complete?

BT: No. See, we had one of the better barracks in the camp 'cause we had drywall, what you call drywall. That's put up inside the unit. But it wasn't installed yet, so we had to wait 'til the camp carpenters came round and put the, put these up.

MN: So when you finally got in there, do you remember what your address was here?

BT: Yeah, Jerome was 41-7-C. And my sister was next door, so she was 41-7-D.

MN: So you're in Block 41, you had friends in Block 42. Who got into the last row of Block 43?

BT: What was that?

MN: What sort of people started to go into Block 43?

BT: Forty-three? Well, let's see, not Block 43... you're talking about the Hawaiians? Yeah, I think it was around November, November or December of '42 that the Hawaiians start to come in. And they were dressed like the Hawaiians dressed, the T-shirts and zoris, you know. They didn't have any warm clothes. So the people in the camp, they donated some clothes that they could afford, because there's no way you can spend the winter with shorts on. [Laughs]

MN: What did you think about the pidgin that these Hawaiians spoke?

BT: Yeah, it was kind of, in a way, I was a little bit used to it 'cause my brother in law was from Hawaii. But he, he spoke English with an accent, but he didn't talk that pidgin language. Yeah, but that was, pretty soon half the, seemed like half the people in camp was starting to talk like Hawaiians. You know how young kids, they copy.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.