<Begin Segment 21>

MN: Now, you were also hospitalized at Jerome. What happened?

BT: Yeah. [Laughs] I don't know, I must've overdid it or something, because, like before the war, I wasn't too much into sports. I was just making model airplanes and whatever. And then when you went in camp, I mean, you're constantly playing this and that, so I must've overworked myself. One night I woke up and I couldn't breathe, so I woke my mother up and next thing I knew, I was gettin' into the hospital bed. But when I finally woke up, my sister said I was out for about two days. Yeah. I don't know if they sedated me or what, but anyway, and then the doctor said that I had an enlarged heart. That's what it was.

MN: So how long were you in the hospital?

BT: I think it was about a week. Ten days at the most.

MN: Did your family come to visit you?

BT: Yes.

MN: How far was the hospital from your barrack?

BT: It was sort of, let's see, I don't think it was a mile, but it was kind of on the, opposite of our, where we, where we were staying, Block 41. Yeah, I think maybe half a mile.

MN: So I imagine that when you first woke up that night, you didn't walk over to the hospital. Do you know how you got to the hospital?

BT: I don't remember. My sister doesn't remember, so the only thing I could figure out is that my brother-in-law was able to get an ambulance and they came and picked me up. 'Cause it's, there's no other way I could've gotten to the hospital.

MN: Now, the nurses and the doctors, were they Japanese Americans or were they Caucasians?

BT: No, they were Japanese American. See, in all the departments in the camp, the head person was Caucasian and the rest of it was one of the inmates. So the head doctor, head nurse was a Caucasian, but under them were Japanese American doctors.

MN: Do you remember your doctor's name?

BT: No.

MN: So the doctor tells you you have an enlarged heart. When you got out of the hospital, how did you feel?

BT: I felt okay, but I was restricted. I couldn't participate in sports anymore and I couldn't do any heavy lifting. So I got a job in the garage as a parts, parts department.

MN: Now, when you talk about this job in the parts department, before you got there, I guess they have interaction with the white army soldiers?

BT: Yes. When the soldiers, they needed parts for their vehicle, they would come into the camp and get parts from our garage.

MN: And what were these soldiers like?

BT: The soldiers, the one I had contact with, he signed his name with an X. Yeah, he didn't know how to write. But before I got the job there, one of the mechanics was tellin' me that this one soldier that came out to the parts, about the third time he came in to pick up parts, he told this mechanic, says, "You know," he says, "you guys are alright." He says the only Japanese he knew was in the propaganda and the comic book, where all Japanese were short, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, and buck teeth. But he says, "You guys are alright," he says. Says he's gonna write home to the people, let 'em know. I don't know if he did or not, but, so it's like anything else, I guess. If you don't know, then you have imagination. Once you get to know someone, understand the situation, it's different.

MN: Let me go back to the army soldier that, and here's this Caucasian soldier signing his name with an X. How did you react to see an illiterate soldier?

BT: Yeah, well, I think there was a story going around that these soldiers that's protecting us, that they were, a lot of 'em were illiterates. In other words, they didn't really fit into the regular army code or whatever you want to call it. So yeah, when the guy signed with an X, he kind of surprised me, but after he left I told the mechanic, "You know," I says, "this guy signed with an X?" So he said, "Well, how did he sign the X, from left to right or right to left? 'Cause if he signed it right to left, that's a forgery, that's not his signature." [Laughs] So they made jokes out of all these kind of things.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.