<Begin Segment 16>

MN: So when you got to Poston, what time of the day was it?

DM: It was late afternoon, around four o'clock. We were assigned to our barracks, and first thing they did was hand us these canvas bags, it's called mattress bags, and told to fill the bag with straw and it's going to be our mattress for the rest of the stay. And the barracks, there were sixty barracks, sixty blocks in Camp I. And each barrack was divided into four rooms, A, B, C, D. We were assigned to apartment C, which was one room around twelve by fourteen feet. Our parents, sister, and four siblings stayed, so there were six of us in that room.

MN: That sounds very cramped.

DM: Pretty cramped. Of course, there was no furniture in there, you had to make your own furniture as time went by.

MN: Now you said you were in Unit C. Which block were you in?

DM: Block 59. So we were at the edge of the camp next to the desert.

MN: Is this where all the Imperial Valley people were put into?

DM: They were scattered all over the camp, anywhere from, I remember from Block 12, there were a lot of people in that area, and then 60 was Imperial Valley

MN: So your block, though, was it all Brawley people?

DM: No. We had a mixture of Boyle Heights people. That was it, mostly Boyle Heights and Imperial Valley people.

MN: Boyle Heights is the city people. Did you get along with them?

DM: [Laughs] At first, they were standoffish. They didn't want to mingle with the country boys. But eventually we became friends, and one of my best friends was Tosh Tsuchiyama from Boyle Heights.

MN: So in the beginning, you said you had to put the hay in these canvas mattresses. When you got to your barrack, where did you put the mattress?

DM: On the floor. Later on, about a year later, they started distributing these metal cots.

MN: Who was chosen to be the cook at your mess hall?

DM: Oh, we were lucky, 'cause our head cook was, used to run a restaurant in Brawley. He was an Okinawa man, I remember, and a very good cook. Of course, one end of the block was the mess hall, and at the end of the other row of barracks was the recreation area, we called it, which had these ping pong tables and things like that.

MN: Now at the mess hall, what kind of food did you serve?

DM: Breakfast was usually just cornflakes when we were able to get milk. Cornflake and toast. I don't remember eating much of an egg. That was it. And pancakes on weekends, I think. Then the lunch consisted of sandwich and soup. And dinner was, in those days, in the beginning it was c-ration, army classified as c-ration which was... well, you can imagine, it wasn't A, it was B, it was C. So some of the stuff they served us was liver, and the parts of the pig that nobody wanted, and things like that. Liver, I never got accustomed to eating it. So all I would eat would be the rice and the vegetables they served. But I think so much complaint went into the administration that the quality of food did become better as time went by.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.