Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Ken Yoshida Interview
Narrator: Ken Yoshida
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: San Francisco, California
Date: October 17, 2007
Densho ID: denshovh-yken-01-0011

<Begin Segment 11>

TI: So when you went to the county jail, describe that. What was the county jail like?

KY: Oh, county jail was just a regular county jail with the cells. And it was about, I think, two person to a cell. And the time I got picked up it was only this fellow Irvin and myself. We got put into a cell and that's where we stayed for one month, thirty days. We just had missed the grand jury. So every six months they had grand jury, so we had to wait six months. So when we went to county jail, we had to stay in the county jail for six months. But after we stayed in that cell, about a month or so later, they put us downstairs in the trustee like area. And so we made, put bread together, and I think we had prunes, and that's about... coffee, and that's what you got for the breakfast.

TI: So your treatment was much better.

KY: Oh, yeah, yeah. We had no more cells, we were just downstairs, and we had the whole basement. That was great. It was a mess down there, but the thing is, I was down there, and at that time, when I got down there, there was about four or five of us Japanese from the camp there. We went downstairs and we cleaned that place up. There was cockroaches and mice and everything. And we cleaned that place up and got rid of all the cockroaches and the mice, and cleaned it up. Oh, in fact, there was a washing machine down there. And I got that thing going, and it was working. So I washed all the blankets that were in this department, and first thing you know, they knew I had the washing machine going. So from upstairs, they started sending their blankets downstairs, and I was washing the blankets downstairs for the upstairs.

TI: So let me make sure I understand. So before you got there, it was dirty.

KY: Dirty and messy.

TI: There was a broken washing machine in the basement.

KY: Yeah, well, I don't... actually, it was not broken, it just wasn't working. People didn't work in there.

TI: And then after you and the others were downstairs, you cleaned the place up and got the washing machine going, and you started washing all the blankets.

KY: Oh, yeah.

TI: So they must have been pretty happy with having you there.

KY: Oh, yeah. It was supposed to, when we were in the cells, the best cell, best tier got Bull Durham once a week. And if the downstairs were no good, they didn't get nothing. We got our Bull Durham every week, no problem.

TI: So you were viewed as the best.

KY: Yeah. Each tier got their Bull Durham, but we got ours all the time. We never missed.

TI: What's a tier? Is that like a level?

KY: Yeah, well, it's a tier with a hall with the cells alongside. So they have gates for each cell, and then they have a tier, and they got a main gate for the whole tier. So you're in your cell, and you come out during the daytime, that way you can walk around and everything.

TI: Now, when you weren't busy cleaning the place up and washing blankets, did you and the fellows ever just talk about what was happening and just talk about...

KY: Yeah. Well, I think they sent us some cards downstairs, and we played cards a lot. And they, I remember they sent us a drum of cockroach thing, and spray cans, and everybody got those spray cans, and they were after those cockroaches. We got mousetraps, and I don't think there was a cockroach in the cell downstairs after we got through, it was so clean. There was some barrels of whatchamacallit, some sort of meat, it was all terrible. We'd dump all that all out, got rid of all the bad things. And we were down there, we had a couple of Caucasian fellows, and we had prunes down there. Those Caucasian fellows got that prune, I don't know where they got the sugar, they made some home brew and they got drunk. And they found out about it, and they were put up to the cell. They came down and inspected the basement, they got rid of all that home brew. That was really something, though. Home brew.

TI: So they lost some privileges. I mean, downstairs was nice --

KY: No, we kept our...

TI: You kept yours.

KY: But the two that made the thing, they knew who made it. I don't know how they found out, but they knew who made it. So they got rid of them, and we had the whole basement to ourselves.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.