Densho Digital Repository
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Amy Iwasaki Mass Interview
Narrator: Amy Iwasaki Mass
Interviewer: Brian Niiya
Location: Emeryville, California
Date: March 12, 2019
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-470-6

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BN: Do you remember the journey to Heart Mountain?

AM: To Heart Mountain? Yes, because we were in trains, and what I remember most... yeah, what I remember most about it is going on, it was scary having the soldiers with the bayonets pointed at us. I don't think I'd ever even seen a gun before in my life, and then having soldiers in uniforms pointing at us. But what I remember about the trip is that whenever we came to a town or a city, we had to pull down the shades. And at that stage in my life where I'd been reading and seeing newsreels about the "Japs" and how terrible the "Japs" were, and they were the enemy and everybody hated the "Japs." I think what I felt as a child is they hate us so much, they don't even want to see us as we go through towns. So it was definitely an experience of knowing fear, rejection, confusion, it was a hard time. I think our parents tried to make it as nice as possible. My mother would always have these very special blue and white mints from May Company that she brought for us.

BN: Did your cousins, were your cousins able to also go with you?

AM: I don't know exactly when my uncle came, but he was there at Heart Mountain.

BN: The one who had been interned?

AM: They let him go and they let him come back to the regular camp, or go to the regular camp. And they lived in Block 6 and we were in Block 1, so they were not right next door to us.

BN: They were there but a ways away.

AM: Right.

BN: And your uncle would have been, quote/unquote, "paroled" to go to another...

AM: Yes.

BN: ...to go to a concentration camp. What were your first kinds of impressions of Heart Mountain as a seven-year-old?

AM: Let me see. I guess, well, I'd been disappointed with the first one because when we went, we didn't really know where we were going, and they were talking about, well, we're going to go to the real camp, so I thought it was a real camp... and my parents added to it because we had fold-up camp chairs. And we got there, and there was no lake, there were not cabins that would you see at a regular camp.

BN: You're thinking summer camp situation?

AM: Yeah, that was my thought, so that was disappointing. There were lots of long lines, but I guess that was at Pomona, too. Eating seemed to be, I don't know why, we always had long lines for eating at the beginning. I think we kind of got acclimated to know when to go and when our friends would go and all of that. But long lines for the bathrooms, for the mess halls, that's part of the early part of going to camp. We were in 1-9-B, and B was the larger room because we were registered as a family with four children. But we got to Heart Mountain in September, the first week of September. And Nails and Fumi came with us because they wanted to see us settled, but that was the week that Park College was going to open. And so they missed the first week, but they missed the racism against Japanese American students at the city of Park, because I guess there were demonstrations. And then that Sunday of that week, the president of Park College, who was a Presbyterian minister, gave a speech about how we need to welcome the students who are excellent students and all of that. And by the time Nails and Fumi got there, that was gone, and they didn't have to experience that direct kind of racism. But they really respected and thought kindly of their president, because he really stood up for them.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.