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PW: Tell me what a normal day would have been like for you at Topaz. Like what time did you wake up, and what did you do in the mornings and afternoons?

YW: You know, there was some people whose feelings were, "The government put me in here, let them take care of me." But you know, soon, everybody that I knew that felt that way, they can only feel that way for a short time because you would see everybody working so hard to help each other. And if you didn't have that help from each other, I think it would have been hard for you to make it. I know I did, I needed help, and there were people that did help me. So I didn't have to wait in line too long. Things were hard because, like even doing laundry because there was no washer and dryer, you wash by hand or you wash by washboards. The soap that they used, I think, was lye, because it was a big yellow bar. And I can remember, if you took a shower and you washed your face, you had to rinse it real fast, otherwise it would start to burn. And I would wonder why it would burn, and they said, well, I think it's the lye. And I believe that because everything got clean, it burned clean and we did have to rinse it real good, and you had wait in line to use even the soap. It didn't last very long because people wanted it to wash themselves. If you had a baby [coughs] -- excuse me -- you would kind of use it for like a disinfectant, but you had to have lots of water to wash it down, rinse it so it wouldn't burn. So having a baby in camp was hard, having children was hard. And you wanted to keep things as normal as possible, so the young people that were in camp, I heard that many times, when people would ask them, "How was camp?" they would say, "It wasn't so bad," except for the fact that maybe they were hungry, or they didn't like the food. But otherwise, they didn't have to do any of the work. They didn't have to worry because everybody else took care of them. And like I said, we tried to keep things as normal as possible.

I had a friend named Jack Soo, Goro Suzuki. He was a friend of mine, we went to the same school together, same church, same clubs. And he was very active even in theater, that was his thing. So he kept the young people active, he was a good singer, and my job was to go out and find the kids that were, wanted to be in theater. That wasn't hard to do because they all wanted to play, and that was a fun thing to do. So that was easy on my part, but he did keep them entertained (...).

PW: So there were, like, theater performances and shows that he would do?

YW: Yes. He put 'em together and we made arrangements. And I don't know how he did it, but he went up to the administration and said, he wanted to know if he can have a bus to take the kids into Delta High School to put on a show. And he put this show together. Not only did he get the bus, he had to get the bus driver, and he was able to do that. And I could remember one time, the permit that... I was like his secretary, so I saw a lot of his paperwork. And one of the things was that it had to be accompanied by a Caucasian. And when they got ready to go, the person that was at the gate, looked at that permit, and said, "Who's this Mr. Cock-a-sin?" He didn't know what a Caucasian was and he was a Caucasian. [Laughs] And at first, they thought, well, of course not, of course they couldn't send a busload of kids into town, because they would all jump out and scatter, and then you have to go around looking, trying to gather them up. And Goro said, "No, they're Japanese." That's all he had to say. And there was no trouble getting the kids into the bus, there was no trouble... when they were supposed to meet to come back, they were right there, I checked them in, checked them out, they all behaved. So the main thing was, for the young people, when I say "young people," I'm talking about high school age and below. Yeah, it was kind of our job to try to keep them entertained. So it used to bother me a little bit when I used to hear them say, "Camp wasn't so bad." Of course it wasn't so bad for them. It was hard, and I give a lot of credit to a lot of these people who did everything to try to make things as easy for everybody else. And the Isseis, I think they tried harder. For some reason, I think they felt bad. I don't say they felt guilty, but I think they felt bad because they tried to work, they tried to help build things like the baseball fields and things, they worked hard to smooth the grounds. I remember they did so much in the cafeteria, in the mess halls.

PW: You mentioned that your father was involved, or went regularly to the Buddhist church in Topaz. Do you have memories of that?

YW: Well, no, there was no Buddhist church. There was a church in camp, there was a church, but not a Buddhist church. I think, for some reason, I don't remember a Buddhist church, and somebody told me Buddhist church was not allowed. But my father was active with the Buddhist church in Berkeley, outside at home. He didn't participate as much as, I don't know exactly what he did, probably the donation. And I know he helped Hiroshima when they had their atom bombing and some other disastrous things happened. Because we have a letter of appreciation, because my dad had helped, tried to help the friendship between the United States and Japan after the war, and they're trying to get them to work peacefully together. And there was a letter of appreciation, I have it in my room. The Isseis, I felt sorry for them because they felt bad. They still loved Japan, that was where they were born, but America's the country that they chose.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.