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VY: Yeah. So let's see. So here you are, you're a six-year-old child who has been fingerprinted and tagged, like everybody else around you, and you are in Minidoka. What was it like in camp? Like what was a typical day for you there?

DS: Well, I have fragments of memory. But there are images that really stand out in my mind. First of all, we were assigned to a large room in Block 15, Barrack 8, Number E. E being a large room that accommodated my mother and father, my three brothers, and my grandmother. So we were awarded or issued a larger room, barely enough to fit the cots. We had no running water, of course, no toilet facilities, and my grandmother, my father had built a little cubby stringing a rope across the room, hanging a blanket so my grandmother, Baachan, could have some privacy. But I remember as a child waking up at night in the middle of winter, and looking, staring at the cherry red coal-burning stove that stood in the corner. I think about it as an adult, as a parent, and this red hot coal burning stove had no gate, no protection, and you two children running unfettered in these close quarters. I just find that inconceivable that we would live under those conditions. But fortunately, no one got hurt. That coal stove was cherry red in the middle of the night. It was good that we had the stove because I remember snow coming in through the windows on our bedclothes so it was difficult at best. And I don't recall, but I can only picture my mother with basically two young boys, both in diapers, with no wash facility, no way to clean them up. It was an excruciatingly difficult situation for my mother.

But life goes on, and I was enrolled in first grade, and my classroom was in one of the barracks. And I would walk to school from block to block to Hunt Elementary School. But I think how important it was to remember my address of 15-8-E, and it's almost like it's my tattoo, don't get lost, remember where you live. So I went to first grade and lived through the summer and went in the next year to second grade, I believe to the Stafford Elementary School, where I would walk to a bus stop and take a bus to the other end of the camp. And I remember one spring, could have been in 1944, that one of my classmates was the daughter of the assistant (project) director of the camp. He was Caucasian, his name, the director's name was (Robert) Davidson, and their permanent home was in El Paso, Texas. And my classmate was Betsy Davidson. I remember her as having blond, curly hair, and she was in my class. And she and her mother invited me after school for a playdate. Can you imagine a playdate behind barbed wire? So there were instances of near normality in an untenable situation. So I often think about Betsy Davidson and how nice it was to have a playdate.

VY: I wonder if you ever had an opportunity get in touch with her again after.

DS: No. She remains an ephemeral figure in my memory with blond hair, from El Paso, Texas.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.