Densho Digital Repository - Frank T. Sata Interview I (Densho ID: ddr-densho-499-8)

<Begin Segment 8>

BT: What did you do every day?

FS: At Santa Anita?

BT: At Santa Anita. As a, what, nine-year-old? What do you do?

FS: Yeah, they had activities in that showed movies. I remember sitting in the grandstand looking at some, I think, at that time, Deanna Durbin movies. Patriotic songs by Kate Smith was it, that used to sing God Bless America, that kind of stuff. That's where they were making also the camouflage nets. So remember that type of thing. And then we had an end unit in the barrack, when we were moved from the horse stable to the barrack. And that's when I first saw the military, because I never knew anything or saw the guns or things. But they had a riot there at Santa Anita, and being on the end track, end unit, these military trucks, half tracks or something where they had the guns mounted on the back, they were coming, rolling by. And I used to sit there at the window in the end unit, because my bunkbed was against the wall right there. It was only a room about ten feet by twenty feet or whatever, big enough for three bunkbeds and three suitcases, of course. So I could watch from the window, side window as the main guns, trucks, military people went by. That's my real recollection of the military.

BN: So just to get this clear, while you were at Santa Anita, you moved from the stable to the barrack area.

FS: Yeah, they were still building the barracks, I believe.

BN: Okay. So as they finished the barracks, your family moved. The barracks were on the parking lot outside, right?

FS: Right. And I think my dad's sketches kind of show how close we were to the stadium. That gave me a good idea.

BN: From your perspective, was that significantly better than being in the stable?

FS: [Laughs] A nine-year-old's perspective? Yeah. I guess, well, it's got to be better in that there wasn't a smell. Yeah, because I remember the smell of the horse stable very much so. In fact, I didn't know anything about that smell until later in my life when my daughter introduced me to it. But yeah, it's clearly... but again, in a way, the parents can provide security in which all of those things are almost insignificant. I hate to say it was that way, but I had no trauma or connection to that, I just have a lot of thoughts about it later in life.