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BN: Okay. So when were you born?

SH: I was born in '41.

BN: Right before the outbreak of war.

SH: Yes. My mother carted me in as a child And she said it was just dreadful because I was a baby and I had diarrhea. She had no running water. And so it was just the beginning of a really bad time.

BN: And I know you don't have first hand memories of this at all but in terms of -- I know they went to Santa Anita first. Yes. Do you know if they were in the horse stalls or in the barracks?

SH: I think so; I don't know. My parents never spoke of that time, which is quite, you know, commonplace.

BN: Pretty common.

SH: Yeah. But the only time that I ever heard of them speaking about the camp was when they would get together with other people who had been there, you know on social occasions. And then when I was very young -- and you've heard this story repeatedly, I'm sure . . . . What are they talking about? Summer camp? I mean, what kind of camp are they talking about? So I grew up knowing practically nothing, and my memories are very limited. And I have a theory about this, which is very interesting. The only thing I remember is -- I remember one occasion there were men outside fighting snakes or something. I remember the long train ride back to L.A. Other than that, I don't remember very much at all. But what I do remember very clearly. I have a very dim memory, however, before that of going to school in Long Beach. But I remember very clearly we moved to Coachella Valley, and that's another unhappy family story. But my mother's cousin, who had been raised by her mother to a significant extent in Japan, had become a very successful farmer. He owned a gas station and a grocery store. This was in Coachella Valley, not too long after the war. Again, he was married to a woman who was very unwelcoming and not a very nice person at all. But my father went there because he couldn't find a job. When we were in that camp at Lomita, my mother said that he would go to the shipyards looking for work, and he would hitchhike and he would come home just wet on days when he couldn't find a ride home. But he went to run that grocery store and gas station in Coachella, but again there was a lot of family friction. So they moved out to L.A. He had saved enough money then to buy a pickup truck and start working as a gardener. Now, what I remember at that time was how very poor we were because we lived in this hotel. I've always wanted to locate that area, and I have – I have (several) pictures. But I think it must have been somewhere near downtown Little Tokyo, where a lot of warehouses were. There were railroad tracks in the back, and we lived in two hotel rooms that weren't even contiguous. And later on when some people moved out, we lived in contiguous rooms. And then we moved to a small apartment near Exposition Park, and then we moved into a larger house in that area. And I lived there -- I want to say through maybe my undergraduate years at UCLA, but I knew USC better because it was within walking distance, you know, you studied at the library. And I loved the law library; they never closed down.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.