Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Sarah Sato Interview
Narrator: Sarah Sato
Interviewer: Dee Goto
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: April 9, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-ssarah-01-0016

<Begin Segment 16>

DG: Once you got to Jerome, we don't know a whole lot about Jerome. Tell us a little bit of what you saw?

SS: When we went to Jerome, our barracks were not finished. When I say finished, you know they just have the outside wall, the inside was all just unfinished. The winds were coming through between the boards, and when you come from Hawaii where it's warm and to come to a place that's cold, and where they had to have furnace, coal furnace, to heat up the room. Fortunately, all the single guys who were interned with my dad, they came and helped to put the plasterboards to double, to insulate the rooms and that, warmed up. And they gave us a room, oh, a little bigger than my living room. They put six of us, not two rooms and, but can you imagine my parents having no privacy and the four kids sleeping in the same area, and in order for us to have more room in the single room, my dad built a what do you call... bunkbeds. So that we had a little more room to make it into a living room, a section. So I know my parents slept this way and we had the full two bunkbeds, that way. And when you, now that you're older, you think, how could our parents have had any privacy? And this is what the government did.

DG: What did you bring with you?

SS: Clothing, but clothing that weren't adequate. A few...

DG: Bring what you could carry?

SS: No, no, I forgot how much we were able to bring... quite a bit. So, I think we took over a trunk full of clothing plus several suitcases. But, we...

DG: Did you bring some things that you felt were your treasures? What did you personally bring?

SS: I can't remember... there's really...

DG: Did you have to leave a lot of stuff behind?

SS: We left most of the things with my aunt, in their place, like our furniture and all.

DG: There wasn't something that you brought that you...?

SS: Not that I can think of. I think it was such a, short time, that mainly that...

DG: Any books...? Or... nothing like that?

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.