<Begin Segment 17>

DG: In Jerome you got sick.

SS: That's right, I got bronchial pneumonia. They didn't have penicillin, so I was in the hospital for about a week. So, now remember my dad got interned in October, we had to evacuate in January, I got sick in February, so I missed most of my first semester, right? Of schooling. So I had to go to summer school to graduate.

DG: Before we go on to there, what were the medical facilities like?

SS: Fortunately, we knew Dr. Miyamoto, who evacuated the same time we did.

DG: From...?

SS: Hawaii.

SS: And he was nice and we knew Dr. Ikuta, who was a very good E.N.T. doctor from Hawaii that our family used to go to. And they evacuated too, because both Dr. Miyamoto and Dr. Ikuta were interned with my dad.

DG: Why were some of those people interned?

SS: Isn't that a good question? I never asked, we never asked people why they were interned. I think, it was one of those things out of respect that you don't ask.

DG: Because there were about 422, they say, in Jerome, from Hawaii.

SS: Some of them were fishermen. Most of them were Kibei. But I know Dr. Ikuta was not a Kibei, but why he was interned, I really don't know.

DG: Oh... so you stayed...

SS: And then, in the hospital....

DG: And what was the hospital like?

SS: They just... had beds. And the doctors, whatever medication was available, would give you. But they didn't have no penicillin those days and somehow, I must have gotten okay, 'cause a week after I was discharged and as weak as I was, you had no taxi, you had to walk home, in the cold.

DG: How far was that? Because it was in February.

SS: Was about two blocks away, and that's quite ways to walk when you have bronchial pneumonia, but that's camp life for you.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.