Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Nobu Suzuki Interview I
Narrator: Nobu Suzuki
Interviewer: Dee Goto
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: June 3, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-snobu-01-0025

<Begin Segment 25>

NS: But after we were there ten days or whatever, the younger one came down with chicken pox and he was covered. I guess, the older one must -- I don't know whether it was the older one -- the older one must have come down first, but his you could hardly tell; it might have been here and there, and you couldn't tell that he had chicken pox. But the baby, nine months old I guess or something, he was covered from head to foot with these sores. So, at that time, they decided (that) they would put him in an isolation ward. So they took one of the warehouses where animals were kept -- it isn't a warehouse -- but, anyway, one of the buildings they had animals, because it smelled like animals, but they put cots in there. And we were put into isolation at that point. My husband brought a tray of food for us to eat, for me to eat because the baby was still on milk. We had to stay there for ten days. Well, I was there for a few days and couldn't stand it any longer so I made him stay there for a while. [Laughs] But, of course, he wasn't the only one; there were others that came down with it, too, and so they had to bear with that too. But we were there in Puyallup until September. That was three or four months. And, during that time, of course we had friends visit us. Our friends from Seattle would come and visit, and they'd have to visit across the fence. We'd just talk to them across the fence. And once one of them brought a chocolate cake to us, but it had to go through the office. And when they brought it to us they had several slash holes in it, because they were afraid that they had put some contraband material inside the cake. But we ate it anyway. [Laughs] But people were suspicious at that time, I guess.

DG: You mentioned later that you thought that the Minidoka administration was so much better. So what was wrong with the administration at the Puyallup?

NS: The Puyallup administration was army more than it was civilian, so they were very strict about people coming and going, and they hardly allowed anybody to go in or out. But, fortunately, we weren't in Puyallup too long and people didn't -- I mean, the authorities didn't know what to do with us.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.