<Begin Segment 11>

TI: Could you describe what Puyallup was like? And where you were staying?

FF: Yeah. I think when we first went to Puyallup, it was a really kind of horrifying. Because jeez, here we were going to live in shacks that were worse than anything we ever had. Worse than any out buildings that I've seen on people's farms. And the first thing we were asked to do, was to get ourselves a mattress cover and go fill it with hay at this great big hay pile. So we went and did that. And then we were issued cots, these folding canvas cots. And we unfolded them and put them in our room and the rooms were really cubbyholes. I mean, they weren't really this size... and the four of us had to, four of us slept in that thing and there was, once you put the beds out, there was hardly any room for moving. But the walls of these barracks went up only, maybe seven, eight feet and then from there was all open. So, the, the conversations going on or babies crying down the barrack could be heard all over. It really, it was really terrible. For us, as teenagers, it was no big problem. But gee, for people with kids, they had to, they had to shush the kids up because it bothers the whole barrack and stuff like that. Must have been terrible for them.

TI: At this point, what were you thinking what would happen to everyone, what were you...?

FF: Geez, I don't know. Nobody knew what was going to happen. The... that's the awful thing about that kind of internment, I think, is really, you're shut off from any news. Access to the outside was strictly controlled. And so, all you fed on was rumors, and cripes, I mean the... there's always guys saying, "The guard told me this..." and all this kind of story. So we lived on nothing but rumors. I don't think I ever heard one thing that would lead me to believe that we would end up at Idaho while we were in Puyallup.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.