<Begin Segment 17>

SU: But in camp, I remember that, oh, we didn't get a, no cribs for the new babies. So that Sheila was allowed a bed with no railings on the side, which meant someone had to be with her all the time. So my mother, my mother had gone to camp. My mother was alive. She was a widow. And my brother, they were assigned another barrack room. So my mother, just before meal time, would pick up my four-year-old daughter. The two of them would go to have their meals, and then I would wait 'til the second shift started. And she'd come back after she got through eating, and then take care of the baby while I would go to the mess hall. So in all this, you could tell the families couldn't eat together. And in the meantime, my husband, who was quite an athletic person, was chosen as athletic director for the whole camp. So he was busy going from camp to, from barrack to -- I mean, block to block.

BK: Block to block.

SU: So he couldn't be with us. So those are the things that I didn't like that -- there was a break-up of a family life, very easily. No privacy anywhere, with the walls not reaching up. Everybody could hear what's happening down the line.

BK: And like you say, the break-down of the meals and that kind of thing. And I interrupted you. I'd like to go back to where we were talking about curfew. And one of your, the neighbor next to you --

SU: [Inaudible]

BK: Who had started the story about, she would have had a child?

SU: Yes. And when the baby started to come in Seattle, after midnight, or whatever it, where he had to stay at home. Well, he was too frightened to go out and look for a public phone or ask for help from the doctor. And the baby came, and he didn't know what to do. It was the first child. And it strangled to death, with the cord. So I felt so sorry for her, because she could hear my baby crying, and here she was, empty-armed now. So...

BK: But those are the personal tragedies that occurred because of these governmental issues?

SU: That's right.

BK: Right. Right.

SU: Of course, some people would not care about laws, and still do. But I guess he was, they're people like that. Like my husband didn't want to go to see his mother, dying mother, because it was beyond the cur -- I mean the limits.

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