Densho Digital Archive
Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community Collection
Title: Hisa Matsudaira Interview
Narrator: Hisa Matsudaira
Interviewer: Debra Grindeland
Location: Bainbridge Island, Washington
Date: April 14, 2007
Densho ID: denshovh-mhisa-01-0005

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HM: After a while we moved with many of the Bainbridge Islanders to Minidoka, because that's where my aunt, the Arimas, and her family were. And so the sisters decided they would really like to be with her family too because she was alone up there, so we moved. Besides that, many of the young islanders were having problems with the Californians. The Northwest thinking was not quite the same as the California thinking, and so many of the families also had relatives or friends from the Seattle, Kent... that area up there, so most of them decided to move up there.

My memories of Minidoka are many. But most of it are children's memories. I remember stepping out the door and you see a whole bunch of people, little kids to play with. All these island kids that we never really got to play with on the island because we lived so far apart. So you step out the door here and here they all are. I played a lot. We played Japanese things, jintori, all these Japanese games. We played cops and robbers, we played marbles, jacks, jump rope... all kinds of things. There probably isn't anything I didn't play. We played Annie over and chased around and ran and ran and ran. Then... but I also liked to play by myself at times. I would look around and find these little anthills and get a jar and put the ants in and watch them busily building their things. Then I put the dirt in the jar and then I'd take it home and watch the ants make their homes. There were irrigation ditches around so when the time came you'd get these little jars and fill them with water and I'd catch tadpoles and I'd put the tadpoles in the jars and watch them lose their legs and their tails and turn into little frogs. Then there were these beautiful monarch butterflies that would be fluttering around between the barracks. I'd run around chasing them and try to catch them. I'd watch them go over to the other side of the barrack. I'd run around. I'd think to myself, "Let me catch this one. Let me catch this one." When I caught it I'd be so happy and they're so beautiful, I'd take a pin and I'd stick it up on the wall. Isn't that horrible? Anyway, that was, that was some of the things that I did.

And I remember this one bachelor man who lived behind, in the barrack behind our barrack, and I was one day doing my ant things. I think I was putting the black ants and the red ants together and watching them fight. Anyway, he came out and he brought me a handful... all these animals made out of pipe cleaners. There was giraffes and tigers. They were just beautiful. Anyway, so I took those, I took those home and showed my mom. So, those are kinds of things that I remember.

I also remember taking classical Japanese dance lessons. I was not very good at it. But we had to put on -- you know when we had a show, shibai. We'd have these heavy wigs and they'd tie you up in the kimonos and they'd put their knees on your back and cinch up the things. They'd put white powder on your face and paint you up all over. And so we'd go on stage and they would have either plays and then they would show us these dances and people would be playing the shamisen or the koto and things. That is where I got some of my Japanese culture. On Bainbridge we didn't have that. I was introduced to a lot of Japanese things there in camp. My mother even said, "You know, it was kind of nice to not to be able to, not to have to go out on the farm from day, from dawn to dusk and then come home and do the cleaning and the cooking and all that stuff." She said, "I even got to take flower lessons and different things." Which she would not have been able to. That part of it was nice. A lot of people got to kind of relax. But on the other hand, there was, they also had to worry. Because like my father or some of the older people, you know, they didn't have anything to do until they got some, some menial jobs. They were so used to working from dawn to dusk that a lot of men, older people, would just be playing go or they felt their life was not very meaningful because they had nothing to do. They had nowhere to really go or anything like that. Some of them became very despondent. Some of them knew that they would not be able to start all over again when they got out. They didn't know when they were gonna get out in the first place.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.