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DG: And what were your parents and your older siblings doing at this time?

MW: My, my mother... and my mother and dad -- well, my dad wasn't there at the time -- but my mother was working in the kitchen. So she got a job working in the kitchen. And in those days I think they paid those help like sixteen dollars. And the help, the professional help got nineteen dollars. And you can't imagine how the doctors and dentists felt getting nineteen dollars a month, but that's what they were allowed. Anything, anyone that were called professionals were given that and all the rest of the people were non-professionals, so they were given sixteen dollars, just three dollars' difference. That's, that's very degrading, I would say. And, but eventually when I got little older... oh, I do remember working in the camouflage net. And we'd weave those camouflage... what do they do, just strips of material and you'd weave those. It's gunny sacks; that's why it's very dusty, dusty job. And eventually I quit that. I only did that for about two weeks. And then I went and, because my girlfriend told me that the teacher, our teacher, our English teacher said that we could have a job cleaning their barracks, their apartments, and that was the professional people that came in. So, I had a job, the job of cleaning the apartment of the director of, of accounting there for the government. So I cleaned his house once a week. And, and I remember my girlfriend cleaning her, the English teacher's house once a week. And you really would have to clean because it was so dusty. But that was a better job than, for us fourteen-, fifteen-year-olds, fifteen-year-old people. Well, I guess I probably had to wait 'til I was sixteen to do that. But it was a better job than working otherwise.

DG: So, you were cleaning houses of... were these Caucasian people who came in to teach?

MW: Yes, yes, uh-huh.

DG: Okay. And they were outside of the camp or inside?

MW: They, well, they came from outside of the camp but they lived in the camp. And they probably, maybe went out on the weekends. But, I don't know. But they came in, they, they had apartments in camp, and they looked different than ours. They weren't tar-papered barracks. They were, they looked... they were cream-colored, so they looked much nicer. So you could tell the difference.

DG: And what sort of relationships did people have with them? Was it strictly professional or did they...

MW: Yes, yes it was, they were good. And they were... some of the teachers were, I was told, were, of course, Quakers. And so they would be more than happy to come in and help. And I don't know where they all came from. They all probably came from the California area. And then the professionals in the administration, they probably came from that area, too. I never did ask to find out where they came from. But the man that I had, that, the apartment that I cleaned, eventually he told me to come and work in his office, so I did. So I worked in the cost counting office and I operated a typewriter that had a carriage that long. And what I did was I put in a sheet of paper that was that long, that was government at that time. And you'd have these little squares all across the paper and all the way down, and what I did was I typed numbers in there, five carbon paper numbers. And so if I made a mistake I would have to go back five carbon papers and correct it. But I learned how to do numbers very well. [Laughs]

DG: And was this in Minidoka by now?

MW: No, that was Manzanar. I never did, we never did go to Minidoka. Whereas the rest of the Bainbridge people did, there were five families that didn't, Takemotos was one of 'em. And Hayashis was another one. And of course Sumiko Koura stayed behind. She was married to Shig Furuta at the time and I think she stayed behind because she was going to have a baby. And so she stayed behind but went back, went later to Minidoka. And, let's see, I can't remember all, but there were, there were five families that, Bainbridge families that stayed. Because my dad had by that time come back from Missoula, Montana, and when the Bainbridge people were leaving, he says, "I am not going to another camp," which was understandable. He had been to one camp, and then he was transferred to our camp. And so he says, "I'm not going to another camp." So, that was okay, so we didn't go.

DG: And what did your dad tell you about being in, in the Missoula?

MW: Missoula? He didn't tell us much. I don't, you know, I don't think that, they didn't talk about things that were really bad and so I still don't know much about it. Except that when we went there, my sister and I drove up there to see the camp one day. And of course by that time -- that's Missoula -- and by that time, oh, that's a detention camp for immigrants, immigration. And at that time, all the barracks were gone. And so they're telling us, "This is where the barracks were, and this is where your people were. And this is where the Italians were." And this is, and those, those were the people who they took off the ships, where there was a, I understand there was an Italian ship that came in and of course when the war was in full bloom like that, they took 'em and put 'em in that camp. So I guess it is a retention camp for foreigners. And, but he, he never said anything about how they were treated or anything like that. He just was glad to come home and be with the family. So that's what he did. And he, he's a very quiet spoken person anyway. He doesn't whoop and holler and talk about all the bad things that are going on.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.