<Begin Segment 4>

EO: Do you remember the stockade situation at all?

HK: The stockade, the leaders, the agitators, I guess, the administration figured that they would pull in the leaders because they were bad influence. And so they pulled in a lot of these leaders and put them in, in the stockade and family members could only visit from a fence or somewhere and wave. It was a really terrible, inhumane thing that they did. I don't really know too much about it, because -- although at one point we thought we would be taken in, and we were all set. We had our suitcase packed and ready to go. And then they decided they wouldn't take us in. But there was about thirty-five boys from a neighboring block, we were 40 and they were 44. But one, one night around five o'clock there was a real commotion and they, somebody banged the mess, mess bell. And everyone gathered because this two army trucks came, and soldiers with bayonets forced these guys onto these trucks, and they took them away and there was a lot of farewells and tearful parting, because they thought, we didn't know where they were going to go. And they were actually taken to the county jail, which was outside of camp. And they were kept there maybe a week or so, I don't know, but they were released. And it was just a power play on the part of the administration so that we would change our minds and register. [Laughs] We were going to go, they, but they didn't... so, yeah. We realized later that it was just a power play, but it made things very miserable. As I say, I was having a good time until then. And I was, actually, I was in a play and you know, we didn't do any kind of original plays, so we would do these white plays, and we'd be white characters. And after the registration business, you know, we decided, well, I thought that it wouldn't be right trying to be white in a play, and so I said, "Oh, I wouldn't do it." And so that stopped.

CO: I'm also aware that people had no access to legal counsel in any of this.

HK: Oh no, no. No one told us of any, or... yeah, we had nothing. And we heard that they could go to Spanish consul or something, and I guess for some things, they did go to, because the Spanish consul would send us shoyu or things like that... mochigome, and we made mochi. So that came from, through the Spanish consul. So I think they did things, they kind of looked out for us. But that's the only thing that we heard of. And, no, we didn't. And then there were a few lawyers in camp, among the Nisei, anyway. So that, no, we didn't get any kind of legal counsel until later, after things were all completed, and then we were desperate.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.