<Begin Segment 4>

EO: So what did you do in Heart Mountain?

MK: Well, in Heart Mountain, I did various jobs. Some of my friends got me a job as, hauling the ashes out of the mess halls out to the open fields and dumping them. And I think at one time in the winter, in the fall I think it was, there was a call out for the farmers in that general area, needed help real badly or they would lose the crops. So we, a bunch of us young people said, "Hey, those poor farmers out there, they're going to suffer if we don't help them," so we said, "Well, we'll go out there and help 'em with the potatoes and sugar beets, so we did. So my actual time in, in the camp was... I don't know, spent between working in the camp and helping out in the, the farm when there were, the farmers were distressed.

The funniest thing about Heart Mountain was that the town of Cody and Powell, I think those two closest towns, they were very anti-Japanese at that time. And that they would say, "No Japs allowed," put up signs in the towns: "No Japs Allowed," and stuff like that, you know. Very racial, but when the town needed help to harvest their sugar beets and potatoes and stuff like that... they asked the camp authorities to have the evacuees help, help them. And then now they come out and said, "Oh, we're Japanese, we're not Japs, dirty Japs no more," because they needed the help. So I think the evacuees did a tremendous job of going out there and helping them harvest their crops. But after the crops were finished, again, the poor evacuees were labeled "Japs" again, they don't want 'em because they thought, you know, that season was over. But the funniest thing, next year came around again, and when they needed the help, we were again, again Japanese, we weren't Japs no more. And, but the people in Heart Mountain, I think very kind people, and they went out and helped them again. And that kind of stemmed the hostility toward us. We were never accepted there but I think that the signs of "No Japs Wanted" and things like that were less and less because the people went out there and helped them.

EO: Did you go out every day?

MK: I don't know how the people were treated, you know. I think that mostly they went out and lived, lived in the farm. They had quarters there or something like that. Because they went out in small groups, because the farms were small. And they did the best they could. Most of 'em were... I think that most of the Los Angeles people were from the city and never did farm work but they went out there and helped out. And I would say that the state of Wyoming, they were very anti-Japanese, you know, from the politicians down to the governor of the state. They were worried that once the Japanese Americans got established in Wyoming that we'll stay there permanently. But I can assure you that there wasn't one in Heart Mountain that wanted to stay in Wyoming unless they had to. Their aim was to either come back to California or some went to areas like Chicago and New York and places like that. But I don't think anybody wanted to stay in Wyoming.

[Interruption]

CO: Do you, do you recall the atmosphere in Heart Mountain? How did the camp, how did the people get along there?

MK: Well, I think in general, people got along pretty good. Mostly from Los Angeles, Santa Clara valley, a few from San Francisco, and a few from Yakima valley. I know in sports there was a great competition between, a rivalry between the San Jose people and L.A. people. It's just, it's normal that there's a rivalry in sports, but socially and everything, people got along. But I was there in Heart Mountain, and I know that people were really questioning why we are still incarcerated in a concentration camp. It was not a happy camp, or described by our Japanese American leaders as happy camps, and stuff like that. It's not true. I was there and I know that a lot of issues, it's like a, almost like a powder keg ready to blow up because people were demanding their clarification of their citizenship rights. And that, that was a big issue. I think the people from L.A. were more, I would say, more politically conscious than people from northern California. We were very naive when it came to political process and the Constitution and things like that. We really learned in camp. But they, I would say that most outspoken people were the people from Los Angeles.

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