<Begin Segment 24>

HU: And about one o'clock or so, MP with a pick-up truck, the pick-up bed -- I mean, a flatbed truck, they came over and I'd been taken out from jail, and the five negotiating committee and two other was in, three other was in police station. Only Matsumura, they don't take him, because the administration know what he was; he was a good boy for administration, informer. So they didn't take him, but the five in negotiating committee and two others and myself, eight of us, been put onto the truck there and sit on the floor. Earlier they carried the ice, I think, a bunch of small ice on the floor, but we sit on and half a dozen or more MP with the tommy gun sit on the bench. [Laughs] And they took them all the way up to Bishop, twenty mile away. So we'd be there, the, I don't know, there's two o'clock, almost two o'clock. Then we'd been put in jail out there. Jail was pretty big out there. Sheriff was pretty nice, you know. Next day he give me all the information, he give me a LA Times paper, the Chandler's newspaper; I kept that newspaper, what's happened. And then Merritt said that this was a collision between pro-Axis and pro-American group. That's what he announced. He just said anything he want but we can't do nothing.

And we stayed there three days, and three days after that, 9th, 10th, I thought they're going to take him back to the camp or something. We're, they put on the truck and passing Manzanar; you can see the lights all over, so I was surprised we're going back to the camp, I thought. No, they bypassed all the way to the Lone Pine, that's eleven miles south of the Manzanar camp. In other words, the 31-mile ride and we'd been put into the Lone Pine jail. Lone Pine jail was about four sides all cement, one small window, one light in the middle. Supposed to be, accommodate only four people because two double bunker beds there, that's all. But a bunch of cots in there; you can't even walk in there no more. You have to jump one after another to go into the bathroom. They didn't have a separate bath -- toilet in the corner. That's all open. [Laughs] And they had about... let's see, six people in there. In other words, no, let's see... we were eight, eight people in there; sixteen people in all together. That was, they was sleeping and then we sleep in there after late.

But the MP was in, what you call... by the door and they got a thick, about a half-inch thick steel door there. And Sunday night or Saturday night, I noticed the MP was drunk and I hear some woman's voice and they get drunk and they shoot up the door with a gun. They're crazy. They, liquor in and they get hurt themselves. And we didn't eat from the morning, so we're hungry. But the next morning, the MP brought some coffee in one jug, mug, one cup only for sixteen people. [Laughs] So we got no place to complain. And then inside was very cold, you know, the end of, December, very cold, freezing cold. They have a stove but no oil to burn, nothing. And we've been there for about a month.

EO: And you had not seen your wife?

HU: No, no. But meantime, Ernest Wakayama and Kurozumi and one more man, three men went out within a few days. Two of them, Kurozumi and... oh, I dropped his name, he's a Stanford graduate man; administration gave him a box of cigars and apology and let 'em out. They brought the box of cigars for each one of them. They were block managers. And I noticed that one of them accused the JACL, informed so many people, Issei. That's why they'd been taken in. In other words, they were branded as pro-Axis but actually they, they were good block managers; they're not against the administration policy or anything. So we'd been cooped up there for the month. But the food was very good, because every mess hall, instead of army feed us, mess hall take turn and bring the food every day.

EO: You mean from the camps?

HU: From the camp. And something, WRA don't finish that kind of food. Some people had like shiitake, Japanese black mushroom and some bamboo shoots, something like that. They open the can, they donate the can so they, some mess hall bring extra fancy food, something we can't get ourselves in the camps. So every day they feed us, take turns.

EO: You mean they drive out to Lone Pine with food?

HU: Yeah, supply the food...

[Interruption]

EO: You spent Christmas at the Lone Pine jail?

HU: Yeah, Christmas Lone Pine jail.

EO: Did you celebrate?

HU: Nah, nothing. No, nothing.

EO: Did you have in mind at all that it was the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor?

HU: Nothing. We can't do nothing on that. We have nothing on the mind as such.

EO: This riot had nothing to do with...

HU: No, nothing to do with Pearl Harbor. That's what they... American people sympathized when they said they'll punish the bastards that celebrate the Pearl Harbor or pro-Axis group, they said, "They're right to punish them." That's what the administration tell to the public. That's all the public knows. See, they talk about incidents, collision between pro-Japan and pro-, what do you call... American, see.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.