<Begin Segment 18>

MN: Let me go back to your camp years and talk about when you were a kid there. Where did kids like you hang out at Manzanar?

MO: Well, we played basketball all the time, we played a lot of baseball. And we played basketball because we had a basketball court in the open area of our block. There was a dirt basketball floor and we had just wooden posts with a backboard and a hoop. We never had nets. And we'd go over to Bairs Creek and we'd play in Bairs Creek trying to catch fish, which we were never very successful at. Or we'd go out to Merritt Park... I remember one time we were out just southeast of Merritt Park and they had these huge cottonwood trees. And we persuaded one of our little friends to steal some cigarettes. And he couldn't steal cigarettes, so he brought this, stole from his grandfather this bag of Bull Durham. And Bull Durham is, you know, you have the paper and you got to roll it up. So we roll it up, and we didn't want to be caught, so three of us were up there in the cottonwood trees, we were sitting on the big branches, sitting out there. We made these cigarettes and we'd light 'em up and we'd smoke 'em and cough. Anyway, I got dizzy and I fell out of that tree. And I'm thinking, "God, this is really dumb. This stuff doesn't even taste good." [Laughs] Or we'd watch other people. And what's always interesting was to watch older couples. Because one of the places they went was out to Merritt Park. And there were two things that people in Manzanar always talked about. One, the wind, and two, the lack of privacy. And here we are, little kids always hanging around, and trying to romance your babe, and you're twenty-two, twenty-three years old. And these kids are around watching all the time. [Laughs] It was all of us. But what we did, we played a lot of sports. That was something that was inexpensive. I remember we had a basketball where the leather had actually worn off, flapped off the ball, and all we had was the rubber interior because we played on this dirt.

MN: Who was your basketball coach?

MO: Shig... what was his name? Shig Ogata, Shig Ogata.

MN: And then when did you always practice?

MO: It seemed we did it in the middle of the afternoon, maybe after lunch. And I remember Shig because my parents went to a wedding, because he married... what was her name? Lived over on Sonora. Anyway, it was a Japanese family, and they got married so that they wouldn't be separated and sent to the camps. Because you got evacuated according to the area in which you lived. So they got married, and then I remember it didn't dawn on me 'til later, but I remember on more than one occasion, we're out there playing, it's really hot, hundred and five degrees. And he would say such things as, "Oh, I got to go take a nap." He was a newlywed guy. You could stand outside any barrack and you could hear everything that was going on in that barrack. You know, there was a little piece of wood covered by a sheet of tarpaper. The good part was, we never got scolded and punished by my father. [Laughs] You know how the Japanese system works, if your kids are bad, you're not a good parent. And they're bad because you had to scold them. So we never got scolded, or if we did, it was very quiet. We never got hit. Yeah, when you're a kid, it's... we had a good time. All my friends and I, we had a good time.

MN: So why were you boys practicing so, during the hot time of the day? Why not practice later in the day?

MO: Oh, that's because the big guys get it later in the day. It's like a kid growing up in San Fernando, we'd go to the park to play baseball, you're not very good, you play earlier, you get better, you play later. It has to do with the heat.

MN: What was the name of your basketball team?

MO: We were called the Zero Babes, because the Stockton people called their team the Zeroes, and they were really good.

MN: And you're with the Stockton?

MO: Yeah, we're with the Stockton-Sacramento group. But the best part was they always beat the San Pedro team, the Yogores, they always beat 'em. And afterwards there would always be a fight, 'cause the Yogores were bad losers. But they weren't very good.

MN: So because you're with the Stockton group, and they're always beating the Yogores and Terminal Islanders, did the Terminal Islanders come after you?

MO: No, they wouldn't come to our block, but we would never go through their block. Say, for instance, I wanted to go to Bairs Creek to play. Where Manzanar is located, you have to go all the way up to the Western edge where the barbed wire is, walk along the rope past the golf course and finally get there because you didn't want to go through Block 9 and 10, because that was the direct route, 5, 9, direct route to Bairs Creek. I always take this circuitous route to get there and when we came back because they wanted to beat us up, because we were the Stockton people.

MN: I mean, how do you describe a typical Terminal Islander youth? Were they any different from all the other kids?

MO: Yeah, they used a different language. They used, their Japanese was a patois that was hard to explain. And they ran around barefoot. We could never understand that, because to us, barefoot was poor. Plus, that sand was really hot. And if you're not careful, you'll get blisters on your feet.

MN: Do you remember the Bainbridge Island group, and do you remember them leaving because of the Terminal Islanders?

MO: There was one family that stayed, I think their name was Hayashi, they were in Block 3. I think they were from Bainbridge Island. I saw him recently, Jackson or Jack, maybe ten years ago. And he was a classmate of mine. But their complaint was they always got beaten up by the San Pedro people. And suddenly they weren't there anymore, and suddenly the Terminal Island people moved into Block 3. It was my understanding they were sent to Idaho, to Minidoka. I don't know if that's for certain, but that's my understanding. And it's the only instance other than the forced transfer to Tule Lake where a group of people moved from one camp to the other. That's historically accurate.

MN: Now, when you were over at Bairs Creek which runs through, I guess part of it runs through Manzanar?

MO: Yeah, yeah, through the southwest corner.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.