<Begin Segment 9>

MN: What about holidays? What was Christmas like in Poston?

TY: You know, we celebrated Christmas outside of camp, so it was no different in camp. It's just that it was with more people. But it was kind of fun. I think the more important holiday for me and my family was the New Year, so we celebrated New Year.

MN: How did you celebrate New Year's?

TY: Lots of food. Even though it was camp food, my mom would redo them. If you got it from the cafeteria or the mess hall, she would bring it back to the mess hall and redo it, so we would have something different than what everybody else had. [Laughs]

MN: How about like mochitsuki? Did they have mochitsuki?

TY: Yes, they did. My father either made it or brought it with him, you know, the actual cement round thing?

MN: The usu?

TY: Yeah. And my mom used to move the mochi around with her hands, my father beat on it, and I said, "Uh-uh, you'd never get me to do that." Because someone miss hits and then you've got your whole hands stamped. I said, no. But she did it, was okay for her.

MN: And then you shared it with your whole block?

TY: I don't know about the whole block, I think some apartments around there. 'Cause there were eight kids already, so who are we gonna give it with? [Laughs]

MN: How did you eat the mochi?

TY: Well, when it was first made we would eat it like that, and then later on we would try to get it... well, we had a fire, what is it called? One of those things that you could heat up the apartments.

MN: Potbelly stove?

TY: Potbelly stove. So we would cook the mochi in there so that you could get it, that kogeru, and then we ate that with shoyu and sugar. I don't know if we had sugar, it must have been honey, huh?

MN: Sugar was rationed, I know.

TY: Yeah.

MN: And I'm kind of wondering, do you know where you got the mochigome?

TY: I don't know.

MN: So I know a lot of the families ordered from mail catalogs?

TY: Yeah, we got ours from "Shasu Robaku," Sears & Roebuck, or "Mongenmori," Montgomery Ward's, yes. So those were our big suppliers.

MN: So when you were growing up, did you know Montgomery Ward's as "Mongenmori"?

TY: Yeah, so when I came out, I didn't know where else to go. Where's Mongenmori? I don't know. Shasu Robaku, where do you find that? I don't know.

MN: Let me go back to the Christmas, though, did your family trade presents?

TY: We didn't have any trading, 'cause we didn't have that kind of money. So we just took whatever we got. Maybe a toothbrush or whatever, toothpaste.

MN: Did your mother ever make you things for...

TY: Oh, yeah. She's famous for making things, or darning socks. But we each would get a shirt, 'cause she would write to Mongenmori to get the materials and then she would cut out the shirts and we would each have a new shirt at Christmastime. So all of the boys got new shirts, and my sister, my youngest sister got a new dress. Because at that point, my older sister was taking sewing lessons in camp, so she could sew, too. So she would sew their clothes.

MN: So now your mother's ordering this material and she's making these new shirts for you boys and your sister, was it from the same material? Was it the same shirts?

TY: Well, for the boys, it was all the same shirts. But for the, my sister, no, different material.

MN: So you were kind of wearing identical clothes.

TY: Oh, sure. You could tell we were all Yamamotos. [Laughs]

MN: Any other memories you have of Poston?

TY: I remember it being really, really cold in the wintertime, and really, really, as they said, mushiatsui in the summer. Those are the things that I remember more than anything. Now as far as other things, I don't really remember, not well, anyway.

MN: Well, how did you keep yourself cool during the mushiatsui summers.

TY: Jump in the irrigation ditch.

MN: How would you learn to swim, though?

TY: Drowned. My brother and I one day went there to the swimming hole. It was a Saturday, so there was nobody there, so we jumped in. We thought we had the paddleboards, but the paddleboard slipped out and I didn't have it. And my brother couldn't get it, so we were struggling like crazy pulling on me to get to it. So we eventually got out, but later on, a friend of my family taught us how to swim, which was a good thing. Because what do you do all summer, sit in the shallow end?

MN: And then during the wintertime, how did you keep yourself warm?

TY: Well, before you go to school you sat in front of the hibachi like thing, just to get as hot as you could. And the coat that my mother ordered from Mongenmori, we would wear that and go to school. It was always these heavy wool things, but what do I know?

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.