<Begin Segment 16>

WH: Do you remember what kind of film you used?

DT: What kind of film I used? Oh, Eastman Kodak, Kodachrome.

WH: 8-mm?

DT: 8-mm.

WH: And, you know, when we look at your films today, even sixty years later, they're so professionally done. Steady, and you have a nice sense of pacing and wide shot, close-up. Where did you learn how to do that?

DT: Well... [laughs] you learn by experience. When I started in 1936, there was too much of this. [Moves camera laterally back and forth.] Wild, you know, and you wonder, why did you move the camera. That's one thing you have to learn, is hold the camera steady and let the action move, not the camera, but you know, you don't know that. At the beginning, oh, you're doing a lot of this. You shouldn't have done that, you see. But that's one thing that a cameraman must learn first, elementary, that you hold the camera steady and the action moves, not the camera. But you don't think of that. You get all excited.

WH: And there's no film in there right now, is there?

DT: Oh, no.

WH: Can you open it up and show us how you would put the film in?

DT: Oh, yeah. You just... [demonstrates loading film.] This is the... see, it only takes a half a spool, and then you turn it over to the other side and take the other half.

WH: How long, how many minutes on that one spool?

DT: Well, this is... well, actually, the whole, the whole film that you take is about... gee, it's only a few minutes.

WH: So you had to be economical, the way you shot.

DT: Oh, you have to be. You have to be. You don't have all the luxury of having a lot of film. But yeah, many a time... and you put the other, you put the other side here, go through here, and you turn it around and take the other side.

WH: Can you kind of hold it up to the camera so we can see the inside of it? What's the name of your camera?

DT: Bell and Howell. Famous company, Bell and Howell.

WH: Do you remember how much you paid for this camera?

DT: Oh, yeah. Seventy-five dollars. I paid Dr. Henry Takahashi, Alice's cousin, who's an optometrist in San Francisco, he got this for me. I paid him seventy-five dollars. That's a lot of money in those days.

WH: What year?

DT: Yeah.

WH: What year was that?

DT: Well, that must have been about... gee, when was it? 1936, '37, '38, around there. This was a good camera, though. As I said, it's gone underwater, bag first, and then in the other housing, you see. But I've got other cameras now that I use underwater. I've done some crazy things, like jumping into the water and forgetting to put the seal in, and I went in and the water goes in. That happened, too. I drowned, I guess, couple of cameras that way.

WH: [Addressing cameraman] Was there something you wanted to ask?

Male voice: Yeah, I wanted to know about whether the shoebox was just a way of carrying the camera, or whether he actually had a hole in it that he took pictures through.

DT: I didn't quite catch that.

WH: You know that baby shoebox that you held?

DT: Yeah, yeah, right.

WH: Did you just hide it in there, or did you have a hole in there and you would take pictures in there?

DT: Oh, no, no. I just hid it in there, and opened the cover and take it out and I shot it.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2005 Densho and The Japanese American Film Preservation Project. All Rights Reserved.