<Begin Segment 18>

AR: We're near the entrance of what would've been the camp back then, the Baca Ranch or Old Raton Camp, and we just traveled over a dirt road up from the main highway. About how many times do you think you traveled up and down that road?

RE: Well, you know, often there were my older, older sisters would accompany them going to Capitan or somewhere, mostly doing just organization of getting our kids' education so my sister Amy spent more time in the...

AR: Commuting.

RE: Commuting out of here, so...

AR: Now was that road in much worse condition back in those days?

RE: Absolutely, the road conditions were really bumpety-bumpety. And, you know, she probably spent all of the day, they would leave early in the morning and come back late, late in the day. As I said before, at times if there were rain storms, you know, gully washers, they couldn't ford the cricks, the cricks were really something, it was deep.

AR: In as much detail as you can, can you describe the living quarters that you lived in? I mean, we saw the physical layout, but the interior, what would that have been like?

RE: Well, the interior of these quarters were rather austere. It was just, there wasn't much to it. I don't recall, but they had, more or less, I think, asbestos boards that were used. Today we use... what do you call it, those sheets? Drywall, drywall.

Well, instead of drywalls, they were all covered with compressed asbestos, so it's a wonder none of us suffer from pulmonary problems. But you know, us kids, we used to see punched out holes here and there. Looked down in there and these CCC boys probably just hid things behind that. But we tried our best to make it look good by patching up any holes. But they were lined with asbestos boards, I will tell you. Compressed boards that looked like fiber, fibrous material.

AR: What was the bedding like?

RE: Oh, more or less, thin mattress, like cot mattress.

AR: On metal...

RE: That's right, spring. It was just like living in an army cot. I think essentially that's what we slept on was army cots, with thin mattresses.

AR: Some of the things written, there's a lot of discussion of how your father and the other Issei men would gather materials around the camp and do repairs. Is that right?

RE: Yes, they did whatever they could to make life easier. If you recall, in World War II, soap was also rationed, so my father and other men had brilliant ideas that if they could get animal fat, which was easy to get, and lye, so with lye and animal fat they would make all the soap that we needed. It was sometimes, the mixture was so strong that it would literally burn your skin. Nobody could say we weren't clean. But obviously it was awful strong. [Laughs]

AR: What about other things, cosmetics or that kind of stuff?

RE: Right, I mean, we had to make do with what we could.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2008 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.