<Begin Segment 19>

AR: So Roy, you're walking up a road toward the residences, but this road didn't exist then?

RE: This road did not exist here. Where the road is now going is actually where the cottages were, the two cottages that were here, the three cottages were right in this, right where the road is. So this road was not here. If it was, it was more to the, to my right here, and it was not any fancy road.

AR: It was a trail?

RE: It was just a muddy trail, like, allowed the automobiles to come by, yes.

[Interruption]

AR: So it's sort of unfortunate in the Forest Service's lack of historical consciousness that when they built this road coming up to the new camp site, the recreational area, they pretty much demolished the foundations or whatever was left of the housing that stretched from here, is that right?

RE: That's gone, yeah. This was the back end, back end of the back wall of the cottage or cabin here, the administrators lived in. So it extended out, somewhere about like this, came out to about here.

AR: Relatively small houses then.

RE: Yeah, you know it wasn't very big. I would say probably was no more than about 20 feet long, by maybe 12 feet wide, rather small.

AR: And your sisters' cottage?

RE: The one just over there.

AR: So their foundation probably would've been on this road area, too?

RE: Part of this road, the foundation would've been on part of what is this road now.

AR: And then at least one more structure further south.

RE: Yes and there was another structure, uh-huh.

AR: This might be a good time to ask about the types of food that you received from the government at the camp. Do you recall the types of food that you ate? Did you have rice or did you end up with oatmeal or what was it?

RE: You know, whatever they could pick up that was not rationed off. It was rationed, we got little bits and pieces. But, you know, it was like bacon, or animal fat, some beef, pork, whatever that they could pick up. Sugar, flours, you know, the essentials for cooking that my mother and Mrs. Kimura and all of the women could cook used.

AR: Did you miss anything, like was there a lack of soy sauce or rice or...

RE: Yes, I think we sure did. But you know we adjusted to whatever was palatable, we took up. But the gardens my dad started somewhere around April, May, and certainly we all enjoyed the fruit of his labor, you know, cabbages, carrots.

AR: The gardens would've been off in that direction?

RE: Right. It was behind our quarters, behind the latrine about 50 to 100 feet out past there. There was a clearing, sufficient sunlight to hit the garden, and those cabbages were humongous; they were huge. The carrots were huge. We wondered why the vegetables were double the size of the vegetables that my father grew in Clovis. The thing is that we're at a higher elevation, the ultraviolet radiation is stronger, of course, up in higher elevation. That contributed to gigantic vegetables. My dad was very proud of that. He always used to talk about the ten-pound cabbages, you know. Big cabbages.

AR: But he would've had to clear that land from scratch, right?

RE: Oh, the clearing of the land was very difficult. It took him a lot of time to get the rocks and stones out of there, and they were utilized to define the garden lot. That was interesting.

AR: So from your childhood perspective, you thought this was a pretty good place to live?

RE: Absolutely. All of the Kimura kids and us, we thought this was, this was heaven. Every day we looked forward to something that was challenging to do. We were always active; I don't think we had a dull moment. We just enjoyed, we were nature boys.

AR: Had you been exposed to mountainous territory before?

RE: No. It was just astounding because we lived in the high plains, Clovis, New Mexico area. And, of course, we had, none of us had ever seen mountains as tall as these mountains. It was just spectacular to us.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2008 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.