<Begin Segment 17>

DC: Did you go to an assembly center before you went to Manzanar?

CM: No, went direct to Manzanar, straight, that's about 225 mile northeast of Los Angeles. Took a bus. There was about twenty buses that went up there at one time.

DC: What was the housing like?

CM: Well it was a... made out of all wood, and the outside wall was weatherproof wallpaper with chicken wire. And the barrack was... one barrack is divided by four, there's 16 x 20 barracks, and then they put eight to ten people in each barrack. They had the single army beds.

DC: Were you and George together?

CM: Yes.

DC: You got to stay in the same barrack?

CM: Oh, yes. And we was in the bachelor group, it was all bachelor group. We were bachelors so we had a bachelor group.

DC: Were with anybody else that you knew?

CM: Yeah, some of the classmates we knew.

DC: What else do you remember about the conditions, the environment, or the facilities?

CM: Well I was in the emergency crew, we did anything, the emergency we'd have to do... we put in a lot of hard work in there, we worked forty cents a day, that was our salary, twelve dollars a month, eight to ten hours a day.

DC: Was that a good salary back then or a bad salary?

CM: We just say it's better than nothing. But we really worked hard, forty cents a day.

DC: Like for example, how much --

CM: And the idea was to comfort the people that's in the camp, make you work good so everybody would be comfortable. With that in mind, it's not the forty cents, it's the comfort of the people in camp and there was 10,000 of us in that camp. And I still remember my address over there... what is it? Block 15, Barrack 8, Room 3. [Laughs]

DC: So forty cents was significantly less than people were making outside of the camp?

CM: Well, it's better than nothing. That was the only thing.

DC: But how much could you make before you were in the camp in a day?

CM: Oh, gosh, I don't know. Well, I was dumb on that, in camp there. We sold things at five or ten cents to a dollar, but I'd accumulate so much at camp, they said you have to report all your income. I was stupid enough, that was the income that we sold five cents a dollar that was cost and below, and I put that as a main income. And I was the only one in camp that was foolish enough to pay income tax while I was in camp. I was dumb.

DC: So, can you walk us through a typical day at Manzanar? When you wake up in the morning until you go to bed at night?

CM: Oh, you wake up so you, then a gong ring the breakfast time, you go to the mess hall, you have your breakfast, then you report to work.

DC: Tell me more about your work.

CM: Our first job was to, when the barrack goes up, there's no landscape or nothing, there's just a barrack there, we would clean up the barrack and clean up the surrounding for the next group to come in. And because all the big contractors, they put up the barrack but they won't do the cleanup job, it was us cleaning up all the jobs to make it livable.

DC: Did you feel like you were making it livable?

CM: Oh yeah, we tried to help each other to make, you know, as comfortable as possible. With that we worked otherwise, be foolish, a lot of them were foolish, they wouldn't even do that.

DC: What happened after work?

CM: Well, recreation, we'd play baseball, basketball, whatever . And some classes, they're, they had a lot of spare time so there's a lot of well-educated, talented people, they'd become a instructor and teach these various people for their project or you know, flower arrangement, wood carving, or all that. They had time so they, out of nothing they made some very nice...

DC: Art?

CM: Yes.

DC: Did you participate in any of the classes?

CM: No, I was not that talented. I was more on the sport end of the deal. I played a lot of basketball and softball.

DC: And then you had dinner after recreation?

CM: Oh, yes.

DC: Then what?

CM: Well, then you had your free time at evening there and people would take judo class or whatever .

DC: So what were your emotions when you were there at the camp?

CM: Well, the camp life, the idea is you just survive, there's nothing there for you unless you take special interest in certain things that they were teaching on the side, not the government project, but individual have their craft to teach.

DC: When you were there, did you feel like you made the right decision, staying behind to sell the business and then going to camp, or did you wish that you had gone to New Mexico, too?

CM: Well, I thought I made the right decision to stay back and clear up all the matters. At least you had something to start. We had what we made in camp, of course, you had.

DC: For when the war ended?

CM: Right.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2012 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.