<Begin Segment 19>

TI: Okay, so I want to ask a little bit about other activities before the war, like, things like picnics.

LW: They even had a football team.

TI: Well, football team, but like picnics, did you...

LW: Yeah, picnic once a year, we had a community picnic. Everybody's invited from all out in the country and people in town. It's a big deal, picnic. Then they have races and they have prizes for the kids, so they had, kids had a good time. They spent almost all day out there.

TI: And the picnic was, was that in that field nearby? Was it by the school or by the...

LW: That school is after the camp.

TI: Oh, okay.

LW: But before the camp, there used to be a baseball diamond, they knocked that out. You know, the nice bleacher you see, that's where they used to have all the picnic in there.

TI: And when you say lots of people, so, again, hundreds of people would come?

LW: Oh, yeah. Maybe five hundred people. They'd all bring their, like a potluck, their whole family bring their own food.

JS: What time of year was that? When did they have the picnic?

LW: You mean...

JS: Yeah, when was the community picnic every year? Was that summertime?

LW: Yeah, summertime. Because wintertime, it's raining. This is around Fourth of July, something like that, when the weather's nice.

JS: And did you notice a big change when it was harvest time, when all the workers came?

LW: Yeah, harvest time, there's nothing you can do, because people were all working. But then they have special occasion, like on the weekend, they had parades, they had Boy Scouts, and the Buddhist church, they dress up that... what do you call that? So the Buddhist church had a nice parade, too.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.