<Begin Segment 29>

TI: Okay. So from here, so you're picked up by train and you're brought to Merced. And what were your first impressions when you got to Merced? What was your thoughts when you got there? What did you see?

LW: Only thing I saw was that we got to get settled, pick up our luggage and where were we supposed to go. And the food wasn't that good, so my mother used to make rice and, you know, kind of better than what they feed you out there.

TI: And so when they found out that your parents could cook, did they recruit them to work in the mess hall?

LW: Yeah. Well, this is at Colorado.

TI: Okay. So at Merced they didn't...

LW: Merced, they didn't have it. Merced, it wasn't equipped for, like the Amache camp. It wasn't, it's not permanent. It was temporary, so you just got enough to, place to stay maybe one or two months. That's all we stayed, then they shipped it out. Because the other camp wasn't ready. They were building the barracks.

TI: And so when you say Merced was temporary, so for things like food, how would that be arranged in terms of how people were fed?

LW: Well, that's why I think a lot of people, I guess mostly catering and maybe... I don't recall that part there.

TI: So any other memories of Merced? So you're there for not too long.

LW: Oh, lot of people stay at that horse barn, you know, the Merced, just like, what's that, Santa Anita.

TI: And so do you have memories of the smells and things like that at Merced?

LW: No, we used to have lot of fun there because we used to see these young couples go out there, you know, it's out in the open there. And in the evening, see what's going on. [Laughs] That's about the only thing I could remember.

TI: So you would see young couples going out to make out or...

LW: Yeah, make love and everything like that.

TI: But right out in the open?

LW: Well, yeah, they got no privacy unless they got to go way out there, out in the open there. The place was pitch dark. But that's the only thing I could remember.

TI: So the couples thought that they were getting away out there, it was dark, and so they had privacy out there, but yet you could kind of see what was going on. [Laughs]

LW: Yeah. But that's the only thing I could remember. But we didn't... about two months we stayed there, so it was really temporary. But it was, you know, where they have a horse place in the barn, it was really like Santa Anita and all that.

TI: Now, at this point, your family was, there were seven of you? There were your parents and five kids?

LW: In one room. So they had those, one of those folding army cots, you know, those ones the GI uses? That's what we had. Just enough to sleep in.

TI: And do you recall things like the weather, if it was hot?

LW: No, that was in April, so it wasn't too bad.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.