<Begin Segment 4>

RD: Did your dad, was he able to fix up your barracks at all?

Roy D.: Well, my dad was a pretty good little furniture maker, so I think he did get, make little chairs and things like that from scrap lumber that was around the camp. But I can't remember him making very elaborate furniture or anything, maybe little stools or little chairs, very simple furniture.

RD: Do you think perhaps he didn't want to make it seem like he was going to stay?

Roy D.: Well, that I don't know. Oh, the other thing he did make was getas, I guess you know what getas are.

RD: What?

Roy D.: They're little wood clogs, and we used them to go to, when we went to the shower room, we didn't want to get athlete's foot, but we all wore geta and took showers wearing these things.

RD: We've heard this one before, and also because of the mud and the dirt and all that.

Roy D.: Right, right.

RD: So the swimming hole, tell me, do you remember the swimming hole?

Roy D.: Yeah, I had a very scary experience at the swimming hole because I wasn't a very good swimmer. The one time I was swimming across, and I tried to stand up, and it was very deep there. And a neighbor, Richard Kishimoto -- I hope he's still alive -- but I was struggling and he pulled me out, pulled me to the side. And I had panicked then. But in order to get over that fear, again, I went swimming right across the same place, just to make sure I wasn't afraid.

RD: Yeah, well, I heard there was a little current in there, too, because they fed it from the irrigation ditch.

Roy D.: Yeah, I don't know. I can't recall that. But we did go to the swimming hole in the summer.

RD: And did you leave the camp?

Roy D.: Yeah. There were several times, one time I sneaked out of camp, actually. I don't know how my dad got me a bicycle, but I had a bicycle. And Jimmy Nishiyama, another person in our block, he had a bicycle, and he knew a family near Powell, the Kawano family, they had not been interned because they had lived in Wyoming from before the war. So Jimmy and I sneaked out, we took our bikes and we went by the hog farm, sneaked underneath the wires. And we pedaled, I don't know, it must have been maybe five to ten miles to get to the Kawano family house. And we were a little scared because the dogs of different farms would bark at us as we pedaled along. We thought we'd get caught, but we made it to the Kawano farm and we spent a real enjoyable day there baling hay and eating ice cream, drinking milk and all. And so we had a great day. But on the way back, one of those sandstorms came up. And it was blowing so hard and it was so sandy that we had to take shelter by a barn near the road, and we had to wait there 'til the wind subsided because it was so windy and sandy. And we finally got back to the camp around six or seven, it was dark already, and we snuck in, back into the camp. But that was one of our interesting experience I had.

RD: And you didn't get in trouble?

Roy D.: No, nobody knew we went. [Laughs] But near the end of the war, I think it must be in '45, I remember taking a bus with several of my friends to Powell. We went to a movie, and I still remember the movie was, it was called The Mummy's Curse, a real scary movie for young kids. And we did go to the movie, I remember. I don't know how we had money, I guess our dad must have given us money for that.

RD: I know they said they had some movies in camp. Did you ever go to the camp movies?

Roy D.: Oh, yeah, our camp, Block 9, had a movie theater. And there were several experience I remember there because one movie we saw was The Sullivans. I don't know if you remember the movie where these five Sullivan brothers were on a navy ship and it got sunk and they all died. After that, the navy never let brothers go together on a ship, I think. But there were about five or six of us in the front row, and we were all crying, it was such a sad story. But we used to see movies like that, and we also, on Saturday mornings we used go to see Buck Rogers. There was a whole series, every Saturday morning, Buck Rogers would be one, so we used to enjoy that. And I think it cost us a nickel each to go to the movies.

RD: I just paid thirteen dollars, too. Do you remember -- I know you were pretty young for this, but do you remember when Ben Kuroki came to the camp?

Roy D.: No, I don't remember that.

RD: Because he was the famous bomber.

Roy D.: Yeah, airman, yeah.

RD: And there were some people... he doesn't like to talk about this very much, of course.

[Interruption]

RD: So no guards. Do you remember a bird?

Roy D.: A bird?

RD: A bird named Maggie?

Roy D.: No. I read that book recently...

RD: By Shig, yeah.

Roy D.: But I don't remember the bird. Magpie, it was a magpie, wasn't it?

RD: Uh-huh. But nobody knew that they could talk. There wasn't a lot of talking, I don't think.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2010 Raechel Donahue and Garrett Lindemann and Densho. All Rights Reserved.