Densho Digital Archive - Kazuo Shiroyama Interview (denshovh-skazuo-01-0005)

<Begin Segment 5>

RD: So did you know where your father was?

KS: No, we didn't. My mother received letters from him, and of course, with the return mail address, she found out that he was at Bismarck, North Dakota, which is, the winters are one of the most severest in the nation there in Bismarck, North Dakota. I remember my father sending us photographs, midwinter photographs of Bismarck, I remember those photographs with those huge snowdrifts, and the icicles hanging over the roof awnings. And then my father --

RD: Almost made you feel lucky, huh?

KS: Yeah, the winters in Wyoming were not as bad. Pretty bad, but not as bad as Bismarck, North Dakota.

RD: And when were you reunited with your father?

KS: I believe it was somewhere between two and three years ago after that, maybe two and a half years or so. He came and our block manager made an announcement in the mess hall as he always did when he had announcements to make for the people living in the block. And he introduced my father, and my father was working in the mess hall at his camp. I believe at that time it was out in Crystal City, Texas, or it might have been another camp in New Mexico, Santa Fe, there was another camp in Santa Fe, it was one of the two. And so the block manager asked him if he'd like to work, and since he was working at the mess hall previously, he said he'd like to get a mess hall job here. So he started working in the mess hall, our mess hall that we ate in. And since he was employed at the mess hall, he would bring home eggs and bacon and such for breakfast, and we'd just cook it on our stove, and that would help us to eat at home rather than lining up in the mess hall there before we eat our breakfast in the mess hall, so that was a plus.

RD: And you could cook it on the stove that you'd already brought?

KS: I think my mother had a hotplate there besides that. Every room had a coal-burning stove. That got pretty hot, too.

RD: And so you had guards. Did the guards have guns?

KS: Yes, the guards all had guns, and they were pointing at us. The reason I say that is because a number of people said the guards were protecting us. If they were doing that, the guns should have been pointing outwardly, not inwardly. [Laughs]

RD: And didn't that make you nervous? I talked to Shig Yabu who said he used to go up and ask them if he could see their guns. You were older.

KS: I never went near a camp guard, never spoke to one. But occasionally I would glance up at the guard tower and see that there was a soldier up there with his weapon.

RD: And how about the people like the project managers and the camp managers? How did they treat you?

KS: Are you talking about the...

RD: Well, they called the project managers, the people that did the administration, you probably didn't interact with them very much. But you had a lot of Caucasians who worked there in camp in the WPA.

KS: I don't know. I can't answer that question because I was too young. I was just a young kid and I don't know how they were treating us as inmates there.