Densho Digital Archive - Nobu Shimokochi Interview (denshovh-snobu

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RD: Let's move forward to Heart Mountain. So you're on the train, and the shades are down.

NS: Yeah, but we kind of lifted them up and opened the windows, and we kind of looked out. But boy, that let in a lot of soot. And by the time we got to Heart Mountain we were really dirty and needed a bath.

RD: Did you get a bath?

NS: Yeah, there was a shower facility. And here we came to this camp, just another concentration camp. But everything was so much nicer than Santa Anita that we felt good. [Laughs] If you can imagine that.

RD: And then how about when you first saw snow?

NS: Well, you know, when I was in Los Angeles, we didn't have a whole lot of smog. And in the distant mountaintops you could see snow, like Mt. Wilson in the wintertime, there was snow up there. And my parents, my dad, he took us up there one day to play in the snow. Yeah, I don't know what year, how old I was then, but you know, I saw snow from L.A.

RD: Little different when you saw it in person, wasn't it?

NS: Yeah, but when we were in Santa Anita, we used to stand in the hot sun waiting our turn to get into the mess hall, and it was hot. Now, a few days later, we go to Heart Mountain and it's cool. And by mid-September, we had a snowstorm, and that was a real shocker. You know, nobody from California had clothes for that kind of weather. And they gave each family catalogs from Montgomery-Ward and Sears, and I believe Spiegel, and we ordered clothes from that. And there were certain items in that catalog that there were either out of stock of or we weren't allowed to order. And when we got to... when we got the orders in, everybody was wearing the same kind of clothes. You know, the schoolkids, I had this hat with earflaps, it was corduroy and a plaid pattern, black on blue, and there was another version that was black on red. But here we are, there's a lot of people wearing the same kind of clothes, and it was a funny situation.

RD: Do you remember what you weren't allowed to order? Cap guns, say?

NS: Ooh, no. I think the catalogs had markings in it, but I don't remember what we weren't allowed to order.

RD: How long did it take until you could make your barracks into a livable, or your parents could make your... do you remember it happening, how they made it livable? Because I've seen a lot of people put it together over the years.

NS: Yeah. Well, some people bought material, but a lot of the scrap lumber that was laying around, everybody wanted that, so that they can make a table or a shelf.

[Interruption]

NS: Part of our furniture were apple boxes, and we just sat on it, like the seat. But we sat on our beds, too. There wasn't very much furniture around, but some people were very resourceful in being able to make things. It was interesting how people start making things out of scrap wood and carving pins that they wear, they made necklaces out of apple seeds, and later on when we got a lot of people from Tule Lake into our camp, they imported a lot of seashells because Tule Lake was a dried up lake, and there was a lot of seashells, like small snails. And they would soak 'em in chlorine bleach to soften them up and push needles through it to make a necklace. They did things like that, there were all kinds of little crafts.

RD: Tell me about the slingshots.

NS: Pardon?

RD: Tell me about the slingshots, making slingshots?

NS: I don't remember making slingshots, but slingshots were kind of a toy that we played with before going to camp. And what we used to do is make slingshots out of wire, so probably could use a clothes hanger to make the slingshot with, and use rubber bands. And we used to use paper wads, fold them a certain way, and zing. Before camp we used to have these little wars.