Densho Digital Archive - Nobu Shimokochi Interview (denshovh-snobu

<Begin Segment 5>

RD: Okay, so tell me about some of the activity. I know there was a swimming hole, I've heard there was sumo wrestling, and wasn't there a...

NS: Well, I took judo lessons. And the central device or place as far as activities went was the school. That's where we met our classmates, there was dozens of organizations, girls had their clubs and the boys had their clubs. There were intramural sports, there were all these, well, basketball, football, all those different sports on an intramural level. And then the big events were, of course, the interschool, interscholastic games, like when we played Sheridan. I think they had a baseball team and basketball team, football team. Baseball, softball, football, we did great. We beat 'em all. But when it came to basketball, I think we were very lucky to win half of 'em, because we're all so little. It's a wonder they just didn't walk through us in football, but somehow we beat 'em all. I remember a game with Red Lodge, 63 to nothing. And you know, I often wondered how the parents felt. You know, this region, the whole region, was full of tiny towns scattered through a wide area, a few scattered towns. And they had a small population, and so they would travel over a hundred miles to get to our school, and I'm sure the parents worried about the safety of the travel and going to a concentration camp, well, basically a prison. And then they would get whipped by these "enemy people." I was wondering, "I wonder how they feel?"

RD: Do you remember a little town called Byron?

NS: Byron...

RD: You whipped their pants in football and in baseball. But we're going to be interviewing a fellow named Ray Habern who played football, and he said the town was only five hundred people. And so they only had a six-man football team and they got reamed. And they said they felt that secretly you had a full sized team and just knew a lot more. Because they were like, "A play? All we usually do is run the ball." They got murdered.

NS: Yeah, we played a lot of small teams because that's all there were. And Powell wouldn't play us because they were champions of the Big Horn Basin and they didn't want to lose their title. So all we could get out of them was a scrimmage. They don't keep score in a scrimmage.

RD: Let me ask you about Powell. Did you go through Powell, particularly in Powell, and I suppose Cody, too, but in particular in Powell where they had all those signs that said, "No Japs, keep moving," and all that. Did you see any of that?

NS: No, but we saw some of it in Cody as we were going to Yellowstone. But you know, we were all excited about Yellowstone. Wow, I mean, that was a huge thrill. And no other camp had an opportunity like that. You know, Cody was such a small town, and they had such a small space to display their anger, their hatred, they had such a short time. And by the time we passed through and they got out of sight, we forgot all about that.

RD: Do you remember what the signs said?

NS: Pardon?

RD: Do you remember what the signs said?

NS: No, I'm not... I'd be guessing now what the signs said.