Densho Digital Archive - Chizuko Iyama - Ernie Iyama Interview (denshovh-ichizuko

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Q: Well, yeah, if we could go through, you can just go through loosely of the accommodations, the food, activities, the saunas and hot tubs.

CI: We did have hot tubs. [Laughs] The Issei just took it over.

EI: Well, things got better later, but at the beginning, naturally, none of us had the experience of... well, for one thing, living together like this, and the army barracks were just rooms, no closet space or anything. And no ceiling so that they just had a wall and then next door, the gable of the roof was open, you know, that space and so there was no privacy. And people who had children, like Chizu's sister had a little baby, was three year old then?

CI : No, born in camp.

EI: Oh, she was born in camp. Well anyway, so you know, the baby would cry at night and they'd try to keep it quiet so it wouldn't bother people. And then, of course, some of the people didn't like the noise because they couldn't sleep and things like that, so there were all kinds of problems like that. And then of course, those who had teenage children had difficulty because it was, they were all in one room and you have girls and boys, you know, teenage girls and boys all there together. And it was difficult to try to get some privacy for them, so they had to hang up either blankets or sheets and things like that. And, of course, they were not well-built buildings, so that when we had a sandstorm, it all came inside through the windows and the doors and even the floor, you know, the space between the boards, because they just, boards that were nailed down and as they dried, they separated, you know. So it was very difficult that, and then in the mess halls, we... they called them mess halls, the kitchen and dining room area where all of us went together, the cooks had never cooked for that many people before. There were about 250 or so people to a block and they had to cook for these people. So at the beg inning, it was, the place was a mess, really, because things weren't cooked well and of course, the things that the WRA gave us were for Caucasians, you know, the type of meal. And we wanted rice and things like that. So we had to petition for that and get it in and finally we got it. So then they started cooking Japanese meals and things got better.

[Interruption]

CI: That was really hard because you're cramping, you're feeling terrible, and then when you're coming out, the soldiers are waiting for you with their lights, and the moment you come out, the lights follow you as you go back to your barracks. It was very humiliating, I think, for a lot of us, that first week in camp in Santa Anita was just horrible. And we had, they didn't have enough supplies and also we had like really bad food which caused us, our stomachs to really revolt against it, so I can remember some of those situations but those kind of like ameliorated afterwards. But the food in camp, of course, with, I don't remember how much it was, even the little inadequate food that we had was under attack by Congressional committees and we could, you know, think of what it did to our morale to read about the fact that Congress was saying that we were being treated too well and that they should cut down our food allotment because the food was very, very poor. However, the cooks did do a good job, I feel like, for the kind of, for the kind of food that they had to work with. When we got into the relocation centers, then because the people in camp also grew their own food and fresh vegetables, etcetera, things got better because of that. Again, my mother used to spend so much time waiting in line because the Issei didn't have very much to do. And so they would spend great numbers of .hours waiting outside of the mess halls and she used to laugh and say, "Seems like in camp all we do is stand in line." Because that was really the way her life was, very much so.