<Begin Segment 7>

EI: So we had a lot of problems that we had to deal with within the camp and it's amazing because there are a lot of small things that come up which you don't realize, and you have to take care of them. Like even squabbles with the neighbors and things like that. And, of course, the other thing was the problem of getting furniture, there's no wood around so you can't even make it if you want to, so people had to...

CI: We scrounged around, though, didn't we?

EI: Scrounged around and find scraps of wood here and there and also, when they got crates, they would break down the crates, so you could see how they made the furniture, you could see all kinds of furniture that they made from these things, and that's what they had to do to make do, you know.

CI: One of the things that, I guess, comes through is the creativity of the Japanese, really came through. I can remember seeing, you know, people who had never really had any art classes or anything before making beautiful objects of art out of whatever they could find. And when we were in Topaz, they would find, like, old branches of the bushes and go out a little bit and find rocks and polish them and make all kinds of works of art. And I know that it's a shame, I think most of them just disappeared after the war. It would have been a very interesting thing to have kept them because they did so much with it. The other thing we saw, in terms of like classes, that there were a lot of classes that were organized and people like my mother went to classes, in terms of English and speaking English, Americanization classes. Classes... one of the things that we saw, for example, were men doing a lot of knitting, things that you ordinarily would not have seen. Knitting, crocheting, all kinds of crafts classes came up. And I think a lot had to do with the fact that the population they had was so creative and willing to share and willing to organize, so that there were lots of classes and things going on, lots of organized recreation, so that they made that time as meaningful as possible even though it was under terrible circumstances. Yeah.

EI: I think at the beginning, when we went into the camp, there was a lot of anxiety, especially among the Issei because they didn't know what was gonna happen to them. But after a year or a year and a half, then they realized that they're not going to harm them, but they're just going to keep them in camp, then think they relaxed a little and I think that's when they began to do all these kinds of things like carving things and... and the creativity came out. Because for the first time a lot of the Issei were able to relax like this. You know, had time, so they began to do all these things. And a lot of the creative things came out, as she said, and it's bad that some of them were lost.

CI: It's too bad like some of the songs and things that, especially among the Issei, was really fascinating, because they had their Issei poetry classes and things, and a lot of things came out there, but it's just lost after the war, people didn't do that.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1983, 2010 Densho and Steven Okazaki. All Rights Reserved.