<Begin Segment 14>

TI: And when you got to Tanforan, describe what you saw.

NH: Oh, said, "Wow, we're gonna live here?" [Laughs] "Okay." And we all got off and went into the grandstands where they had processing. And the people that were doing the processing were mostly Niseis older than myself, and they had organized some way of doing this. I don't know how they did it but they, they did most of the organizing.

TI: And then after you were, you were processed, then where did you go?

NH: Oh, then they were told, ours was 14, 14-something, I know it was Barracks 14, and it was a very end, end apartment. I forgot the number of it, but whatever it was, that's where we went.

TI: And so for a family of six, there were six of you, how much room did you have?

NH: We had one horse stall, 'cause Tanforan was a racetrack, you know.

TI: And so a horse stall would be roughly what size?

NH: I don't know. Not much wider, about half as wide as this room.

TI: So about 8...

NH: And twice as long this way.

TI: So maybe it was 10 x 20, roughly? Ten feet by twenty feet?

NH: Yeah, I guess so. That would be pretty good.

TI: And so six of you would live.

NH: Yeah, uh-huh.

TI: And how would the, the six of you kind of organize that space?

NH: Oh, well, we, my dad put one bunk on, one bed on top of another, so my brother and I were in one, and my sisters were in another one, and my mother and father slept in the middle, and that was it. Of course, there were, that's all it was for us, it's a dressing and sleeping facility. If you wanted to go to the bathroom you had to go out of the stall and go down the back way and there was a bathroom. It was a public bathroom, public showers, and public, everybody did their laundry in this, together, community laundry.

TI: And so what were you thinking? You were the oldest son. So you had the most education in terms of American education.

NH: Well, tenth grade. [Laughs]

TI: Tenth grade, and so, but you knew probably something about the U.S. government and how things were supposed to, to work. How did you feel about what was happening to, to your family?

NH: Well, that's, I think, I think I was so naive, tenth grade, I must have been a really dumb tenth grader 'cause it didn't bother me at all. It just, "This is what we have to do, let's do it," and then we did. In Tanforan, they said they were gonna start a school, the people that were gonna start the school were older than us, about four or five years older than us. And they said, "Well, we can't let you kids be running around here without going to school," so they arranged for us to go to school in the grandstand, you know, underneath the grandstands was just all this big empty space. Well, that was the dining area, too, and so morning, noon and supper we'd have to go to the grandstands with our plates and our knives and forks, and we go up there and go like that and we'd go down to the cafeteria line and get our food and eat there. Or you take it home and eat it, eat in your stall if you wanted to, some people did that. But mostly we just went there and we sat in our little group, our family table, ate whatever we had and then my mom would gather all our dishes together and take 'em home and wash 'em and get ready for lunch. But after breakfast, about an hour or two after breakfast, then school would begin.

TI: In that same place?

NH: In that same place. There were no walls or anything, so, "Okay, you kids go here, tenth graders here, ninth graders here, sixth graders here," and so on down the line. And they did their best to teach math and reading. We didn't have anything to read, though, so we did, they made up, they made -- I know we did math. I guess they had books that they could get some sort of idea of what to do.

TI: And you said these were like the older Niseis, four or five years, so they're like college --

NH: Yeah. So I'd be tenth grader, then this, my math teacher was, was going to Cal. She has since passed on, Ms. Hosoi, that was her maiden name. I forgot her... Katayama, I think was her married name. Well, anyhow, Ms. Hosoi was going to Cal, she was a math major and she taught math. And there were other people, I don't know what they did. We had, I think most of us had at least two or three different classes of one kind or another.

TI: That's interesting.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.