<Begin Segment 8>

CN: So you all arrived and obviously you were the first to get to Minidoka, too, right because no one else was there.

DM: I think they some people go early to help get settled I think and I think some went to help build it but I'm not real sure about that.

CN: How many barracks were there at Minidoka?

DM: Let's see. I think there were twelve in each block and there were forty-four blocks.

CN: Do you remember which, the number of your...

DM: 28-4-C.

CN: 28-4-C. Were you the only family in your barrack?

DM: Oh, no, they had at the end of each barrack, both ends, they had smaller apartments for couples. And then they had a large apartment for six or more, and then right in the middle was one to five, so we were in the middle size apartment.

CN: A lot of Japanese families had -- yours was kind a small family wasn't it? I can almost picture having a lot of...

DM: Yes, they probably had two rooms I would think. But we just had our cots lined up and then they had this big potbelly stove in one corner and...

CN: And you had to go to a mess hall or something?

DM: Yeah. Mess hall, all the meals, laundry room, showers and all.

CN: What were the conditions? The barracks, at least were newer.

DM: Newer but still, they were still just, inside they were the raw wood and outside they were tarpapered and, you know, it was dusty in the spring in Idaho and the dust just come blowing in the windows and all.

CN: And it was still pretty cold wasn't it?

DM: Yeah, it was cold.

CN: Did they give you coats and things like that?

DM: Oh yeah, they passed out, actually they were mostly like CCC, old army, the CCC must have got it from the old army, stuff, and so they were, a lot of them were World War I type pants and jackets and stuff.

CN: Because you, from Seattle all you could bring, what did they allow you, just one suitcase per person?

DM: What you can carry.

CN: So you're seventeen years old at Minidoka? Now you only went through junior year?

DM: I didn't finish my junior year.

CN: Okay, you were, so did they have high school for you?

DM: They had school in camp but they weren't -- a lot of us didn't -- I didn't go to school in camp. I would rather, I worked rather than go to... so I signed up with the coal, they used a lot of coal, everything was coal to heat all the barracks and heat all the mess halls and the laundry room, so they used a lot of coal. And the trains did not come into camp so we would have to take -- they were army trucks, and go out to the spur which was probably about probably five to ten miles out of camp and we'd go load the coal onto these trucks. And they weren't dump trucks. You'd get into these gondola cars and hand shovel, fill the trucks, and then you'd fill the trucks and go back to camp and unshovel it wherever they needed it.

CN: So you were busy.

DM: They had two crews, night and day crew.

CN: What other activities did you participate in camp? I mean, there must have been a lot of seventeen year olds.

DM: Oh yeah, in the evening there was, all in the summer, they had baseball leagues; they had dances every Saturday night in the mess halls. But most of all, after dinner we just kind of hung out. And there again I made a lot of good friends. I found out Japanese kids are more fun than white kids. [Laughs] I fit in. You know, in Seattle, I was fine until we got to high school. All my Caucasian friends, and then they start pairing up, a boy and a girl, and here at that time a little Japanese boy didn't even think about asking a white girl out. And so that's when I began to feel the need, I don't know if was a need, that I was kind of out in left field, but once I got to camp and I met all these boys and girls, and so my memory of camp is more, that's why my daughter wanted me to come to say that my outlook is different than a lot of people because I didn't think it was so bad.

CN: You had a lot of friends.

DM: I got a lot of friends.

CN: And you could socialize.

DM: Right.

CN: And it seemed like there were a lot of activities actually.

DM: A lot of activities, and at seventeen you don't think of the, what, how terrible all this really was to happen to you. My sister was much more adamant about the treatment that we received, she's five years older. She realized the impact more than I did.

CN: Your sister was probably in college?

DM: She was a junior at the University of Washington.

CN: So she had to leave and so she felt that?

DM: She was only in camp one year and she got a chance to go to Hamline University here and that's how we ended up to Minnesota.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright ©2009 Densho and the Twin Cities JACL. All Rights Reserved.