<Begin Segment 12>

JA: Tell me about your first night in the camp.

HT: [Laughs] You know, the first night is something else, you know? Me being born on First and Pedro, other than sandlot playing field, all I knew was sidewalks, cement, and at night, we'll have streetlights. And I never thought about looking up into the sky, but the first night, all of a sudden I realized that my God, there is holes in the roof. There was knotholes. When we went in, they didn't have the drywall in the inside, and a lot of the places were not completely finished yet so we had knotholes all over the thing. I look up, and I see the sky, and I see stars, which I'd never enjoyed before. I thought, "My God, it's so beautiful." That is the sky, the first night sky that I experienced in Manzanar. So I guess no matter how bad things get, you know, there are good things happening, too. That's the beauty, beauty of nature, that's one thing that no one can take away, I guess. Experiencing the beauty of nature. Yeah.

JA: What did you observe about the place the next morning in daylight?

HT: Well, I never realized that a wide open space like Manzanar could suddenly be engulfed in smoke. All of a sudden it's gone, and you realize, that's not smoke. It's sandstorm, and it's just like smoke. You couldn't see the outside. It's just like smoke, it's like trying to see through smoke. So we made sure that the windows and the doors were shut real tight. And my mom says, "Hikoji, I think the storm is gone." I said, "No, no, no." So Mom opens the window and sure enough, the outside, outside is clear again. The sun is shining, but the inside, we're still having the sandstorm going. All the sands had entered through the cracks, through the windows and the knotholes and things. The outside is clear already, but the inside, we're still having a sandstorm. Dust. Sand dust is it? Is that what you call it? What a difference between the night stars and that.

JA: How did your mom adjust to life in camp? The kind of quarters you had and the style of daily life?

HT: She kept everything to herself. I think she never complained, but she kept, I know she just kept blaming herself for a lot of the things that had happened, and it was killing her inside. There again, going through her million death, she kept telling us, "It'll be over," but I know it was just killing her. Every day it was killing her. She tried to make the best of it, yes.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2002 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.