<Begin Segment 8>

RP: Where did you go to go, where did you leave to go to the Portland Assembly Center?

MH: We left our home and our neighbors, the Hosleys, took us to the Gresham fairgrounds, which was the county fairgrounds there. And they dropped us off there and we waited and waited for the buses to... I, you know, I can remember just sitting on our luggage waiting for the buses to come to take us. And they, and they did and when we got there it was like walking through these kind of fence, fencing. And we could see the barbed wire. And then again we waited and waited to find out where we to go, what apartment we were to have, as they called, an apartment. Yeah. And it was quite a shock to find out what we were going to live in. It was just plank floors and there were I think plywood to enclose our room. There was a canvas that hung as a door. There, there were seven cots in the room. And they were cots not regular, regular beds. They were just cots. And they gave us a ticking and then we had to go and fill it with hay. So that was our mattress. They gave us blankets and they were old army blankets, probably left over from World War I because somebody said they actually had bullet holes in there, yes. So that was our, our blankets. And that's where we lived. Probably just enough for, for seven cots. There were no ceilings except the ceiling of the building itself. And we happened to be in an area where they had windows that were like this, you know, across so they would open the windows during the day. And at night we could hear them come through and clank, shut the windows. We could see them walking on top. I used to watch for 'em because it would be about ten o'clock and that's when we had to be in our rooms.

RP: So you had a curfew.

MH: Uh-huh.

RP: Even in the camp.

MH: In the camp, right, in the assembly center.

RP: So the assembly center originally was a livestock exhibition center.

MH: That's right.

RP: Had you ever visited that as a child on a field trip or?

MH: No.

RP: So that was your first ...

MH: I had no idea where it was, what it was there for or anything. Yeah.

RP: What did, what did the ground smell like?

MH: It was putrid I guess is the only word I can think about. And someone told us we were where they usually had the sheep, you know, where the sheep came in and that's where they had those. So, everything underneath is like manure, whatever, 'cause I don't think they cleaned them out particularly. Fortunately we, there were planks of wood over it so, yeah. So it was, it was quite a place. The arena was still there. We played in the arena a lot. And they had bleachers. They had school for us half a day in very cramped spaces. And our teachers were the older Nisei ladies who wanted to do that.

RP: One of the other conditions that people describe were the, and you mentioned about the smell, but also apparently there were lots of flies.

MH: Oh, the flies.

RP: Drawn to the manure I guess.

MH: Yes. The flies... I don't know if you remember fly stickers. You know, they hung and they would stick onto this thing and they would just be black with flies. And they hung them all over the place. Otherwise you'd just have to swat 'em. Right. The bathroom, shower facilities were pretty primitive. I think it was really hard for my mother especially. You know you have the privacy of your own bath and then she's used to a Japanese bath, an ofuro, but they had showers and so, you know, that was how we kept our self clean. We had to go at certain times too. Because everyone couldn't go there at the same time.

RP: And the whole assembly center was surrounded by barbed wire...

MH: Yes.

RP: ...and sentries. And can you still see that in your own mind and...

MH: I can still see it.

RP: And do you have a feeling attached with that? Did you have a sense of, you know, that your freedom has been restricted or when you see, when you see a soldier with a gun walking along a fence line and you're inside that fence...

MH: You know, I was, I was young. I was eleven, twelve years old. I don't think too much of that kind of thing. You know, all I remember is looking out of the barbed wire fences and seeing cars whizzing by. And that it was different outside than it was inside.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.