<Begin Segment 7>

RP: Tell us about living in the barracks. What was that like for you?

ES: Well, it was certainly different. But then of course and then they built the dormitories and they were really nice, there were two girls assigned to each room in the barracks. And our barracks was H so we called it Heaven, our barracks was Heaven. And of course Martha and I lived in the same barracks. She wasn't my roommate, I had a teacher by the name of Arlene Hooper was my roommate.

RP: Can you describe the rooms to us?

ES: They were small with a closet I think with a curtain over the... I don't think there was a closet door but a curtain over the closet. And there was room for two twin beds and two dressers and that was about it.

RP: Did you have bathroom facilities inside the dorm?

ES: We had one main, I mean there was just one big bathroom that had showers and the commodes and the sinks.

RP: Now did commodes have partitions, doors to them?

ES: Yes, yes.

RP: You had a sense of privacy?

ES: Yes, and we had a kitchen where we could you know make popcorn or we always ate in the dining areas in the barracks.

RP: There was an administration mess hall, is that where you took your meals?

ES: Yes, that's where we had our meals. I think they were about twenty five cents a meal.

RP: And do you remember what type of food was served in the administration mess hall?

ES: Oh, we had good food, good beef, good pork. Of course during the season when the cantaloupes and watermelons were ripe here we really lived good.

RP: So would you have meat at every meal?

ES: It seems to me like we had something with meat in it at every meal, every dinner.

RP: How did you strike up a relationship with Martha Shoaf?

ES: I don't know. I think it was first started when we moved into the same dorm because I wasn't in the same barracks with her. This Arlene Hooper was in the same barracks I was and I can't remember who else was there, seems like there were four of us.

RP: In the barrack rooms, four to a room.

ES: Yeah, but in the dormitories there were two to a room and I forget how many rooms we had. And most of us were all teachers.

RP: If you can recall back to the time you spent in the barracks, was there any furniture there other than the beds and what were the beds like?

ES: You know, I can't remember. It's been too long ago.

RP: What do you remember about Martha? What attracted you to her as a friend?

ES: Oh, I think her outgoing personality. She made friends with everybody so easily. So we took a lot of hikes together and I never hitchhiked unless I was with Martha. She was a good hitchhiker.

RP: I can see her just kind of throwing herself out in front of a car so hey, stop.

ES: [Laughs] Yeah and they'd stop for her too.

RP: When you hitchhiked, where were you hitchhiking to?

ES: Well, she had made friends I think with everybody in every bureau of water and power people all the way up the whole valley so we would visit some of them. And that was always so nice because their lawns were so nice and green and all the trees so it was nice to get out of the hot sun of Manzanar. Although we would take walks out by the orchards and the trees and outside the camp and we'd go to the river, a little stream out here. And we made friends with some of the men at the airport.

RP: They were training pilots out there.

ES: Yes, and Martha's sister was up here training to be a pilot and she met a friend and the two women, they had a room at the dorm too.

RP: What do you recall about the airport?

ES: Well, one of the teachers made a good friend of one of the pilots and she married him, Burmay her name was, Burmay Rude, she was a commercial teacher at the high school. She taught typing and shorthand.

RP: She was a teacher at the Manzanar High School?

ES: Yes.

RP: And she married one of the --

ES: She married one of the pilots over there. After they were married he flew for the Flying Tigers but at Manzanar he was training well to the people was... I can't think of his last name. John, he was a movie star.

RP: John Payne?

ES: Yeah, John Payne and Clete Roberts. And so he was training them, he also was training Martha's sister and her friend, Nona, and so we made quite a few trips back and forth to the airport. Now there's no sign of it left.

RP: A few runways and that's about it.

ES: There's still some runways?

RP: The runways are still there.

ES: Of course they weren't cement they were just plain gravel.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright &copy; 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.