<Begin Segment 14>

RP: Let's just talk about how, how involved were you in the church at Amache? You said there were activities and things.

TA: I think we went to the service and I don't recall whether it was conducted in English or in Japanese, but I'm sure that we had services, and I don't recall going to the big Christian thing. And being Buddhist was not within my experience whatsoever, nor being a Catholic. In fact, I think there is a picture that we have of, someone had taken of a small group of us at camp, and I don't recall who took it or what. And my photographs are probably going to be the last of my de-cluttering thing. [Laughs]

RP: Do you remember other clubs in the camp, besides your own?

TA: I think that there were clubs, but I don't remember other than the Wee Teeners, and there was another club that we were in. But there were glee clubs, there were... I don't remember.

RP: You mentioned earlier about this, there was a group of kids that kind of dressed up like zoot suiters.

TA: [Laughs] Yes.

RP: Were they a little more...

TA: Well actually, there was a term for them like yogores, which means dirty. So I think they thought they were pretty, I can't recall if this is right after the war, whether they thought they were so with it, with the long chains and things of that sort, but I think high schoolers tend to be, kind of go with fads, and that probably was what that was at that time. Some of them were very good, I think, in football and so they could be big man on campus kind of thing.

RP: Tough guys.

TA: But basketball was very competitive in camp. There were very good players. We used to go watch. Because it was a thing that the farm areas could do, and so they already had that background. They were good at it. But I think that when the camp place football team played one of the outlying things, I think one of the Romers, R-O-M-E-R, was on the other team, and I think he came to Los Angeles as part of the school district and I think he was from there.

RP: So the --

TA: But the, I think the outsiders thought it was unfair because they always lost, and they did not have as big a population to draw from as we did, because we had a population of ten thousand people and they had small places. And some of the people said, they were very resentful of the camp because we had a hospital, they could smell food growing, they did not know that anything grew in that area except sugar beets. They had never, ever smelled celery, they had never smelled other kinds of produce that some of the people in the camp were growing. They, because all they knew was sugar beets. And some of the barracks, I think, I understand the people in that area afterwards bought because they thought some of the construction, poor as it was, was better than what they had.

RP: Do you ever recall, kind of in that same idea of community attitudes about the camp, that Japanese Americans in Amache were being fed better than people outside camp, that was a common...

TA: I read a study where they said in, it turned out to be in thirds. For a third of the people the food was better than they had, for a third it was about the same, and for a third it was worse than they had. I think for me it was worse than I had before. And having also being with the Yoshimunes, who had been in the produce business, and being part of a market, our food was fresher, it was better. And being in a city, it was better, except that I cannot know if whether you lived on a farm, whether you'd have better food or not. But I was introduced to some things that I had never, ever eaten before.

RP: Apple butter.

TA: Yeah, apple butter, squid. [Laughs]

RP: Were you introduced to mutton too?

TA: What?

RP: Mutton?

TA: I don't remember what that was. But the boys in our camp, in our block, so many of them worked as dishwashers in camp, and so they had some money and so that was very helpful for them. They probably would not have been able to earn that kind of money had the war not happened. They would have had to work to help their parents if their parents were gardeners or something of that sort, but they would certainly not expect to get money for it. It would be, help sustain the family.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.