Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Shigeo Kihara
Narrator: Shigeo Kihara
Interviewer: Richard Potashin
Location: Sacramento, California
Date: April 1, 2011
Densho ID: denshovh-kshigeo-01-0016

<Begin Segment 16>

RP: Right across the road from you was a large area. It used to be called a shepherd ranch and there was a lot of cottonwood trees there and still are.

SK: Oh, okay. Yeah.

RP: There was an area called North Park at the time the camp was there. There was a barbeque and people would go and picnic there.

SK: Oh, okay.

RP: Apparently one gentleman also had caged a number of wild animals there and had a zoo.

SK: Yeah, yeah, I don't remember.

RP: Les actually talked about that.

SK: Okay.

RP: Les said he actually captured magpies and other birds and raised them in the camp so.

SK: Oh yeah, that's right. There was a whole bunch of magpies and yeah, and people used to trap rabbits and things like that with snare traps and things. Now it comes... see, those are things that I just didn't remember but it comes back to me when you mention it.

RP: Uh-huh.

SK: Yeah, we used to make those little traps. Even when I was that young.

RP: Really? How did you make those?

SK: We used to use little, like a willow tree or whatever, a green one. And put a, and then I think we used to use a little diamond shaped string with a trigger on it. And when they went into it, boink, it went up and caught 'em. And, oh, that's right, and the older, the older people or the grownups used to capture little, I mean, they used to get birds but not kill 'em, to just put 'em in a cage for people, with those little nets. The birds would fly into 'em, yeah, and they get their, they get caught inside there and then they take 'em out of there and put, made 'em as pets. Yeah. That's right.

RP: Yeah. There was, seems like there was a very strong impulse to have a pet there.

SK: Right, yeah. And then they, they had those colorful like... it weren't, they weren't sparrows. They were something else. I mean, they were colorful. Not the garden variety sparrow, English sparrows. It, they were something else. Anyway, yeah. I remember that too, now.

RP: Interesting.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.