<Begin Segment 18>

RP: Did your other sisters work in the camp too?

KN: Yeah.

RP: Let's see, Hanako, do you remember what she did?

KN: Yeah. She worked one of the project directors too.

RP: Oh, she worked as a secretary too?

KN: Yeah, she, yeah, she was a stenographer too.

RP: Oh really. Did you teach her?

KN: Huh?

RP: Did she go to school for that?

KN: Just from high school.

RP: Oh, okay. How about Nobuko? What did...

KN: Nobuko's too little. She didn't, she was only about eight or nine years old. She just went to school. She didn't do anything.

RP: Haru?

KN: Huh? Harue was not too well so she didn't do anything. She had a, she was always sickly. She had kidney problems and... Harue, so she didn't, she didn't work at all.

RP: Was she, was she the sister that got separated from the rest of the family? And was that...

KN: No, that was...

Off Camera: No, that was Nobuko when she was, she was ill. So she spent a lot of time in the hospital. Nobuko.

RP: Nobuko.

Off Camera: Harue was the one who had appendicitis and died.

RP: Oh, yes, yes.

Off Camera: The first funeral in Jerome.

KN: Yeah, when my sister Harue.

RP: Your sister passed away in Jerome.

KN: Yeah, and the first funeral in Jerome. Boy, it was a big funeral. Everybody came 'cause they never had a funeral in camp. And my sister was the first one that died.

RP: And now what were the circumstances about her... she had an appendicitis attack...

KN: Yeah, yeah.

RP: ...and nobody treated it?

KN: No, in camp, they don't treat you right away. You just ignored 'til it's too late. And then it burst. And then too late and she died from it. Her appendix burst. 'Cause she keep on saying her stomach hurt, stomach hurt but they didn't do a damn thing. So you know, you just have to, we just went through all this stuff in camp that we wouldn't have gone through if we were, if we're not in a concentration camp.

RP: Right.

KN: But then there's a lot of people who went through the same thing. Yeah, in camp, we had a lot of funerals. Young kids, old folks... just of a short illness and they just go.

RP: And was that was pretty early that she passed away a short time after you got to Jerome?

KN: Yeah, yeah.

RP: So the medical facilities were pretty...

KN: Not very --

RP: Nonexistent.

KN: -- not very efficient, not very good. And then you have a stomach ache. You call for ambulance but you wait and wait and wait. They don't come. By the time she comes she stomach and she's holding like this [Bends over] It burst but then ambulance don't come 'til it's too late. Everything was like that in camp. You can't get any service. You just have to live through it. That's how it was in camp. But then what can you do? That was, that was wartime camp.

RP: Did that change later on? Did things get better and more efficient?

KN: Toward the end I suppose. But we weren't there long enough to find out.

RP: So you said that a lot of people came to the funeral.

KN: Yeah, from the camp. Everybody in the, in our, in our block. It was the first death in the camp and the first funeral so they thought it should be polite. So gee, all the young kids, they wore a suit and they all came to my sister's funeral.

RP: And these were all people from Florin or just all over?

KN: Not really, they were all in our block.

RP: What block were you in?

KN: Thirty-two I think it was. But everybody went through a lot. There's a lot of people who died in camp so you can't say anything. They weren't all old people either. Young people have acute appendicitis or something that you never think about outside. You don't get any medical help. And by the time you go to the hospital it's too late.

RP: And so your youngest sister, Nobuko, was also hospitalized too.

KN: But she was all right. She, she recovered.

RP: But she spent a long time in the hospital there?

KN: I think she did, huh? Yeah, she did.

Off Camera: She had lung problems and she, she had more medical problems than I realized.

KN: Yeah. She had all kinds of problems. Kidney problem.

Off Camera: She said Baachan used to sit outside her window.

KN: Yeah. Yeah, you don't get much medical help you know. In the camp you just, you just live through it and you die.

RP: Did your mom work in camp?

KN: No. She was too busy taking care of the sick in the family. She had to go to the hospital, bring them snack and all that so didn't work at all. My father worked but he worked in the, out in the forest chopping wood I think that's what he did. Everybody had to chop your own wood. We had a big potbelly stove and they, you had to put your own wood in and so everybody had to go out in the forest to thing. And my father was eighty years old but they expected him to go get our own wood so he went. Yeah, some experience in camp. You talk about it now and people, my kids think it's real funny but it wasn't at the time. We went through all that that you wouldn't think of it now. But then at that time it was one of those things that we had to go through. And this hakujin that worked, they never seen us before. They never seen a Japanese people. And then we worked for them and then they couldn't believe that we could do the things they think, they didn't know we could. I took dictation from them and I had to fix their English. They're terrible. But then they never had such an experience of a Japanese being secretaries.

RP: Right, so they didn't believe that you could do those kind of things.

KN: Yeah. I know, they wouldn't believe that I could do all that.

RP: Did you have, did you have a social life in camp? Did you go to dances?

KN: Yeah. That's about the only thing. And then they had movies. Some of those old, old movies that we'd never seen before. But once a week they showed on the recreation, rec hall, old movies. And I don't know where they get 'em but we never saw it anyways so we watched it. Yeah, we got movies every couple of weeks.

RP: And when you attended dances, were there bands in the camp?

KN: No. Regular record.

RP: Just records. And so what was your, what was your favorite music at that time?

KN: Oh, Glenn Miller, Kay Kyser, Tommy Dorsey, all those...

RP: Big Band.

KN: Yeah, Big Band of that era.

RP: And you were a good dancer?

KN: Yeah. From people from the block. We didn't care. We just went. You just, they'd pick any of us and then we'd dance with anybody who wants to dance with us.

RP: Do you remember there was usually a person that was designated as a block manager, in your block.

KN: Yeah, he was sort of voted block manager.

RP: Voted, right.

KN: Yeah.

RP: Do you remember the man who was your block manager?

KN: I can't even remember now. There were active people even from the outside in their social things, so we just designated them as block manager whether they wanted to or not.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.