<Begin Segment 18>

RP: Did your father grow -- you mentioned he had a small garden right next to the pond -- was he also growing Japanese vegetables as well?

MY: Yes. Yes, like the Japanese nasubi, the elongated eggplant, and as I said, he loved green onions, and the cucumbers... just trying to think. And then there was some Japanese foods that he raised. I don't know what they were. They would grow in the water area, but he never shared it with us and they didn't look very appetizing. I think he just built, grew it for himself. But the garden was his therapy, I think.

RP: And would those vegetables just be, be cooked up in your room, or you'd take 'em to the mess hall?

MY: Yes, in the room, because we never grew enough to share with people in the mess hall, because each block had a couple of hundred people, right? Yeah, so, but we'd share it with the people that lived in our barracks and also the next barrack. Yeah, if they wanted it.

RP: Where do you think your dad learned how to trap animals? Was that in Texas, perhaps?

MY: I'm pretty sure it was in Texas. He was there, 'cause he arrived there when he was only fifteen, and so I'm sure he was there at least five to... let me see, he got married in 1930 and he was born in 1899, so, and my mother graduated from high school in, she was born 1908... I'm just trying to figure out when he came to Los Angeles. So he must've been in Texas a good five to maybe seven years, and he remembers having Italian neighbors, African Americans, I mean, just the whole gamut. And they used to get together to butcher, to make sausages, blood sausage, pickled pigs feet. I mean, I was raised on that, 'cause he loved pickled pigs feet. He liked, he would eat, he had what we'd call diverse palate. There wasn't any type of food that he would not try or want us to try.

RP: You shared a story about how he sort of negotiated this opportunity with the military police to go trap outside the camp.

MY: Yes.

RP: Now, was there a gate or some type of area where he actually passed through the fence?

MY: Yes, there was just the gates, and I don't, I can't even remember if there was a lock on it, but the gate was there and everyone respected the gate. But I remember there was maybe like a latch-like thing, and then we just walked through. And then when we got on the other side we'd put that thing back on. We had to be careful because the barbed wire. He never came down.

RP: And the tower was located right above the gate?

MY: Right, it's right there, and he had his machine gun there. That, I know.

RP: You saw the gun.

MY: Oh yes. But it was pointed up. Yeah, and so we just opened the gate, walked through, and when we were successful we always showed the rabbit that we were taking back. [Laughs]

RP: Roughly how far out of camp would you go? Just a short distance?

MY: I'm not very good at, minimum one city block, maybe two city blocks. Not only would we go north, but also towards the mountains east. And he would always tell us to look for markers. I said, "What's a marker?" He says, "Know when you're turning, so when you come back you know which way to go back to camp. You don't want to be lost out here." And then if we couldn't find a marker, he'd have something with a little ribbon on it, we would tie it on there so we'd know, so we wouldn't get lost. So those little things that he taught us, 'cause we couldn't go back to the same place each time. He says, "Otherwise you're not gonna get rabbits. You have to go different places."

RP: Can you describe the traps to us that he used?

MY: The traps, they were made out of wood, and it's an elongated rectangle and it had a trap door, and it had string and then the string went down at the end of the trap, and we would have, usually I think we had a carrot because I think lettuce would've wilted. But I remember tying carrots on there, and then set it up and we'd have a real sensitive pole there, so it's on this pole, the string, and then the minute the, not the minute, but after the rabbit went in, when he touched the carrot, then the trap door would fall. But he'd have to be all the way to the end, but you couldn't make it too long 'cause you want the rabbit to be able to smell it and to see it maybe, 'cause why he should he go in a dark place if not for food. And then when he got there, if the door was down, then we knew we had a rabbit, but we had to also check to make sure that we had a rabbit, 'cause, well you could tell when you picked it up, 'cause sometimes the rabbits are smart, they get the carrot and speed out and it'd be an empty trap. But I think we were successful about seventy-five percent of the time.

RP: Were there any other animals that inadvertently got trapped?

MY: Oh yes. [Laughs] Well, I became very, very ambitious and felt we could catch bigger animals, not knowing that we'd catch something that would harm us. And so I asked him to build a bigger trap. I said, "Oh, we'll catch bigger rabbits." He didn't argue with me, so we built a big trap, about, let me see, three feet high, three feet across, and we couldn't use wood because it'd be too heavy to carry out, so we used chicken wire. And so we did the same process, put a carrot in the end, and then one day we went back and a coyote that wasn't very bright thought a carrot was good food, and we caught a coyote. And then my father just looked at me, says, "Now what are we going to do? We can't leave it in there because if we do then you will have killed a good coyote." I thought, I didn't want to be considered a murderer, so I said, "Well, what can we do?" He said, "Well, we want to get away." And my father knew that the coyote was afraid of us, it was going to run away, and he says, "Well, get behind me." So I got behind him, then we went right around the other end and then we pulled up the trap door, and the coyote just ran for his life. [Laughs] And he says, "Now, what are we going to do?" I said, "Just leave the trap with the thing down. We don't need that trap anymore." And so we left that trap there.

RP: Wow, it's still out there?

MY: I don't know, could be. But my father didn't want to carry it back. It was a big trap. I mean, it took both of us time to get it up there, because there's lots of brush out there and when we went to trap the rabbits, I mean, it wasn't a clearing. They liked to go where other brush is, I suppose.

RP: So you really got an introduction to the natural world here at, here in camp.

MY: Yes.

RP: Were there other, other...

MY: We trapped birds.

RP: Did you? What kind?

MY: He put up a net. I don't know what type it was and I don't know if he learned to do that in Japan or in Texas, but they were considered, quote, edible. My mother didn't want to butcher them, so he had to kill them and take the feathers out and whatever, and he got some soy sauce, whatever, marinated it, and then he ate it. But he only did that twice, so it must be that they weren't that tasty. [Laughs]

RP: Maybe quail, perhaps.

MY: No, they weren't quail. They were black.

RP: Black.

MY: They were very small. I think there was just not enough meat on it. I think those, he barbecued outside. It was just too tough. But that was short-lived, but it was fun to see him weave the net that we put between three or four trees, and then we went back and would get the birds. They would go in, and then when they tried to pull out the neck would get caught, or the wings would be caught. And we took a real big, what was it, cloth bag, and we had to go every day because we didn't want them to be dead two or three days. [Laughs]

RP: But where would, where would the traps be put up?

MY: Well, it was before we got to the tower. It was inside the camp. It was between some trees where the birds would congregate.

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