<Begin Segment 9>
RP: On that topic, do you remember other improvements that you made to your room? Did it, did the appearance of the room change over time?
MY: Those are the major changes that the government did for us, and then I remember my parents ordered a cardboard closet, 'cause we didn't have any closets. And so we had two, they ordered maybe two to put, especially the adult clothes in there, so you could hang them. We didn't have, the government did not provide closets. Then I remember in another corner we had some drawers, real simple drawers. And I don't know if they were made out of plywood, very, very, not substantial set of drawers.
RP: Did you have any furniture in your room?
MY: When you entered our apartment, to the right was, like, a kitchen and then the stove, and then right next to that was our diesel stove or heater, and then right after Kenji, I mean Eizo was born, they moved the double bed next to the heater because of the baby. They wanted him to be warmer, and they had the double bed. And then we had a little partition. My brother had one side and I had the other side, real narrow area, barely had two army cots and maybe about three or four feet between them. And then the back one was where my mother and father moved back to after Eizo was a little bit older. And Eizo and Kenji had two little beds, next one, little beds, two cots next to them in the very back place, but it just had, like, a partition up there. And then we had a partition right next, a plasterboard partition where my father could listen to his radio and he had, like, a water cooler. He somehow was able to rig up a shortwave radio.
RP: A shortwave radio.
MY: He wanted to hear what the Japanese were saying on the radio. Then he'd go to the block office and read the L.A. Times. Two entirely different stories. [Laughs] But he just wanted to get both sides of the story, I suppose. But it was entertainment. We got some Japanese music. But he only had maybe two friends that he would allow to come into his little inner sanctum to listen to that shortwave. No one else knew about it.
RP: Do you know who they were?
MY: Mr. Kobayashi across the way, and maybe, I don't know who the other person was. But just two men. And then also a place where he played cards, Hana, with his friends.
RP: Hana.
MY: Yeah, or poker.
RP: That was the inner sanctum area? That was...
MY: And that's where his water cooler was. And I don't know if you still have them out here, but I was telling Kelly about it, three sides were burlap, real heavy burlap, and then he had little tubing going through and had holes punched in, and the water would drip down, and there would be a motor that would blow to circulate the air in there. And then it gets cooler, right? And he just called it the cooler, and he took out a little bit, maybe it was just a little bit smaller than this, but maybe by four, four by four or five by five, and had a little door on it, and he got the motor by writing his own authorization letter.
RP: That was quite a, quite a story too. When he really wanted --
[Interruption]
RP: This is tape two of a continuing interview with Madelon Yamamoto, and Madelon, we were just sharing the story about your father rigging up what we would call a swamp cooler.
MY: Yes.
RP: And so when he really wanted something he found ways to get it.
MY: [Laughs] Yes.
RP: With the firehouse address and that type of thing. But it made life a little easier for you.
MY: Yes, and it's something that he just did on his own, and he found a way to get all the, quote, equipment or whatever materials he needed to get it going, and I never questioned him. I just helped him. And I appreciated the cooler. You couldn't keep things like ice cream or anything like that -- well, we couldn't get ice cream much in Manzanar -- but we could put fruits in there to cool, and melons, I remember melons we could put in there to cool.
<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.