<Begin Segment 16>

RP: Did you have any opportunity to go outside the fence?

MN: I think we, I think we did sneak out once. But it was parts where people were going, anyway, out there beyond those, near Shepherd's Creek or something. Anyway, there was this nice big place where the water would be coming, gushing down, and then we could find, see little trouts and things in there. But we never caught them, just the outing and we'd come back during the day. But no, we never ventured very far. I think some people did go all the way up to the foothills, but no, we didn't go that far. Just school friends, we'd go.

KP: Can I just interject a quick question? You talked about the cold weather. You were captured in a photograph by Ansel Adams. Can you tell Richard a little bit about that, that you discovered when you were up at Manzanar the last time?

MN: I know, yes, my daughter, she, yes. That was, apparently I was going the Buddhist church there -- we had a church -- and you know, I looked at it and I thought, "No." Then I thought, "Oh, this coat, I wore. This is all we had, warm." It's a green and white tweed coat that, it was the little tiny tweed and it was style at the time, and because nothing really fit me, my mother had that made for me by this lady that used to work up at Bullocks Wilshire Magnin. She was a seamstress there, so she made the clothes for me and so that's why it fit. But I said, "I recognize that coat," I told Shari. [Laughs] But I have no idea what happened to that coat, but I just loved that coat. I think I just wore it until it just wore out. But I had no idea that, when he took the picture he must've been on some high building.

RP: Hiding somewhere.

MN: Somewhere, right. And she blew it up and she said, "Mom, that is you." I said yes. And we took, I know we took, they used to have plastic galoshes that we fit over our shoes at the time, and apparently because boots didn't fit, well, this is what we did to keep our feet kind of dry.

RP: Did you also wear geta?

MN: Geta, when we went to the shower. [Laughs] Because, we'd wear the geta and then in the shower we, this is what we wore inside the showers because we didn't know who was, who, before us. But, and then mainly too, when it snowed we would wear the geta, but by the time we'd go, the snow would be packed so much inside, in between those two little things, my gosh, it would be like this [holds hands up].

RP: Be like walking around with weights on your ankles.

MN: Right. And it rolls because it's not packed.

RP: That could be kind of treacherous.

MN: But we did, we had those getas.

RP: What were your, what was your experience like with the latrines?

MN: Oh my, that was something. Open. They had, bad enough, they had these big sinks, but then when it came to the actual toilets, there's no barrier, no partition or any, just wide open. And then eventually they made little partitions, but no doors. So we'd all try to scramble to the last one. [Laughs]

RP: Do you, did you do anything to adapt to that, that humiliating situation? Or did you know other people that, for instance, folks saying that they waited 'til late at night when nobody was around?

MN: The showers, yes.

RP: Or people came in with blankets and covered other people up with a sheet or something so they...

MN: That, I'm not... but we did wait until late.

RP: To take a shower?

MN: Yes, yes. But other people had the same idea. And luckily there's just women, but these are just block people who are living in the same block.

RP: Was that the most humiliating part of camp life for you?

MN: I think, yes. Yes, very. We're not used, we weren't used to things like that. I think so. Laundry place, well, everybody does laundry. That's different. But going into your own private bathroom, that was hard. Sure, here, when we were living here, we only had one bathroom with five of us living in this house, but then it was, that's different.

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