<Begin Segment 17>

KP: We're going to bring this to a close, I just wanted to open up for any other questions that you guys want to cover or didn't get answered? [Addressing others in the room]

Off camera: Do you remember when you lived in Block 5, were there any ponds or gardens?

TF: Oh, well, actually, there might have been one family who somehow got some cement and made a little pond, and was able to put carp in there. Because when you're a G-man, that was one of the better jobs in camp. A G-man is actually a garbage man, and what they do is they load these cans on the truck, and then they go out of the camp, there's a guard there, and you go out to dump it. But then you pass over a creek, and the guard lets you stop there and fish. [Laughs] And that's how they catch fish and stick it in the pond.

KP: Do you know where that was, that pond?

TF: Oh, no. Once you leave there, I don't know.

Off camera: Was it your block, was it your neighbor, or nearby?

TF: Oh, no, it's one of the people that was there. But the other areas of camp, they had better-looking ones. The only thing I remember of Block 5 is that we as teens had a certain camaraderie that even today, you know, it's pretty hard. In fact, did I tell you about this one gal who lived in the next barrack on the end, didn't recognize my good friend who lived a few doors up. And so I brought this picture to show her that this is what everybody looked like in camp 5. And so I'm going to show her today, and she's going to see if she can remember. Because she said she remembered me, because we were just in the next building. And she mentioned how she went to school with the others in the same block, and so there's one boy there that's the younger brother of the gal that she went to school with. And I kind of wonder if she kind of recognized him. If she does, I'll introduce him as he is today. Because I don't know if I mentioned it, but at one of the reunions, he came to see if he knew anybody. And so being in Block 5, he went to Table 5, and wanted to know where all the people from Table 5, were from Block 5. And then two of us were there, so we were able to work up a nice friendship that way.

KP: Rose, did you have anything?

Off camera: Yeah. I was curious, you said that when you were in high school in Los Angeles, that you heard a lot of racial slurs being thrown about. I was wondering if when you went to high school for about a week in Idaho Falls, what the general feeling was.

TF: Oh, in Idaho?

Off camera: Were there any other Japanese Americans in the school there?

TF: Well, when I went to Idaho, the experience I had as we were farming there, it was that... it was the nicest place. Because we went into a movie theater, and instead of telling us to move into the balcony, maybe, because there wasn't any, he wanted us to sit on the side. And we go back into the middle, and we'd get moved over, and so we got out of there. As far as other Japanese there, there seemed to have been other Orientals there, but I don't really recall any where I would actually meet. But I knew that there was some around. But when I went there, I had a great time because the first day of the school, one of the fellows even came and got me and took me to sit next to him up front. And that's the way you kind of like to get started. But that's not the way it's always been, and it doesn't happen all the time. These are little incidents. And like in the army, they don't really pay favoritism, and yet they do. Because when the cooks in our Company A knew that there were eight of us Orientals, that we usually eat rice, well, the cooks asked us, "How do you prepare the rice?" Well, when I was young, as punishment, I had to wash the rice.

[Interruption]

KP: You were talking about the rice, preparing the rice.

TF: Oh. As far as the rice is concerned, we as kids had to wash the rice as punishment. So we'd add rice, and then you would add so much water. And then so we'd tell the cooks, we don't know how, because that's how we used to do it. Well, surprisingly for the eight of us, they cooked white rice. And for all of the people to eat, they didn't know what to do with it, because they'd never had it, so they wonder if they put milk on it or what. [Laughs] And this was the kind of thing that you seldom hear about, but they're trying to make you feel at home.

[Interruption]

TF: The thing I was mentioning was we were on this forced march, and we were in Company A then, 148th Battalion, that was led by Captain Allen. I never saw a guy so bigoted. Well, I use the term loosely because he was bigoted only against colored people. And I guess they never assigned colored people to him because he really talked bad about them. And here we're marching, and all of a sudden the jeep stops and the colonel gets out. And then all of a sudden he comes behind me and starts chewing the sergeant out. Because with the colonel, found that the sergeant hit one of the guys on the head, on the helmet, with a stick. And it happened to be the guy I left camp with to join the army. So that was one where the colonel finds somebody, quote, "abusing" a soldier, getting on him, and I kind of wonder, gee, I didn't know they did that kind of stuff. So you get different views of everything. Lot of times when you get feelings that people you're under, other lists, other things happen where things make up for it. And I kind of thought that the colonel was pretty good where he stopped to chew the guy out and make it so they'll not do those things to anybody.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.