<Begin Segment 10>

KL: How long were you in Minidoka?

JM: Three years. And anyway, as kids, school was great fun with all my Japanese friends. And then I got to school the first four years of my life, second grade, with all Japanese. So coming back to Portland was my first time with non-Japanese. And outside of my close friends my age that came back, also from camp, my best friend was this... she seemed like she was four feet six. I mean, I was... yeah, she was four feet six now, how could that be? Anyway, she was almost a head taller than me in the sixth grade, and tall, skinny, blond, blue-eyed gal from Indianapolis, Indiana, who had never been around Asian people. And we were friends right up until she passed away last year. And she was just the loveliest person, and we just hit it off. We were the Mutt & Jeff of Shattuck grade school.

KL: What were the, what were the school facilities like in Minidoka?

JM: In a barrack. Yeah, we had barracks, and instead of the... they must have knocked down some of the walls, because they were pretty big-sized room with all the desks. We had a beautiful blond teacher named Miss Ricola for my third grade, and I think a Miss Schmidt in my fifth grade, but I can't remember who the fourth grade teacher was. And Lily was a Sakurai, and Shig Ishikawa were the assistants. Although Shig used to teach P.E., too, he was in charge of sports for our classes.

KL: Was school difficult or fun?

JM: No, it was just fun. And the things we did, I mean, my friend Kumi used to have the red ginger, don't ask me where she got it, but she, we'd have that red ginger that you put usually for, on top as...

KL: A spice?

JM: Yeah, the one that they chop up like with the eggs and put it on top of rice. We used to suck on it all afternoon in school, stuff like that. And oh, we used to go up, and oh, there's these stories about... oh, some round ball that floats around, ghost stories.

KL: What were the ghost stories?

JM: Oh, if somebody died, then there'd be, these kids used to stay up late, sit up in the haystacks and tell stories, swear they saw this round, red ball floating over the barracks and all sorts of that kind of stuff, scary stuff.

KL: Did they talk about earlier people who had lived there?

JM: Yeah, I think then... but usually if there was a death in the barrack or something like that, if someone died in the block, they would say they'd come back as ghosts. I remember the night, young (teenagers) who chased me when I went trick-or-treating and took all my candy away, and I never went trick-or-treating again. [Laughs]

KL: That was in Minidoka, you trick-or-treated? Where did you, did you make your Halloween costumes?

JM: No, we didn't... I don't think we had costumes, but we did go trick-or-treating from apartment to apartment, and so we got a lot of candy. They used to supply us candy -- or not candies, but all sorts of treats that were supposed to last a week, like dried fruits and crackers that we called hardtack. They weren't graham crackers, they were really hard, like rye crisps, and different things, it was called oyatsu, and you got a whole bag full once a week. Supposed to be snacks for the whole week. We went to the movies in, I'm pretty sure Block 34 was with the barrack that was not only the church on Sundays, but the movies. And we used to eat pine nuts, which we would get a whole bagful for next to nothing. And now, pine nuts cost a lot of money. [Laughs] And we used to crack them and eat them, throw the shells on the floor. But we didn't have popcorn, we had pine nuts.

KL: Sounds good. [Laughs] Although popcorn's good, too.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.