<Begin Segment 11>

KM: My father built a little sink.

YI: A burner like.

KL: He built a sink in your apartment?

KM: Just material, metal material, I don't know if... sheet metal or some kind. Anything grand, and then you could wash dishes there, and she got a hot plate so she could...

YI: Where did you get the water?

KM: He directed it from the outside, because in front of each barrack...

YI: Oh, that's right, there was a faucet.

KM: The first apartment had the faucet. If you wanted the faucet and lived in the other apartments, you had to come out there.

KL: But he wired it into your apartment?

YI: Yeah, he plumbed it into...

KM: He plumbed it so that it would come into our house.

YI: Because ours was the first one, we were Apartment 1, so we had ready access, actually, because it was first. It wasn't like he had to do a lot of plumbing.

KM: Like I said, he was very good with his hands, and he could do all kinds of stuff.

KL: What happened when other neighbors wanted to use it?

KM: They could still use it.

YI: They could still use it, he just piped into it.

KL: Was it underground?

YI: I don't think so. I think it was all on the outside of the barrack.

KL: Was that typical? Do you remember other friends having that setup?

KM: I guess if their father was good at plumbing.

YI: We were fortunate, I mean, we kind of had a class A apartment, I mean, in comparison. It was still small for six of us.

KL: What else was in your apartment for the recording? We were talking earlier...

KM: Well, like I said, we had a stove, and we had a little pantry that my dad built out of shelves, covered with that fabric, so they could hide the food you're not showing all your stuff, cereal.

YI: It's an empty room, you know what I mean? It's no privacy, nothing, so any kind of partition would be like a wire, and then they would hang a bedspread or something over it to kind of some privacy from your sleeping area. But I don't remember exactly the set up, so Kazy probably remembers better.

KM: Like I told you, the corner had the stove...

YI: Well, I kind of remember that, in the front of the building.

KM: And Daddy made the chair, the two-seater, the Adirondack chair, and then mom put a futon on it so it wasn't hard-hard.

KL: Where was the chair?

KM: Two chairs were on the side of the stove, heater, whatever. And then I can't remember where the chair, the long one, but there was a long chair, I think. There was really not much room.

KL: So there was the Adirondack-style two-seater and then two other chairs?

KM: One chair for sure. I can't remember where the other chair was.

KL: Where did that other chair come from, the third chair?

KM: He may have made it or ordered it.

YI: In the pictures, he worked in the carpenter shop, so he had access to scraps of wood that were gonna be thrown out anyway. So I think he had a lot of material to do that.

KL: What did he do for his work in the carpenter shop?

KM: He built things and repaired things.

YI: Wherever it was needed, probably, within the camp, like in the mess hall, those benches and tables, I think those were all made by those, the workers in that shop.

KM: If you look at the Eastern Museum, you can see where they worked and had access to wood. That was his job. And then he was good with his hands, so he, Mr. Merritt was the administrator of the camp, and he wanted a cabinet or something and Dad made it for him. He was happy with that, so he got a bottle of whisky. My father didn't drink.

KL: What'd he do with it?

KM: I guess he gave it to his friend or somebody. We had no ice, cocktail ice.

KL: There wasn't a bar in your apartment?

KM: No. [Laughs] That was one of the luxuries we gave up.

YI: I was gonna say, those pictures that they show of, like, Toyo Miyatake's apartment, that's not the way it was. His was a special apartment. I mean, he had carpeting in there, he had real furniture, that's not... it was an empty room. And you were lucky, like we had a chair, chairs to sit in. I mean, it was nothing, it was just beds.

KM: Yeah, I don't remember the table and chairs.

YI: No, we didn't. I don't remember that. I know we had chairs, because we had to sit to put our shoes on, or times when you had to sit down.

KM: Yasuko here was a losing battle with shoe strings. She would try to take them off, and she would be going good, and then she'd give a yank, and there would be a knot.

YI: Knot, it would get a knot.

KM: So, of course, what did she use to undo the knot? Her teeth, which made it wet.

YI: Saliva. So now they're wet and tight.

KM: And she's really mad.

YI: So that picture that we took all standing in front of the mountain? That day was the crucial day, because we had to wear high top shoes because all that sand is blowing.

KM: Mom had a funny sense of style.

YI: No, everybody wore those high top shoes, those brown Sears-Roebuck high top shoes. Anyway, I could not get the knot out. [Laughs]

KL: Probably had to rely on your older sister.

YI: Oh, she wasn't really helpful because she's just laughing at me because I'm struggling.

KM: What a cruel person.

YI: Yeah, I think my mom finally had to do it. I don't remember her helping me. But anyway, that was one of the struggles in camp.

KM: But it made you a better person.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.