<Begin Segment 12>

KL: Tell us about the beds in your apartment.

KM: The beds? There was a bed against one wall, the back wall that we shared with the neighbors, that wall, and then Ichiro had one wall, and that's where the bunkbeds. Do you remember where the bunkbeds were?

YI: Did we have to share a bed, you and I?

KM: Maybe.

YI: I mean, I don't remember six bunks. There were not, so we must have had to share.

KM: Where would we get room for a double bed? Because Mom and Pop had a double bed.

YI: They did?

KM: Yeah.

YI: I don't remember. I just remember single beds.

KM: Single beds we had were the straw mattress beds.

YI: Yeah.

KM: And then Ichiro had the upper, because I remember his airplane...

YI: Well, Frank must have slept with Mom and Dad.

KM: No, I think he had a single...

YI: Crib? Small bed?

KM: Yeah, I think he had a crib or a junior bed, or a small bed. And then Ichiro had the top, and he had those Wheaties, made model airplanes.

YI: Paper.

KM: The Russian yaks and Messerschmitt and things like that.

YI: They put a penny in it to make the weight in the front of the plane. That was part of it.

KM: And then you put a string in a certain place and then stick it up on your ceiling.

KL: How many did he have?

KM: Quite a bit, probably five or six. And I guess the people in the mess hall would save them for the kids, so he had several. And then like she said, my dad made toys. He made a wagon out of wood, painted it, and the wagon had the wooden wheels, and then around the wooden wheels was metal, so that it was shown in the museum how Pop had made this.

KL: In the Eastern California museum?

KM: No, this was in camp. And then I guess they were showing the handicrafts you could use to make toys for the kids. And I don't recall having a doll, do you? I know we must have.

YI: I know we had Shirley Temple and the kewpie dolls, but I don't know whether that was postwar, or was it before the war?

KM: We had lots of presents before the war.

YI: I think this nice auntie, the Pasadena auntie, I think she bought us those. And I know my mean brother cut that string and dismembered them all, too.

KM: She's been traumatized since.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.