<Begin Segment 18>

KL: Before we leave the Manzanar time, you had a baby in the camp.

HF: Yes.

KL: Did you have him in the hospital?

HF: Yes, uh-huh.

KL: What was it like to be pregnant in Manzanar?

HF: It was okay. I didn't have any problems. I think if you had a problem, might have been... but then I lived near the hospital, so when I started spotting, I thought, well, I'd better start walking to the hospital. So I walked, and it was at nighttime, but you know, it was safe to walk in Manzanar, so I just walked to the hospital from Block 34. Of course, there was a firebreak in between that I had to cross, but it wasn't hard. And then I just left a note for Mr. and Mrs. Yoshitsuru, "I'm going to the hospital now." And then when I got there, my father was working there in the hospital. He was a janitor there. So he said, "What are you doing here?" So I said, "I think I'm having a baby, so I came."

KL: Did your father stay with you? was anyone with you in the hospital?

HF: No, it was okay. I stayed there a month.

KL: Oh, wow. Was that normal?

HF: No, it's not normal. But I said, well, when I go home, there won't be anybody there to help me, so, "Can I stay?" and they let me stay. Because my mother was in Block 22. And then it was too hard, she had high blood pressure, so I didn't want to have her walking to Block 34 every day. So it was okay.

KL: What were your accommodations like in the hospital? Did you have a private room, or was it like a dormitory?

HF: It's a dorm, but it was okay.

KL: Was Fred a pretty easy baby?

HF: He was a pretty easy baby, I would say. But then I remember one day I had to leave him because I had to go eat. Well, he cried so much, you know how they push their legs, and then he got up on his, against the bars, and then when I got there, there was an indentation of the bars on his head.

KL: Was that still in the hospital?

HF: No, that was when I went to eat, so he was home.

KL: Okay. And your husband, was your husband, he was gone, he was in Oregon when Fred was born?

HF: He was gone, yeah, right. He wasn't back yet.

KL: What was his response? How did you tell him the news that you had...

HF: I didn't tell him. He doesn't know about it.

KL: Did he know you were pregnant?

HF: Oh, yeah, he knew. Because let's see, he went in the springtime, and I had him in August.

KL: Did you get any, like any new mother training, for lack of a better term? What kind of guidance did the hospital give you, or how did you know how to care for a baby? How did you learn?

HF: A neighbor. She had a baby just before I did, and so she showed me how to give it a bath, give him the bath and everything.

KL: Did you guys spend much time together?

HF: Yes, we did.

KL: What was her name?

HF: It was Dr. Itatani's wife.

KL: And she was in Block 34 also?

HF: Yes, uh-huh. So she came and helped me.

KL: I guess you had kind of a medical community right there because of where you lived.

HF: Yeah, because of the hospital. It was closer for the doctors to stay in Block 34.

KL: Is it Dr. Iwatani?

HF: Itatani.

KL: Itatani. Was his wife a friend of yours already?

HF: Yes, I knew her before, I mean, I knew her in camp. She was a very nice lady.

KL: You knew her before you were pregnant?

HF: Yeah.

KL: Yeah, that was lucky.

HF: Yes, it was very lucky.

KL: We were talking before we started the interview about something that you did to your barrack to help keep milk cool.

HF: Milk cool, right.

KL: Would you tell us about that?

HF: Yes. My husband cut a square hole in the floor about this size, I think, probably double this size. And then, so put a wire basket in there to keep the milk cold, and a lot of people did that. We had no refrigeration.

KL: So Fred, your baby, was born in 1944. What time of year?

HF: August.

KL: That's pretty hot. [Laughs]

HF: August 21st, so his birthday's coming up. He's going to be, what, sixty-nine? I can't believe it.

KL: I can't do the math that well.

HF: Yeah, I guess sixty-nine.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.