Densho Digital Archive - Hanako Hoshiyama Fukumoto Interview (denshovh-fhanako-01-0020)

<Begin Segment 20>

HF: My husband used to go fishing up in the, Mt. Whitney.

KL: Oh, he did?

HF: He did. He went with a fellow named Mr. Numa, N-U-M-A, and he had long hair. I don't know what happened to him, but he used to go up with him. And then he would stay all day, and then he wouldn't catch anything, and then come home.

KL: Was it risky to leave the camp when he would go to go fishing?

HF: Yeah, especially he had to go under the fence and crawl out, and then make sure you don't get caught.

KL: How would he manage that?

HF: I really don't know.

KL: What time of day would he leave?

HF: That was before we were married, so I don't know. He must have left in the evening, because it's too hot to go out in the daytime.

KL: There's a new movie out about people doing that, leaving Manzanar to go fish secretly. I'm going to have to go watch it again and look for Mr. Numa and see if your husband's mentioned in it anywhere, yeah.

HF: Probably not.

KL: The farm plots where your brother worked, were those inside the residential part of the camp, or were they to the north or south of it?

HF: To, let's see, it would be... it would be south, I think.

KL: Toward Lone Pine?

HF: Uh-huh.

KL: And you said sometimes he would bring home fish when they irrigated?

HF: No, I didn't see him bring home any fish.

KL: Oh, your brother didn't?

HF: He might have brought it home for my mother to cook, I don't know. But you know, later on, they were able to buy fish in the camp.

KL: I see.

HF: I don't know who brought the fish to sell, but they had a store where they had fish. And they say, "Oh, you can get raw fish now." So they would hurry up and go to the canteen before it sold out.

KL: Was that the canteen your sister worked in?

HF: That was the food canteen. My sister worked in the dry goods side.

Off camera: Could you tell us more about Mr. Numa?

KL: Would you tell us more about Mr. Numa?

HF: Well, I really don't know too much about him, but then too bad my husband is gone. He's the one that used to go with him to go fishing in the mountains.

Off camera: You said he had long hair?

HF: Yes, he had long...

Off camera: What else did he look like? Was he older?

HF: That's all I remember of him, that he kind of wore it in a ponytail.

KL: Is that a name you recognize?

Off camera: I'm just curious. If he's the in Manzanar Fishing Club movie, and we could kind of make that connection between those two stories...

KL: Did he speak mostly Japanese or English, do you remember, when he would talk to your husband?

HF: It must have been Japanese. I don't know, my husband spoke more Japanese than English until we went to Chicago, and then he worked in a company called Central Steel and Wire, then he started speaking in English more, his English got better.

KL: I bet your Japanese got better first.

HF: Well, I'm sure.

KL: Are there other people or places from the camp that you recall spending time at?

HF: No. Mr. and Mrs. Yoshitsuru, they're from San Francisco. And he was a newspaper editor for the Japanese newspaper in San Francisco. Let's see, I'm trying to remember what the name of his paper, Nichibei...

KL: Yeah. Do you remember why they ended up Manzanar? Were they living in San Francisco? That's unusual.

HF: Yeah, they lived... we had people from all over, I don't know how they happened to end up in Manzanar. But Manzanar was a better camp, I understand. Like people who went to Arkansas, the camp in Arkansas, it was so humid there, it was bad. We were hot, but then hot was better than humid, I think.