Densho Digital Archive - George H. Morishita Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

<Begin Segment 15>

KL: When did you guys arrive in Manzanar?

GM: April 2nd, '42.

KL: What are your early memories of the camp? Like if you stood outside the barracks and looked around...

GM: It was real dusty. But the Sierra Nevadas were, you know, it was quite a spectacular... living there all the time, I couldn't live where there's no mountains. The west side of our country has mountains everywhere. I always look forward to that. When I moved here, I was telling my friend in Tucson, I said, "Hey, Bob, how high is Mt. Linden?" I know it's only nine thousand one hundred something feet. And he's into those kind of things. And I go, "Hey, there's a Mt. Charleston over here that's almost twelve thousand."

KL: Was that the first time you had really been around mountains was in Manzanar?

GM: Well, in L.A. there was, I guess, the San Gabriel Mountains, but I don't remember that too much. But yeah, I don't know if I ever mentioned, but there was one thing that I told... the first time I was going to Manzanar, I thought I'd call the Pacific Citizen and get some information. And they connected me to one of the assistant editors, and she told me what to do and all that. Then I told her something. I said, "You know, one time me and at least two of my friends, we went toward the Alabama Hills rather than the Sierra Nevadas, and we came across two rows of burnt vehicles." And I said... my friend Eddie, who was a little bit more grown up than me, and he figured, okay, that must have been owned by the Japanese that volunteered to start building the barracks and all that. So when I mentioned this, she said, remember you had the head of the Park Service there? Was it Frank?

Off camera: Frank Hayes.

GM: Yeah, something like that. And she said, "Oh, gee, you know, Frank so and so would be really interested in that." I said, "Oh, come on, come on." Think about it. L.A. took the water away from Owens Valley way back in the early 1900s, so there was a lot of bad feelings toward the government and L.A. The dumb guys, they should have donated that to the valley people and said, "Hey, look, this belonged to the dam, Jackson or whatever, you guys could have it." But no, out of anger, they just burnt it like a fool. So trust me, they probably buried it. So when I came to Manzanar that year, and the community center was not finished yet, and it was Frank I saw, and I wanted to ask if I could walk with my daughter and niece and see if I could find more [inaudible]. And then I told him who I was, and he goes, "Oh, yeah, they told me about it, and I met one of the guys that lived here before the war, rancher in Manzanar." Manzanar was a community before, it was an apple orchard, I guess. And he said, "Yeah, this guy said that they buried it," I said, "Well, that's what I was telling so and so." But that was kind of, I thought...

KL: Were you aware of that background between Los Angeles and the Owens Valley when you were a kid at Manzanar?

GM: No, not when I was a kid. But as I got older and I thought, "What a dumb thing, that they did burn it."

KL: Where were those cars?

GM: Not far from Manzanar, going toward the Alabama Hills. We couldn't see it from camp, I don't know how many miles out there. But it was closer to camp than Alabama Hills, if I recall. But there was two rows, they were all burnt, I remember that.

KL: When was that, that trip?

GM: That would have been about... probably about '44. I don't know if it was early '45. Because Eddie and I and they were two years older than me. And I remember we went up to the top of the Alabama Hills, and I still remember not a plant on that hill, just all lava rocks. Got to the top, and on the other side was a shack like they do silver mining or something. And right on this one rock was, with cement thing, warning, private property and all that. And there was gonna be jail term or fine. And we said, oh, my god, you know. And so the three of us started going down the hill, and that was my most fantastic... I said, you see these movies where guys fly, and birds and all that? It was great. I aimed for open space, and I'm leaping like a deer, you know. And one of my friends, Shuichi, stumbled, and I just was able to look back find where, he was way back. I said, but I'll never forget what a wonderful feeling that was, just flying down like that. I don't know how high the mountains are, couple of thousand feet? Are they even a thousand feet above the valley there?

KL: Yeah, I don't know. I would guess they're a couple hundred.

GM: Oh, okay.

KL: Several hundred, that close, but I don't know where you were either.

GM: Then we went to this ranch, there was an abandoned house there, and I still remember there were some horses there. And I was dumb guy, I got on top of the rail, and I had my friends spook the horses and I was trying to hop on them. Years later, I thought, "Yeah, sure, I would have got killed." But the horses were smarter than me, and every time they came by me, they'd veer away.

KL: "We don't want that guy on us."

GM: They just veer away from me, I remember that. Nobody was there.

KL: Was that the same trip, or did you go a couple times?

GM: Yeah, the same trip that time. We came across this abandoned ranch, because I saw the nails were triangular, and someone said, "Oh, yeah, that's the way they used to make nails back in the old days."

KL: Who were the guys you were with?

GM: Well, two of them I remember, Eddie Uyeda, he passed away some years ago from cancer. And the other guy was Shuichi, S-H-U-I-C-H-I, Watanabe, W-A-T-A-N-A-B-A, nabe, N-A-B-E. Those are the only two, I remember the three of us went up there, and I don't know if there were any more guys below, or if it was just the three of us. But Eddie was the leader. He was more smarter than me, mature, you know. I kind of remember, that was the first and only time I remember ever going toward the Alabama Hills. Most of the time guys would go... we used go to that Shepherd's Creek for swimming.

KL: When you went to the Alabama Hills, you said it was probably in '44 or '45.

GM: Somewhere around there.

KL: Did you get permission?

GM: Oh, no, we just went underneath the barbed wire fence. Because the thing was, we did go out with a pass sometimes, but I kind of remember, if we wanted to get lunch made or something like that, the mess hall, then there was the one gate facing the Sierra Nevadas, would that be on the west side of the valley? And you had to come back there by a certain time. So that restricted where we want to go and when we had to come back. So most of the time, we just used to go underneath the fence.

KL: Was there a sense of danger as part of that, or were you worried?

GM: Well, there was no more soldiers around, no guards. Because I remember we went up to one of the towers.

KL: You did?

GM: Yeah, but it was abandoned at that time. When I first moved there, they had sentries, naturally. I don't know how long they walked. And the guard towers, like Block 5 was at the end of the camp, and there was Bairs Creek there. And they used to have picnics, some of the people there. And I still remember one night, I was running back to my apartment to get something, and these guards were having a good time with me. They had the spotlight on me and I was darting from one bush to another, I was scared, hiding. And then later on as I got older, I said, "They probably had a ball." [Laughs]

KL: Did they say anything to you?

GM: No, I couldn't... they spotted me. And I was playing along. I wasn't playing with them, I was trying to hide from them. But then when i got a little older, I thought, "Oh, those guys had a good time."

KL: How did you think, what were your thoughts about them? If you saw them, how did you react?

GM: But I know... I was telling my friend, I said, "I still remember, I do remember the guards walking on the road, they were pretty young. And one time, one of the adults, the older Nisei guy, complaining to his friends, "Goddamn government, sending these young kids, probably scared as hell, and they probably shoot," you know. He said something, some crack about, "They're not even mature yet," or something like that. And he said, "The government's sending these guys like that here." I still remember one of the older guys making that comment.