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

<Begin Segment 25>

KL: What other places do you remember in Manzanar? Where else did you spend your time?

GM: Well, the Shepherd's Creek we used to go swimming. I remember a lot of people did that. There was a dam that the farmers and the ranchers used to use that water, and I still remember more than once when I was there, a pickup truck comes and two rangers would come, they don't say anything, no one, none of the people were sitting, and we're all nude. So people coming, we'd all hide behind bushes and all that. Even the older guys were, nobody had trunks. And we were the younger ones, and these ranchers would come, they would quietly come and park their pickup truck and move the board for the water, maybe they needed some more water and the guys would block it so the water would get deeper. Normally it would drop down to maybe three feet or something like that, and then by shutting that it would rise up maybe a foot or two. But I laughed when I saw a picture of Manzanar where... what's the photographer? Toyo Miyatake? And I was telling my friends, "That's, like most pictures of war scenes and all that, I understand in the Civil War, those photographers got dead bodies." I said, "They had the picture of these, about five kids on the dam at Shepherd's Creek, and Toyo took a picture of them," I said, "they all had trunks." [Laughs] I said, "Nobody had trunks." Because I remember one time we saw some dust in the distance, and at the last minute we realized there's a pickup truck coming. So all the guys including we kids ran behind bushes. And this guy, this Japanese guy and two gals, they came, they had trunks on, they parked the pickup trucks in about five minutes and they swam in the water all by themselves. And then when I got older I said, "That son of a gun should have at least said, 'Hey, thanks, you guys.'" He knew. [Laughs] Because I was hiding behind a bush and I could see older guys in their twenties and whatever they were. And nobody said anything, and these three people had the water all to themselves. And then they went back in the pickup truck and took off.

KL: Did people usually get a pass to go to Shepherd's Creek?

GM: I guess you could there, because it was, you know, on the west side of the camp, and that's where the gate was. And we used to walk up, how far north? Three miles, four miles, five miles. How far is Shepherd's Creek from...

KL: Couple miles.

GM: Okay, maybe not that far then. And so we probably might have gone by pass there. Because I remember we all would be walking back. I just used to leave when the older guys were leaving.

KL: Was that gate staffed, was there a person...

GM: There was something, yeah. I forgot what color that little card was, you'd get it at the manager's office or something, block manager's office. I don't think we had that, I'm not sure.

KL: Do you remember a replacement for the first block manager? You said you never really saw him again after the army.

GM: No, I don't remember. I guess I was too young for that.