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

<Begin Segment 26>

KL: I got carried away, we sort of lost track of the description of the inside of your apartment. You told us about the barber shop part, but what was the rest of it like?

GM: Well, after my father made that barbershop part, they squeezed in that, so we had about six of us. [Laughs] The beds were pretty close together. But then at some point, as many of the people started moving out, my father was one of them that Building 10, next building, we were able to use one of the... it was just to sleep, and my dad and I used to sleep there. I don't know if this was just one season or the last half a year or something. It was the wintertime I remember, because I laugh when I think about it, every night I would say, "I'm so cold," and he had that extra blanket rolled up like in the army days, and he'd always tell me, "What are you going to do when it really gets cold?" And I used to tell, I told my mom after that, "I don't want to sleep with Papa anymore," because spring came, and that extra blanket was never... [laughs]. I'll never forget that.

KL: So you think it was, like, right across from...

GM: Yeah, that building was right, the next building, Building 10, and it could have been apartment 3 as well. And it faced us. But I remember when my sister, she was in Gila or Poston, Arizona, and I don't know how she arranged it...

KL: Is that Jean?

GM: Yeah, Jean came to visit us with her two boys. Because her first son was born in 1940 and then Dave was born at Santa Anita Racetrack in 1942. And so must have been '44 or something like that, because we had that extra apartment, and then they stayed there. I don't know how many days she was able to visit.

KL: You said she was in Poston?

GM: They were in Poston, they also were in Gila.

KL: What did she tell you about Santa Anita, Poston, Gila and having a baby at Santa Anita?

GM: Yeah, well, my nephew was born there. Of course, she doesn't remember that. But he recently told me that he went on a tour there. But my sister, all I know is that when we moved to, when she found out that my wife and I and kids were going to go to Tucson, she said -- Jean was outspoken, and she just said, "I can't believe anybody would live in that damn desert," it was so hot, I guess. And I said... of course, she came to visit us years later. When we first told them we were moving Arizona, she just... because she lived in Poston and Gila, and she was a young adult, so the impression is different from young kids.

KL: Do you know anything about her pregnancy and delivering her child in Santa Anita?

GM: Not to me. She might have told my younger sister. But she was not alone, I'm sure there was others back then. Because experiences were shared by a lot of other people. Just like -- this is a little different, but my wife came from Peru, I think you guys knew about the Peruvian Japanese that were brought here. And I remember she was ten years old when she came, 1944, and she says she remembers in New Orleans they segregated all the ladies. And they were made to undress, get nude, and they got DDT. And she was saying the remembers some of the women were pregnant, some of the women were having their menstrual period, and women just don't feel comfortable being nude in front of everybody else.

KL: Or having DDT sprayed on them.

GM: Yeah. But she remembers that, she was telling me that. People here didn't experience that, but our country didn't think nothing about Latin America.