<Begin Segment 9>
KL: Were you guys involved in the Christian community at Manzanar?
UN: Pardon?
KL: Were you involved in the Christian community, or one of the Christian communities in Manzanar?
UN: Oh, yes, sure.
KL: How were you involved?
UN: I went to church every Sunday. And the minister was Reverend Bovenkirk, and every once in a while, my mother and dad would buy, through Mrs. Deal and other Caucasian people they contact, would buy groceries and they would cook in the... my mom used a hotplate. She would cook a meal so that we could all sit together and pray together and eat together. They did that every once in a while.
KL: In your apartment?
UN: In my apartment.
KL: You were in Block 29, is that right?
UN: Yes.
KL: What was the inside of your apartment like? Could you describe what we would see if we walked in the door?
UN: It was just one big room, that's it. And there were holes in the floors, and every time the wind would blow, the dust would come up through the holes. So my dad went to the mess hall and we'd get the lid from cans, and we would use that and nail it on the, around the holes to keep the sand from blowing in. [Laughs]
KL: Did that work?
UN: I don't know, the sand, but we had scorpions coming through the hole, and they would get in our shoes. So we had to shake our shoes to make sure that we don't get scorpion bite.
KL: Do you know anything about how the church you were part of in Manzanar got organized? Were you guys part of setting it up? I've talked to Jack Takayanagi, I don't know if you know him.
UN: Oh, yes.
KL: He talked about how it was kind of difficult even to find people within Manzanar. What do you remember of getting the church set up?
UN: Jack Takayanagi was pastoring the church I was attending before the war. And during the war, I guess his, in Block 23, his barrack was at the end of our barrack, and that's before we moved to Block 29.
KL: You were in 23 first?
UN: Yes.
KL: What was, was it Reverend Bovenkirk, what was his background?
UN: I was too young to be questioning his background. But he was a gentleman, I would say, about fifty years old. And he voluntarily came in to become a minister in Manzanar.
KL: Did he live in Manzanar?
UN: They all lived in separate, they didn't have barracks, they had actual homes for these, the Caucasian helpers. And I don't know whether, where he lived, but I'm assuming that he was, he lived in one of those homes.
KL: Was his leadership similar or different to your minister in West L.A.?
UN: No. He was a very calm, nice, gentleman.
KL: What else, were there memorable services or people from that Christian community at Manzanar?
UN: Well... at that time, I would say that most of us just went to church on Sundays. And during the week, we had other things to do. For instance, I worked for the hospital kitchen so that I could have, the government paid us like twelve dollars a month, and that would help pay for our shoes. And we all needed shoes, and we were growing up, so we needed t-shirts and shorts and whatnot. And so everybody would be, will have some kind of job.
<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.