<Begin Segment 9>

KL: What else were you involved with in terms of community life, activities or organizations or anything?

MS: I do remember that I never was able to join a Boy Scout group. I think it existed more on, sponsored by the Christian church, I believe it was. However, it never happened, I never had the opportunity to join that. I say that only because I've heard of such an organization where a lot of other kids were involved in.

KL: You heard about it as a kid?

MS: Uh-huh. But otherwise it was, my social activity was mostly with the neighborhood kids that we got together and played with.

KL: What did you do, what would you play?

MS: All kinds of things, you know. If there were a gymnastics bar or something, we would try to do whatever we could with that. We used to play with the horses, what do you call the...

KL: Gymnastics horses?

MS: Yeah, horses, and played with that. We would play what we call samurai games, you know, taking a wooden sword and going through the samurai battles, play acting that.

KL: What did you know about samurais or how did you learn about them?

MS: At the movies, from the movies. What you see in the movie is what we call chanbara, just random cutting, it's not real sword, use of the sword. It's just random cutting. All kind of marbles, tops, flipping milk bottle tops, which is waxed to make it heavy and stable. I don't know what the game was called, but the object was to slide your top underneath the other person's top on the ground. Things like that, all kinds of games that used to exist at that time.

KL: Was there a movie theater on Terminal Island?

MS: No.

KL: Where did you see samurai movies?

MS: When it came around, they used to have it in a hall. But these were Japanese movies, samurai movies and other drama movies. They used to come very infrequently. But whoever sponsored those just brought everything, the projectors and the film to that place and showed the movie, everybody gathered.

KL: What was the hall?

MS: It was just a meeting, big meeting hall that there used to be. It wasn't at the church, it was a different... I guess it used to be a community hall that they used.

KL: Was it pretty important other times? What else was it used for?

MS: I think different meetings of different groups. It was large enough to have a movie.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.