Densho Digital Archive - George Kiyo Wakatsuki Interview (denshovh-wgeorge-01-0012)

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AL: So you were talking about your friend said you went out to go fishing, but you don't remember that? Going out fishing?

GW: I just remember going out fishing with Woody. We used to make (hooks), get a straight pin, make a little curve at the end and tie a string on the end, other end. And he had me go out with him to look for grasshoppers because that was our bait.

AL: This is in camp?

GW: Yeah. Go out, that's when they'd let us out of camp. After a while they took the guards off and said, "Now you can go out, give you passes so that you can go out and come back in." So they gave you a pass so that they know that you, you're out there, and then if you don't come back, then you have the pass there, that way they keep control over, or know where you're at, if you're lost, have to go out and look for you. But my brother and I used to go out.

AL: You were talking about passes and security and the guard towers, what do you remember of the guard towers when they were staffed? Did they have lights, did they have people?

GW: When we first got to camp, they would have a guard up there with a machine gun. And we know, we were told, "You don't go near the fence," because there's a little break between that and the barracks and so forth. You don't go play around the fence, so we never did. But they took them off, I don't know how many years after that, they allowed us to leave the camp. But the guards were taken away from there. I don't know if the records show that it was one or two years after that that they took 'em away.

AL: I think it was in '43. Because Merritt said that they left the lights in the front towers on the highway, they left those on. And he said, "For the comfort of mind of local citizens," that they would light those towers at night and staff them, I guess. But the ones on the back... I mean, they always had MPs there, but the staffing changed. That's what it says, anyway. So you never had any interactions with military police?

GW: No.