Densho Digital Archive - Masako Yoshida Interview (denshovh-ymasako-01-0017)

<Begin Segment 17>

KL: When you kind of close your eyes and you think back on Poston, is there a particular memory that comes?

MY: Well, I met my husband there, and we had a good time. We used to jitterbug and go to these outdoor movies, and it was okay. It was just a time... we were fed, we didn't have to really work, or we got fed, and we didn't need much clothing because everybody wore the same old clothes. And it wasn't important. So I would say that I had a good time in camp because of the fact that I met my husband there and I was a teenager, not old enough to have to worry about working, and yet old enough to have fun by playing sports and working. I enjoyed my work, whatever I did, I enjoyed, and that was it.

KL: What about your parents? Did they ever talk to you or do you have a sense of what it was like for them?

MY: No, they never complained. They just never complained, they just did what they were supposed to do. I know that was hard for them, I remember we used to eat as a family and we used to pray together, but I know in camp we quit because you eat with your friends. So that's where the family life really broke up for many of the families, because the men would eat with... my father would be one of the early ones to eat, and he would eat with a few of his church friends who were not our friends there, but they became our friends in camp. And my mother would eat with her friends, and the kids would just eat together so we would, it really wrecked our family life because we all used to eat together. And before we ate, we said our prayers and everything, and it really, we really stopped that, definitely.

KL: How did your parents fill their days at Poston? What was a typical day for them? Did they have jobs?

MY: Yes. My father and mother took the worst jobs in camp. They were the, my father cleaned the latrines and my mother cleaned the latrines with another lady and another man, and they were not too proud. They needed the bathrooms clean and my father did it and my mother did it. And so they were the janitors, I know that my father was already quite old. I forgot how old he was. See, 'cause he passed away...

KL: He was born in the 1870s, I think.

MY: Well, he passed away at ninety, and so he must have been about seventy in camp, huh, seventy, close to eighty, maybe.

KL: Did the circumstances at Poston change anything about their relationship to each other? You said your mom kind of ran the household and your dad was out in the public?

MY: No, it just stayed the same, my father would just... my mother would be with her friends. My father was not a chattering person, and you mean at night, did they associate with other people? Not too much.

KL: I just wondered if it changed their roles or the way they reacted to each other.

MY: No, I don't think so. Because, well, for one thing, they were never real close, to me. Because until I learned about sex, I thought, gosh, how did the young people in camp who got married, how did they exist with different people in their rooms? But I don't know, by then my parents, I guess, were so old, it didn't matter that much. They went to, my father went to eat early by himself and my mother went to eat with another group by herself, I think. I never saw them eating together, because the men would eat with the men and the women would eat with the women in our block. I would not say that is true of every block, but that was how it was in our block.