Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Marion I. Masada Interview
Narrator: Marion I. Masada
Interviewer: Kristen Luetkemeier
Location: Fresno, California
Date: September 10, 2014
Densho ID: denshovh-mmarion-01-0011

<Begin Segment 11>

KL: Okay, so back to Poston, you said you guys arrived and it was really hot and you'd been wearing all your clothes. What happened in the first couple of hours that you were in Poston? What do you remember about that, arriving?

MM: Well, probably not much. We had to find our barrack, I mean report to where we're going to be housed and find the barrack.

KL: Who gave you your housing assignment?

MM: I have no idea. I have no idea. Being a kid, you just follow where your parents say we have to go.

KL: Yeah, "Stand over here and don't move."

MM: Yeah, right, right. [Laughs]

KL: What was your barrack like in Poston, when you first went into it?

MM: Just one room, twenty by twenty-five, one lightbulb, no partitions or anything. And with our large family living in one room, all we had, all we could do is just sleep.

KL: Yeah, how many of you were there at that time?

MM: There were six of us kids and Mother and Father, so that means there was eight of us. And then one more was born in the camp, Earlyn, so that's another person.

KL: Where did your grandmother live in Poston?

MM: She lived in 219. We lived in 211. We were in the same camp. [Coughs]

[Interruption]

KL: So we just took a real quick break to breathe, and you said that your grandmother was in 219 and 211. I assume the 2 is Poston 2?

MM: Uh-huh.

KL: And then is 19 the block?

MM: No, 219. It was in the two hundreds, Camp 2 is two hundred; in Camp 1 is one to one hundred or something like that, and Camp 3 is three hundreds.

KL: So where were you relative to the rest of the camp? Were you in the middle or right on the edge or...

MM: We were on the edge, because I remember the forest next to us, next to our barrack, and we used to run in the forest and hide and have a little privacy. And my girlfriend and I, we would sing, sing to, just screech out, belt out thanksgiving songs. [Sings] "Over the river and through the woods," we used to sing that song. Yeah, it was fun.

KL: Was she your friend from before Poston?

MM: No, we were friends in camp, that's all.

KL: What's her name?

MM: Miyoko Hada, M-I-Y-O-K-O, and Hada is H-A-D-A.

KL: Do you remember a military presence at Poston?

MM: You mean the guard soldiers?

KL: Did you ever encounter soldiers or guards?

MM: Oh no, they were never walking amongst us or anything. They were always up in their tower, so we never went near there.

KL: How did you know not to go near there?

MM: Well, for one thing, it wasn't even close to where I lived. It was stationed someplace else, but I never saw it and I never wanted to go see it or was interested in it or anything like that. Curious, no.

KL: Did your barrack change at all during your time in Poston?

MM: What do you mean by change?

KL: Did you, like in Manzanar, after several months wallboard went in and linoleum went in. if people had the money, they ordered it from catalogs.

MM: Are you kidding? No, we didn't have no such thing.

KL: Or some friends would bring furniture in. I think it depended on your economic group, but...

MM: No, no. No, none of that.

KL: No changes.

MM: That's the first time I heard of something like that.

KL: Yeah, it was a construction zone. See, people who went to Manzanar usually didn't come from an assembly center. Manzanar was an assembly center, so for a lot of people it was under construction when they arrived and it was, things were changing even on the government side for the first several months people were there, as far as finish, finishing the barracks.

MM: Really?

KL: And then if people had the money or they had stuff in storage and a friend who could --

MM: Bring it.

KL: -- get the tire tickets and stuff and bring it to them, sometimes that would happen. But you guys were farther too. I mean, that was part of Manzanar's proximity to L.A. So no changes, really.

MM: No.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.