Densho Digital Archive - Saburo Masada Interview (denshovh-msaburo-01-0012)

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KL: What else stands out to you about your time in Jerome? Are there any other experiences or descriptions?

SM: Well, Jerome, I enjoyed my classmates, and also the orchestra, played the clarinet. One flute player was an adult. I don't know why he was in our orchestra. Maybe he was assisting. But his flute was a hissing sound, and I thought, gosh, what a terrible instrument, hissing all the time. And so years later, when there was a group of young adults at our church camp and they had a little, they had guitars and he had a flute, and he played and it was such a beautiful tone. I never, I didn't know the flute was supposed to sound like that. So anyway, I remember that. And had an art class, I found out later that this was the famous Mr. Sugimoto from Hanford, who was the art teacher, but of course I didn't learn anything about art. I mean, that's the kind of student I was.

KL: What do you remember about his class?

SM: Nothing, except we were drawing and painting, but I don't remember anything that I produced.

KL: Who were the other students?

SM: Just people in my eighth grade. Course, there were, I think there were two or three eighth grade classes, so he was the teacher of one of our eighth grade class in art. But I can't, all I could say is that he was our teacher. That's all I can say. [Laughs] And let's see, I remember vividly a school play. It was by the high school, but our junior high school, they were all in the same block, same facility, and the musical they put on was "Old Man River" and I remember falling in love with the song because of the Nisei senior who played the lead role. He had such a beautiful voice, singing "Old Man River," and that became one of my favorite songs.

KL: Do you know who the singer was?

SM: No, I don't. I've asked the other, two of my classmates, but they couldn't remember. In fact, they couldn't even remember the play, the musical. So I have to keep asking.

KL: Showboat, right?

SM: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Oh, that's the title of it. I thought it was Old Man River, but it's Showboat, right.

KL: That's the only...

SM: That's it. That's the one.

KL: That's interesting, because there's definitely an undercurrent about racial prejudice in that script, too. It was people within Jerome who put that on?

SM: No, it's a high school, the high school put it on. So there's some talented people, I guess, like in any high school. I remember that as a memorable experience in Jerome. Remember doing nothing but playing, because before we went to camp we studied and we worked, sun, from morning to night and played in between, but in camp there's nothing to do, so my grades went way down.

KL: I know you were a child, but do you, were you aware of any tensions within Jerome, between Japanese American people?

SM: No.

KL: There was no sense of that.

SM: Yeah.

KL: You mentioned some of your siblings and their responses to the Selective Service form and the leave clearance form. You said it, you said that both of your sisters qualified their answers?

SM: Yeah.

KL: Did your brothers also?

SM: Apparently not. Apparently they just said "yes-yes," because, well, that was the easiest way to go. But I, my sisters, they remembered having meetings in our block where there were strong sentiments about those two questions and about the whole idea of a questionnaire, so listening to the arguments or debates, that they agreed. But they weren't willing to say "no-no," because they're Americans. So they qualified it, they said those are, questions are not right questions, and so they were brought in by the board that examined these people who answered the questionnaire without unqualified "yes-yes." And after they explained it they were approved.

KL: So it was, was it Miyo and Lily who qualified it?

SM: Uh-huh.

KL: And how did you learn about these conversations, with the board and their, their...

SM: In their records. When we asked, wrote the archives and got the material, I read in the, in their archival collection that they had to appear before the board.

KL: And they were called debates within the block, about how to respond to those questions?

SM: Say that again?

KL: You said also that they recalled debates within the block about how to --

SM: Yeah, my sisters. Miyo -- Lily died early, so I didn't get to discuss that with her, but Miyo said that they had these debates. And I think every block had that. And then there were some, I guess closer to our block, who felt very strongly, so there was a lot of debate.

KL: Do you recall people going, leaving Jerome and being taken to Tule Lake?

SM: Well, just in general, I know these people were leaving, but I don't remember too much details about what the whole issue was.

KL: Mark, you had questions about Jerome, I think.

MH: Actually, I want to go back to Jerome and the mess hall, eating in the mess hall. Would you eat as a family in the mess hall?

SM: Never. Most of us, we ate with our friends, and our parents sort of ate by themselves or they were in the kitchen working. My mother, I think she went to the kitchen and brought back some food for the first six, three weeks. But after that she was free to go by, eat by... well, no, then sometimes she, I think she brought home food for my brother, who was, had cerebral palsy. But I wouldn't have been eating with my mother at all, or my sisters. At home, before the war and after the war, we always ate together as a family. We all sat around and ate together. But in camp I didn't eat once with my family, and that's most of the kids. They never ate with their families. We all ate with our friends that we played with.

KL: That was it?

SM: Someone said, I was mentioning what kind of effect that might've had on us, and -- I was in junior high, but even older ones -- because we, for at least three years or more, we never sat around the table to eat together and talk or even listen to each other, that that might've had some impact on our ability as parents to develop this kind of conversation with our children. Someone brought that up, and so I think there's probably some relevance to that, because the Niseis weren't always very good at parenting. Not that they abused their children or anything, but the communication was not there.