<Begin Segment 9>

LP: You mentioned softball. So was that one of the, sort of, activities that you participated in in camp?

RM: Yes.

LP: Did the teams have names or anything?

RM: No, we just played, we may play another block, it's like football. But nobody liked to play with us because we had these two guys, my best friend and his brother, who were mean. [Laughs] Nobody wanted to play with us. And his name was Morita, George and Robert. But what I do remember about baseball is a semi-pro team came from... what was that town close by? Klamath Falls. They came to play, I vividly remember them because, see, we played, our guys were five foot four. Oh, those guys were six foot tall, they were big, giant guys and all that, you know, we said, "Wow, those guys are big," but we beat 'em. [Laughs]

LP: This was a team that was just local kids that were coming over?

RM: The guys were, they had played, the ball players, good ball players from Tule Lake were from a town called Riverside, and they had played ball before, no, they were nineteen, twenty year old guys, so I still remember that, playing. They must play about three or four games, I remember going to see the games. So that was... that's one thing I remember.

LP: Was there sporting equipment given to people in the camp, or was that something people had to make in the camp?

RM: Yeah, I don't know how, you know, the guy that taught us to play basketball and softball and stuff, I don't know where he got the equipment. I don't know, I really don't know.

LP: Do you remember where the field was for them?

RM: Oh, in the firebreaks. And in the block they had this one area where he built the... every block there was a kind of area you could build a basketball court.

LP: So besides basketball, baseball, softball, was there anything else that you did as a kid playing or activities that your parents really wanted you to do in camp.

RM: No, that kept us busy so that was it. Except when I went to Heart Mountain, marbles. See, what is it, fourth grade, I was pretty good at marbles. [Laughs]

LP: You mentioned that there were dances, and were those at Tule Lake or later in your...

RM: No, in Heart Mountain.

LP: Do you remember, do your parents have any sort of social groups to hang out with? It sounds like your mom, your parents were probably both really busy with having...

RM: Yeah, having a family, so not that... and see, maybe it's kind of different for our family because we were in every camp only year, so some of these people I know, when they go to reunions, they go to reunions because they were in the camp together for three and a half years, but I was only in each camp one year, so you don't really build that strong relationship. Because when I left Tule Lake, they had this autograph book, and guys signed them, so when I looked at it how many years later, I was gonna donate to the museum, I looked at it, I couldn't remember a single guy. I was ten years old, by the time I looked at it, I was sixty-five, and I couldn't remember a single name. And from Jerome, I only remember one guy's name. but I do remember a couple other people.

LP: So you talked a little bit about the winter weather, but what about the whole year, with the warmer months, was it really unbearable weather during the summers? People remember extreme...

RM: No, I never... the weather never really bothered me, even, because I like cold, so it never really bothered me, the weather. I used to think about things like, even Tule Lake now, you know those little whirlwinds, we used to call it girigiri. We said, "Oh, another girigiri." Yeah, that's what I remember about that in Tule Lake. And then what I remember about Jerome was my buddy said, "When you're walking to school, if you feel one drop of rain, you better run, thunderstorms." He was right. One drop of rain, you'd better run, because it would just shower. And then what I remember about Heart Mountain is the long days in Heart Mountain. We'd go to a movie, come back at night, and then we'll play softball afterwards, it was still light. The long days, I remember.

KL: Can I ask one or two questions follow up for Tule Lake? You mentioned cooks who were taking ingredients and they were sent away. Were those cooks Japanese American?

RM: No.

KL: They were Caucasian staff?

RM: Caucasian, yeah.

KL: Do you know where they went?

RM: I have no idea. I was ten years old, but I knew that they were gone. And afterwards, when we came here, you could start reading about what happened to him. But at that time, all I know, they were gone.

KL: And they were replaced with Japanese American cooks?

RM: Yes.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.