<Begin Segment 7>

KL: You were telling me a little bit about the graduation or lack of graduation from high school in Manzanar. Would you tell us for the recording what your memories of graduating at Manzanar are?

MW: Well, it seemed odd to be graduating in the mess hall. There wasn't that much space, and there wasn't that much room for parents to come in, you know, parents when they came. Although everybody didn't come. And I can't remember how many people we had in the graduating, but when you put the winter and summer together, it became big. That's why that picture is quite a bit of students there. But that was because we had all of the winter and summer graduates together.

KL: Tell us about the picture. I know it's repetitive, because you already told me, but just to capture...

MW: You mean the picture, the group picture?

KL: Both.

MW: Out on the firebreak, we call it firebreaks because between the barrack, there's so many barracks that consist of a block, and then they had to be open, almost two block opening. So I worked in another block beyond that. Well, when the wind blows, you're jumping up and down like a jackrabbit to get through where the opening is because (the) pebble just constantly hit your leg. You're just jumping up and down and you look like a jackrabbit going across, but that's the only way to get across if you happen to want to go just when the wind is blowing. But funny things (happened) to it, it even took a roof off the toilet, we laughed so hard. It just lifted it up and dropped it, oh, we laughed so hard. It was men's, it wasn't a women's.

KL: Was that in Block 14?

MW: Uh-huh. No, it wasn't Block 14, it was another block, I can't remember exactly, but that's what it did. And we laughed so hard, you know, you're kids, we think they're all funny. But they had a men's latrine, one building, and the barracks were all like this, and right in the middle was a laundry room and a women's bathroom, men's bathroom, that's how it was. And then like when we first went -- I don't know that I ever told you or not, but when we first went there, we go to the bathroom, there's absolutely no partition of any sort. There's just toilets just one after another. And I said, "I can't go to the toilet." Well, you have no place else, you've got to go. So finally they did put a partition between the toilets. Nothing in the front, but on the side. (...) I don't know about men, but women, that's what they did. And so that was terrible. That's, I think, one thing most of the girls didn't like. But in the shower, too, I don't know whether I told you, in the same building, in the toilet where the latrine was, same building, I said, "Where do you take a shower?" They said, "Open that door." It was a big room like this with showerhead, showerhead, showerhead. And I said, "Does everybody take a shower in here?" "Yes." "Where do we put our clothes?" "Outside the door." There's hooks on there, you take your clothes off where the toilets are, hang it up, go in there naked, get one of those showerheads and turn 'em on. Take your own soap, which was distributed because nobody had any, and they were terrible. That was the most embarrassing, I think, for anyone. And so people would take it late at night, early in the morning, they would try to be where there's not (many) people.

KL: What did you do?

MW: Huh?

KL: What did you do?

MW: I didn't like it, but at the end, there's nothing you can do. If you have to go, you have to go. But shower you tried to, but there's always someone there. You get that many people in a block, how many people were there in a block?

KL: It'd be fourteen times four times seven maybe. So close to 7, 650.

MW: There was a lot of people. And for one bungalow of bathrooms, you know, that's just not enough for all the people. You always have to wait, or my mother and they would go, they always used to take a bath at night. You just have to just try to figure out when to go when people aren't there.

KL: Do you remember your block manager?

MW: Oh, god, I thought his name was Hori, Mr. Hori, H-O-R-I.

KL: What was he like?

MW: He was a big fellow, very nice fellow. And I worked, I can't even remember the person that I worked with, in the block. I worked in another block. Well, you don't know what to do. You're going to get the same sixteen dollars a month anyway, no matter what it is you're doing. Whether it's a job in the office, I don't know whether they had any. Now, see, I knew I took some office, like typing and shorthand, but I don't know whether I could do it anymore, hadn't done it for so long. So when I came back out, and I had to look for a job, how do I tell them I know what to do? You don't know what you can do. And so somebody said something about a state exam for typing, and so I thought, well, let me just take an exam. If I fail, I fail, that's all. I would just try to get in something, and so I passed it.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.