<Begin Segment 13>

RM: Tell me about the trip to Manzanar. How did you get there?

JY: Somebody took me up there. I had a car, so I sold it. My brother-in-law took me up there and dropped me off. And I went in as a volunteer, I could come out any time I want. I stayed in with her until we had Beverly, she was born there. Then they let us out.

RM: What was your first impression of Manzanar?

JY: Well, it was sad to see all the people, rich people, poor people. The poor people wasn't bad because they had a house to stay in and food cooked for them, and making a few dollar. They were making parachute and things like that.

RM: What did it look like?

JY: Just dirt, wind and dust and barracks. We had one barrack maybe the size of a garage and maybe about four families live in it. We had a little corner, just a bed in there, that's all, sat on the bed.

RM: Who lived in the barracks with you?

JY: Other families, two other families. One family had about three or four kids, and one had one, and us. We didn't have any kids, so we were all thrown in together.

RM: Did you remember the other families' names?

JY: No, I don't. We just kept to ourselves, more or less.

RM: I suspect that you imagined something different for the first months of your marriage. [Laughs] What was it like to have to live in that room with other people as a newly married couple?

JY: Well, we'd been married quite a while already, three or four months we'd been married. So it was awkward living with other people under the same roof. But that's the way it had to be.

RM: What block did you live in?

JY: I forgot, 23 or 24.

RM: Do you remember what building or room you were in?

JY: Yeah, we were the second one. We weren't on the end, and we were near the fireplace. I think it's 23 or 24, I'm not sure.

RM: Maybe 23, it's next to a firebreak.

JY: Probably.

RM: And what do you remember about the latrines?

JY: Well, they were open toilets. For men it wasn't bad, for women it was hard because there was no divider or anything like that, just toilets lined up. And showers were the same way, you go in the big room and you shower.

RM: How about the food?

JY: Pardon?

RM: How about the food at Manzanar?

JY: The food wasn't bad because they had their own cooks, their own people cooking, it was Japanese food and all that.

RM: How were you treated?

JY: Well, I told you I was, went to sleep with a claw hammer. I thought somebody would attack me, being Chinese, but hell, I was treated like one of them. I had no trouble, so I put the hammer away.

RM: Did you make friends in Manzanar?

JY: Yeah, I made good friends.

RM: Do you remember any of their names or what they were like?

JY: Oh, yeah, Miwako.

RM: Can you tell us some of their names?

JY: I've forgotten. Played ball with them, we had fun together. Watched a movie, block movie, outdoor movie, big screen and all that, entertainment.

RM: Tell us about playing ball in Manzanar.

JY: Yeah, I played baseball with them, basketball with them. Her family, my wife's family were great basketball player, because when they went into the service in Japan, they won the championship over there. They got the brother to join the army so they could go back to Japan, and they beat a Notre Dame group back there for the championship two years in a row.

RM: What was your job in Manzanar?

JY: I was a carpenter.

RM: How did you get that job?

JY: Oh, I applied for it. They tried to put everybody to work making something.

RM: Had you worked as a carpenter before?

JY: Yeah, I did a little carpentry, yeah.

KL: What did you build in Manzanar?

JY: Pardon?

KL: What did you build in Manzanar?

JY: Repairing barracks, moving walls. In these long barracks, about 120 foot, the walls can be moved according to the size of the family, so we did a lot of that.

KL: Do you remember installing any plasterboard or anything?

JY: No, we didn't have any plasterboard in there until later, 'til after we moved. It was just the outside, and that's why dust was coming in. A lot of people put up sheets just to keep the dust out. So it was kind of horrible.

RM: How did you make privacy from the other people in your room?

JY: Okay, we put posts up and put ropes and put blankets up.

RM: On the posts?

JY: Yeah, on the rope. It would run from post to post, so that's the only privacy we have.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.