<Begin Segment 26>

KL: Do you have questions about Topaz?

LP: Yeah. I was actually curious about any presence of, like, native people that was obvious at Topaz. Like fossils and different things were found, but like at Tule Lake, there's evidence of projectile points and arrowheads and different things. And so I was just curious if, when you were there, if you noticed, kind of, anything that was tribal that people that maybe had occupied that space before?

MS: That was one of the other things that they were all hunting for, was arrowheads and pieces. I have that great big black, you know what the arrowheads are made out of.

ST: Flint?

LP: Obsidian?

MS: Obsidian. it's a big piece, and that's one that Dad also found and brought home. I've also got that yet. And also his father found quite a few pieces of arrowheads, mostly old broken pieces, but yeah, there were quite a few of those. It was another hobby, I guess. They probably found those, because remember the people used to go digging for shells, because we used the shells to make jewelry and stuff. And I imagine when they were digging around for things like that, they probably found a lot of arrowheads and other interesting things.

SP: Earlier we were talking about that man who was shot. You mentioned a dog, and so I was curious, did people have, it sounds like people had pets at Topaz. How did people get dogs and...

MS: I have no idea. They did have animals. In fact, we were the, my mother and father and Tsuki and I were the last to leave, and the dogs all ended up in our block. They would be fed until then, so I guess they had to just abandon them. So we had about a dozen dogs that came, and my mother would feed them. So I don't know what happened to them after we left; hopefully they picked them up and took them somewhere. Yeah, it's amazing, there were quite a few dogs running around.

LP: There's a few photos at Tule Lake of, like, dogs, and there's dog shows and these things, and it's just really bizarre. We've been trying to figure out how people got dogs, if they were just wild dogs that were domesticated, or if somebody was bringing, if it was like an administration thing.

MS: I have no idea how they got that.

LP: Huh, okay. And then was there like a cemetery or was there, for that one person that got shot, people probably had different ways that they wanted their remains to be handled.

MS: I have no idea.

ST: I don't know what happened to all those.

MS: I have no idea. I guess because we had no use for it. I don't know.

ST: They probably cremated all those.

MS: Huh?

ST: Probably cremated 'em and put 'em in an urn and took it with them.

MS: Oh, yeah, they could just take them home, take 'em with them. That would make sense.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.