<Begin Segment 14>

LP: I'm curious about the hospital because I've read a little bit from other interviews, people that were nurses there and just the lack of supplies, and the unnecessary, in some cases, death and illness that people didn't really have the opportunity to deal with. What do you remember about the hospital in general?

EY: Not very much because my role was such a small role, and I just did what I was told to do. And I never made an adventurous curiosity to look and find out, so I really don't know the whole history there. And if the supplies were rare and all that, I believe it. Because I don't think the government really provided the way it should have been. From what I understand, though, that because we only had one telephone for each ward, instead of a block, why, if you were sick, you would have had a hard time to have the ambulance come pick you up and take you to the hospital and all that. So I really don't know.

LP: Do you remember any of the names of the doctors or nurses or any staff that were there?

EY: No, I don't. I never had any interaction with them.

LP: Were there any cases of any illness that you were aware of there? Anyone, maybe even like in your family, anyone getting sick?

EY: No, I don't remember.

LP: I'm asking, there was one lady I interviewed who, she did a lot of dancing and was very athletic, her parents had her do everything, you know, it was just 24/7, having to do some extracurricular thing. And she had a really bad stomach pain one day and so they went into the hospital and the doctor was really certain it was her appendix, and her dad asked if they could wait on doing any surgery until after she performed.

EY: Is that right?

LP: But it turns out that this one doctor had a reputation for misdiagnosing people, and the next day it went away, it wasn't her appendix. And so he was trying to prevent her from being operated on because he was concerned about what would happen to her. So I was just curious if there was anybody that was, had a reputation of being good or bad, anything.

EY: I have not heard.

LP: And it's escaping me what year this was, but the Hitomi murder case, were you at Tule Lake when that happened, the man who was killed and there's still no identifying information about what happened really?

EY: I think I heard someone talk about it, but I'm not fully aware of that, no. Like I say, I'm very naive. [Laughs]

LP: One of the other things I was just curious about was, so Barbara Takei recently was kind of talking about some of the cellars potentially at Tule Lake, I know some of them have been found at Manzanar. Do you recall anyone having a cellar or basement that they dug out underneath their barrack. Did you ever see anything like that?

EY: I think I remember just one barrack that had a hole in it, but I was unaware of what they were using the hole for. That's all I know.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.