<Begin Segment 22>

KL: Did you have a job in Jerome?

EY: Yeah, I was a dishwasher.

KL: Oh, that's right. Were you washing dishes in the same mess hall as where you lived?

EY: Yeah, it was in our block, so it was hop, skip and jump, I didn't have to go anywhere too far. So that's how I chose that. Although I'd rather prefer being in the office, that's where I was in Gila, I was in a canteen.

KL: So what was a typical daily routine in Jerome?

EY: Well, washing dishes three times a day, right? Morning, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and that was all, it was just a short span, but it was something to do, and gave me twelve dollars a month.

KL: Did the twelve dollars continue to go kind of to the family pot?

EY: Family pot. Everything was in the family pot. Even my two brothers didn't work, so it was just my father and myself. So he made sixteen and I made twelve, so how much is that? That's all we had for a whole month.

KL: What was his job in Jerome?

EY: Let me see, I don't know if he went back to the hospital as a cook or not, or whether he worked as a cook in the mess hall, I don't remember.

KL: Larisa asked basements in Tule Lake. Do you remember any basements in Jerome?

EY: I don't know. I don't think so, because if you did, it would be the swamps down below, and so I don't think so. And because it was so humid and hot, I don't know that they would even take the time to do that, knowing that there might be a swamp on the bottom. So maybe there were that I was totally unaware of.

KL: What about gardens or other landscaping or fish ponds?

EY: Oh, yeah, there were, like in Manzanar, there were people who were active doing that. That's why there were, some blocks were much more prettier and homier because the evacuees were much more into gardening or making little ponds or something.

KL: Do you remember any specifically? Can you describe what they look like or where they were?

EY: No. Just very picturesque. [Laughs] It's such a short stay, too. I wasn't going to school.

KL: What else were you... were you taking any classes, or was it pretty much work and caring for your mom?

EY: Yeah. I didn't go take any classes at all. Too bad, because there were so many offered. In fact, I think that's the first time that all the farmers' wives had a chance of doing something that they enjoyed doing instead of, you know, like Jim's mother, like being a farmer's wife. And when the weather was bad, she would take apart the jeans and mend the jeans and put it together so the kids could all have good wearable jeans during the summer and all that. My mom never did things like that, and I didn't have the time, looking after her and all that. So I regret that part, because a lot of people were involved, the men were involved, the women were involved, kids were doing whatever, and I never had that chance. So then when this chance came up to go to class, I said, "Oh, go." So even if I worked, I didn't work eight hours a day. Sometimes I did, but mostly six hours a day, so I had a chance to go to class for this.

KL: How many hours a day did you work in Jerome?

EY: Probably maybe six hours, huh? Because doing the dishes, probably two hours, two hours a day. Two, four, six hours a day times seven.

KL: How was the cook in your mess hall?

EY: In my mess hall? He was okay. Actually, he was a gardener, he wasn't really a cook per se, but he was trying to be creative and do whatever. So it was okay, it's a little bit better than Tule Lake, but it was edible. I wouldn't say delicious, but at least we filled our tummies, anyway.

KL: Do you remember his name?

EY: No, I don't.

KL: But he was a gardener?

EY: Yeah, by profession he was a gardener. And another person was a farmer, so they had a variety of people making our dinner, breakfast.

KL: Did your mess hall have any kind of garden or pond outside of it?

EY: See, the one in Jerome, it seemed like it was a little fancier than the one in Tule Lake, in that I felt that their equipment was more modernized. I don't know whether it was just me or whether I wasn't that observant while I was in Tule Lake or not, but seemed like it, I don't know. But it was all picnic tables everywhere we went, Tule Lake, Jerome, Gila, it was all picnic tables.

KL: Are there other places in Jerome that you spent any time besides the mess hall or your barrack?

EY: Uh-uh, just in our barrack and the mess hall, that's about it.

KL: Were you part of any religious community in Jerome?

EY: No, not at all.

KL: Do you remember ever soldiers from Camp Shelby coming into Jerome or having any connection with Nisei soldiers?

EY: No. I heard about it, I don't know how the conversation came up with someone, "Did you know that they were there?" I said, "No." [Laughs] News to me. No, I didn't know. So I think that the ladies who were involved had to be a little older, maybe in their early twenties.

KL: It sounds like you were pretty busy with work, both at home and in the mess hall. And it's kind of a weird time after you were done with school, but were you able to make any friends in Jerome, any good friends?

EY: I knew faces, but not to establish a friendship.

KL: So there are two people who became pretty well-known activists and writers who were in Jerome. One is Yuri Kochiyama and one is Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga. Did you ever hear their names?

EY: Yeah, I heard their names after...

KL: Later?

EY: Yeah, relocation. Is Yoshinaga the person who writes for the Rafu Shimpo? Not him? Or is he the musician Yoshinaga, I don't know.

KL: She wrote one of the first books about Japanese American incarceration, sort of, start to finish, and she discovered evidence about, you know, the reports that said that it wasn't necessary to incarcerate Japanese Americans.

EY: No, I'm not familiar then.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.