<Begin Segment 6>

LP: So we're talking about the barracks at the lumber yard, or not the yard, but where your dad was working. And so we were talking about the bathhouse area, and you were reflecting on the assembly center and that...

EY: Back and forth.

LP: Yeah. So... I forget specifically what you were talking about.

KL: She was just describing the latrines.

LP: Okay. So what were the differences and similarities, I guess? Because you were making a connection between those two, and looking back on it and using the word barrack and all of this, it seemed sort of odd, but was there any similarities in the barracks that you were living in with the...

EY: Of course, the only similarity was the roofline, and the ones in camp were tarpaper, but we had wooden ones around, and then we did have a porch, so that it wasn't quite stark as the one in camp. And then the fact that there was the outhouses, and we had outhouses here, too. I guess for me, it wasn't that quite of an adjustment like for a lot of the city folks. They talk about graffiti, especially in Tule Lake. That's the first time I was aware of graffiti, I didn't know that word then. But the Japanese people from California and the Japanese people from Washington and the Japanese people from Oregon were all, came from different areas. So in the girl's room, there were some naughty words about the Washingtons, Washingtonians, and then the Californians. So I said, what's going on here? I never really knew that we Japanese were that expressive out in public, especially, because we're taught to, we don't do things like that. So when we got into camp and went to Tule Lake, for a while it was nice and clean and then all of a sudden, all of these graffiti like things, wow. SO within our own Japanese culture, nationality, whatever, race, there's this thing about the feeling of being so different. Never occurred to me, talk about naive, I was very naive.

LP: Was the residential area with the lumber company, was there a community to that? Were people close with each other at all, or what was the...

EY: Yeah, well, there was a man who came to the camp once in three months or so to show Japanese movies, especially for our parents who spoke Japanese mostly. And so at that time, then we would all meet at this one, it wasn't a hall per se, but it was a unit, it was still a barrack, but it had a larger room, just plain big room. So I guess you could call it a gathering place, and he would show the movie and play the part of the characters on the film, and if it was a woman he would change the tone of his voice and he would speak like the women was talking. And then when the man was talking he would change his voice and talk like a man was. And it kind of fascinated me, I was in fifth grade, sixth grade, and that was our more or less entertainment. And then as the young kids, we had a chance to go see an American movie once in a while. And in my particular case, the man next door who had the studio was friends with the family on the very end, my girlfriend, and he would volunteer to take some of us to the theater. And whether he stayed to look at the film I don't remember, but anyway, we got a chance to see some of the American movies. But as far as entertainment and things, there wasn't that much, but the kids got together and they made their own little baseball team and maybe not quite a full team, but you know how children get together, they just start playing. That's about what it was, no set thing, no basketball or anything like that.

LP: Did you tend to play with your siblings or were there other kids in the area?

EY: Yeah, there were other kids, and my youngest brother, he liked to fish, and the Snoqualmie River was across the way. And our barrack was down here but there was this railroad crossing, and I think the lumber company must have made this division where the railroad track went through our place. And then in order to go to town or anything, you had to go up and then cross the railroad track, go down and then be the regular street. And then for us to go to high school, that's what we had to do, go up and cross the railroad track, go down and then get to school. See now, my train of thought just... what was I talking about?

LP: Oh, playing with other kids or socializing with other kids?

EY: Yeah. My youngest brother, he did play with the kids, but he liked fishing so well that my father provided a long bamboo for him. And he was really good about fishing, and he would go, there was a picture of him, he's sitting there, he's just sitting like this and then the fish would come along, and he'd always come home with a fish. And my second brother, he never was that lucky. He used to get upset, because my younger brother was getting all these fish and bringing it home, and we'd have our dinner with it. But when he goes, he can't bring home a fish, you know. But I wouldn't say that he was a loner, but he enjoyed fishing, and so occasionally they would play baseball together, and then we girls, I don't know, I was too busy doing my chores, so I really never got to play with the rest of them. Only time was going to and back from school. In fact, it's funny talking about this, when I was in the fifth and sixth grade, had to go through the lumber mill and then go up to go to school. And because the lumber mill was the way it was built, they had flocks of sheep. Well, like any animal, they did their business, and it looked like marbles, black marbles. I didn't know any different, so I'm walking along and I see them, and then finally my girlfriend, "Don't you know? That's poop." I said, "What?" [Laughs] "That's sheep poop." Talk about being naive or dumb or stupid, I don't know. So we had to go around and find our way to school, and I'm tiptoeing like this with my books in my hand. Finally got so, the heck with it kind of a thing, but that was funny.

LP: Were the sheep being used for wool?

EY: No, they ate the grass, so that they kept the weeds down, so it was okay. I didn't know what they would be used for at that time.

LP: So how long in total was your family at that area or living in that area? Was that where you're at up until World War II?

EY: I guess we were there about eleven years, just about the time the war started.

LP: And your dad stayed in the same position for that eleven-year period? It sounded like he was milling boards.

EY: Yeah, I don't really know whether he did get any different position or not, all I know is he'd go to work. That's another thing I never asked him.

LP: Were they harvesting wood really close to where you were living? Could you hear anything, or was it being trucked in from somewhere else?

EY: I know that I'd see big trucks with huge logs sometimes, sometimes I'd see it all stacked up nice, so I had no idea.

LP: Somebody that I interviewed in Washington, D.C., they have this fond memory or memories of growing up in Oregon and their dad was a lumberjack.

EY: Is that right?

LP: Yeah, he had no training in it but he would climb these trees and do all the stuff and he could hear, they had this house in the woods, and the person that owned the company or whatever lived up the hill from them, they were real nice people, but it was just this really country kind of living for them, but he could hear the trees being, fallen and stuff in the woods. And so I was thinking of this mill and wondering what the environment was like or if it was, you were just processing the boards and they were harvesting it somewhere else and trucking it in?

EY: I think it was processing, yeah, because for us at home to get the firewood to burn the stove for cooking, my father did get permission to cut one tree down. And I know he made a back thing for my brother and myself to pack in the wood that he chopped out there to the house, and we had a little shed in the back. I don't know what happened to my second brother, he was never in the picture. But it was my younger brother and I that did that. So my father made a small one for him and one for me, and he would chop the wood. He would get the tree down and take all the branches off and then he would cut it and saw it to the length, and then he would chop it. Sometimes he wouldn't chop it and I had to chop it at home. I still have a scar from it, but anyway, that's the first time I got a little axe. But yeah, in order for us to make, or get the food cooking and everything, we had to chop the wood in order to get the fire going and then also the same stove created the same heat for the whole unit. And so my younger brother and I carried the branches of chopped wood sometimes on our back. And like I say, my job sometimes, big one, chop it up and all this.

LP: Was your dad into carpentry at all, being around all this building material?

EY: No, he wasn't that way. Actually, I don't know that he even had a hobby, now that I think about it. Either that or he was just too tired after all that. But eventually my youngest brother became an optometrist, that's how he made his living.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.