Densho Digital Archive - Sue Kunitomi Embrey Interview (denshovh-esue-02-0012)

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JA: Tell me about the gardens that started to grow up, the flower gardens and the ponds.

SE: The what?

JA: The flower gardens, the ponds.

SE: Oh. When I first got my job as the reporter for the Free Press, I was assigned to go up to Block 6, which is the very end of the camp, and do a report on a pond that had been finished. They had Japanese goldfish in it, and I was kind of intrigued by that. Evidently they had ordered them through the catalog. And it was not just a pond, they had a rock garden around it. And I know that when they were digging up and cleaning out a lot of the gardens they came across the garden at Block 6, which was, I think, the first garden that was built, and then they built another one across, which was Block 12, and that was quite an elaborate one, too. But they used the materials right there that they could find, the stones, the rocks. They bought -- I guess they did get cement to put those rocks into the garden, build the pond.

JA: What first inspired that, do you think?

SE: Well, according to an interview that we did with Harry Ueno, he said he was concerned because everybody lined up for their meals outside the mess hall and there was no shade and no place to sit, so he talked to the mess hall people and the, and the men in the block and they decided they would build this, this garden. His garden was almost the full length of the barrack, the mess hall, which was 100 feet. And they got an order for cement and they brought in the rocks and put together, you know, I guess the yucca trees and different shrubs. He had an order for three sacks of cement and it was not enough, so he asked that they keep the order requisition form and not turn it in, so each time that he was finished with the three sacks he would send someone to the warehouse and get another three sacks. And so we... later on they called it the "three-sack garden," but it really took more than three sacks. And he, I think his garden in Block 22 won the contest for the best garden in camp, and there were gardens all over the place. And I think that they wanted to really beautify the place because it was such a barren and windy place and people wanted to be able to, you know, sit there and enjoy each other's company and not have to sit in the hot sun, or stand in the hot sun waiting for their meals. I don't know whether it was an all-camp project, but they did build an acre of garden and pond for -- they called it Pleasure Park but eventually it was called Merritt Park for the director, Ralph Merritt. There are still remains of that and some people would like to have that restored. But there were gardens everywhere.

JA: That must have had an effect on the mood of daily life.

SE: I think so, and the people also built gardens in front of their unit. They planted flowers, they had vegetable gardens, and it was a real attempt to beautify their surroundings, and I think it really helped the morale of the people.

JA: That's great. Tell me about the attitude called shikata ga nai.

SE: Well, that was mostly a saying among the older generation, and I guess we kind of picked it up, too, but it was like, "Well, you know, it can't be helped so you have to make the best of it." And I think the Issei were very good at that because they had, had suffered so much even before, even before the war. I think in a way it kind of helped them to go through the period of being confined.