Densho Digital Archive - Bob Fuchigami Interview (denshovh-fbob-01-0016)

<Begin Segment 16>

RP: What other recollections do you have of Merced Assembly Center?

BF: That, that went over rather... that period of time. We were there about three months. That period of time went over quickly, for me. I didn't attend the schools that they set up. They did set up some schools, well, classes, such as they were. The teachers were all internees. And I guess they were just trying to finish out the school year or whatever. But there was only about a month of that, I think, and then they may have had some summer schools. That, that period of time, it's been written up in the, in the book called In the Home Place, I think. But I, what I remember about Merced was they started some recreational kinds of things, baseball for example. And they had some pretty good teams. There were teams from Sebastopol and Livingston and Yuba City, Yuba City, Colusa and before the war they used to have Nisei baseball leagues. And some of these teams entered Merced intact. Because all the players from that particular area would, would go into the camp. So we had some very good teams and they played some pretty good baseball.

RP: And those teams actually ended, also ended up getting transplanted to --

BF: To Amache, yes. Yes. Because when it came time to, to move from Merced to Amache, all that entire Merced camp and that population ended up in, in Amache. And that was different from the other group. Cause half were from Amache and the other half by and large were from Santa Anita. And Santa Anita, of course, was that famous horse track down there, they had... what, they came about 18,000 people, I think, from the L.A. area, L.A. and surrounding area. When it came time for those folks to move, they got sorted out. They didn't, they didn't come as a group. And they're... we got maybe 3,500 of those folks. And they didn't come with their own baseball team or... so when they eventually formed teams in, in Amache, here were their established teams and of course they did quite well. And, that, but that's one thing I remember. They also had talent shows or variety shows with talent. I remember, I think that's when I first heard Pat Suzuki. Pat, Pat became very famous later on as a singer. RCA at one time had her ranked right up there with Perry Como and Harry Belafonte, and others. And it was, what, Bing Crosby and someone found her singing in a little nightclub in Seattle and said, "Hey, here's a, here's a budding superstar."

RP: So she got her start in Merced?

BF: Well, she, she had, she had been performing and... not as a star or anything but just started singing in the, in their little town of Cressey.

RP: Cressey, right. The Japanese American farming area?

BF: Community, yeah. Farm community. And when she got into camp of course she, she performed a little bit. But she was, she was twelve years old.

RP: Oh, your age.

BF: In the camp, we were, we were classmates. She, she wouldn't remember me but I remember her, simply because she was performer.

RP: Bit of a celebrity.

BF: But she didn't see herself as that. She, she's... I think she saw herself as sort of a shy little kid that had a voice. And was asked to, asked to sing. We had others who were older. We, we had some gal, Kawamura, she was a, she was... her body build was more like Kate Smith, and she sang like Kate Smith. And I think her, her song was "God Bless America." And, so they said, "Well, she's the Kate Smith of Merced." I don't know what happened to her, but she was, she was very good. People, people liked to hear her sing. And then, 'course, they had other, others who, who performed. So we had like, they called 'em talent shows.