<Begin Segment 13>

RP: Sus, we were talking about your time at the, the Santa Catalina prison camp for your offense of resisting the draft. And you met all these other people, Hopis and conscientious objectors, and... how would you describe your time there? Was that an education for you to learn about these other stories and know that you weren't alone?

SY: Well, it was quite an education for me because we never knew that was, that there was a thing about conscientious objection. I never knew that until we came there. Nor did we know that the, the Jehovah's Witnesses were also in that category. And, yeah, it was quite amazing. And also that the Hopi Indian people, the chiefs were there. There was three of them. And besides that, the Navajo chief. And one night my brothers persuaded him to do the Indian dance. You know, [singing] "Hi-ya, hi-ya, hi-ya." It was quite amazing. And it was raining. It was dark outside. It was ten o'clock at night, and my brothers were making all that noise and we're doing the following. We're doing the chain dance behind him, right? And the whole barrack is doing that, right? What an uproar we're doing, right? You know? Can you imagine? "Hi-ya, hi-ya, hi-ya." And Murphy, the guard, came in there and then he looked in there, "What's all that noise goin' on?" He threw his arms up and left. He said... he was laughing and he left. My goodness it was amazing. We saw him come in there [Laughs.] Yeah, yeah. We had a lotta fun there. Fun times, really.

RP: What else did you remember doing with, with...

SY: Well, mainly, the Coronado National Forest thing was they had this road that they were punching through to, to another area and we were the main supplier of labor for that road. And there were wood crew, they knocked down the trees and they'd bring home the trees for firewood and stuff. And also there was the jackhammer crew, they'd jackhammer the mountains and make holes in the mountains for blasting. And there was the Japanese brothers, Takemoto brothers, they were the, they were the man that was the dynamite crew. Could you believe that? Mr. Shager, he was a, he was an instructor for that... he was a, he was a chief for that. And we were working in the agricultural department off the valley, into the valley, and we'd go down every day, work in the farm to make, grow produce for, for the camp and stuff like that. And there was a crew that was a mess hall crew. And there was a fire crew. He was the fireman for the kitchen. And that's how we survived.

RP: And you guys lived in barracks similar to the ones in...

SY: Right. Just like in the army, army barrack. Up in high bunk, lower bunk. Yeah. It was quite amazing. Yeah.

RP: Wow.

SY: Curfew was what, ten o'clock. We'd get up in the morning at six.

RP: Now was this camp surrounded by barbed wire and any other types of, forms of security?

SY: None. None.

RP: You mentioned this one guard. Was that the only guard that was there?

SY: Well, no, everybody had... each crew had a guard.

RP: I see.

SY: Because they're the ones that...

RP: So they'd go out with you every day.

SY: Right. They were the... area, they had to do whatever had to be done and yeah, yeah.

KP: So you said camp was surrounded by white rocks. Was that what defined the perimeter?

SY: Yes, that's right. That's right.

RP: Four large white rocks.

SY: Yeah. The four rocks. That was the boundary. However, one man wrote a letter saying that he's gonna try to escape from here. And every letter that was sent out of there was censored. And next day he was in, in Texarkana. Five years he spent down there. But after coming back, after the... well, in the meantime, President Truman paroled... you know, what do you call 'em? Not parole. Pardoned, he pardoned us so he came back. But it was after about maybe four years he was down there. And soon afterwards he died of a heart attack. So he was, he was young. He was very young. Yeah, when he died also he was very young.

RP: So you were pardoned by President Truman?

SY: Yeah, yeah.

RP: After a year's time at... how long was it before the pardon came?

SY: I can't tell you the exact year. It's probably around 19...

RP: '45 maybe.

SY: No.

RP: No?

SY: Later.

RP: Later, okay.

SY: Maybe around 1952, somewhere around there.

RP: Oh, all right, uh-huh. Right. But you spent about a year's time at the prison camp?

SY: Yeah. Nine months.

RP: Nine months. Oh.

SY: It's called "good behavior." [Laughs]

RP: Good behavior. You mean you didn't go outside the white rocks?

SY: Yeah. After that we can. [Laughs]

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.