<Begin Segment 9>

JA: You mentioned the gardens. Tell me about the gardens. How did that happen to start? There were both flower gardens and vegetable gardens?

GI: Mostly vegetable gardens, and here again, every block had their own garden. Where they got the seed, I don't know. See, that, another question we'll find in my mind: where did we get the seed to plant all the vegetables growing in the, in camp? But eventually they tore all the soil out outside of camp and then build a big farming camp there, I mean, big farming area there.

JA: What were they growing in that?

GI: Oh, they grew all kinds of vegetables, and they were shipping quite a few to other camps.

JA: You showed me a picture of you on a tractor. Tell me what that was all about.

GI: That was... I just loved to drive the Caterpillar so I, somebody told, showed me how to plow out in the, out in the farm field, that's what I did. I enjoyed doing that all day long, from morning 'til night, you know. But I used to be, we didn't have no such thing as a mask to keep the dust out of our lungs, either. By the time I got through, my face was just full of dust. But I'm still here. [Laughs]

JA: [Laughs] And still happy, that's good.

GI: Yeah, that's right.

JA: Great. There were also some pretty parks and ponds and things.

GI: Yes, oh yes. There was a fellow named, I think his name was Mr. Kato, who was a rock garden specialist. He built that garden. He brought all the stone, big rocks down there, and they built a beautiful rock garden up near the hospital. So, you know, it goes to show you that if anybody, any individual that set their mind to do what they want to do, they can do it. It doesn't matter what they, what it is in life, and I think Mr. Kato wanted to build a rock garden. He did. And a lot of farmers wanted to work on a farm and they, they really went out there and made one of the best farming countries, farming countries... farming area in the country. They proved that they can do that, and in fact, that's where the chicken farm came in, too. They found some people that knew how to raise chickens and they got them out there. And hogs, because the Japanese Americans or I guess the Isseis must have had some hog farm and chicken farm in the old days.

JA: Did you also work with the chickens?

GI: No.

[Interruption]

JA: Tell me about the chickens again.

GI: No, the reason I got my name involved with the chicken farm was because a friend of mine, a family friend of mine by the name of Min Shishido, and I used to pal around together, and we went up to, by the chicken farm and they just got through putting that little stone together up there and then we found that the cement was still wet. So I put my name up there and put "Gimp Izumi" there, I put my date down, and Min Shishido did exactly the same thing just on the other side. And that's the funny part about the Huell Howser program, you know, he wanted to find out who Gimp Izumi was and I said, "That's me." But when we went up to Manzanar to be interviewed for that, for that "Gimp Izumi's Signature," he told, said, "We don't want you to go and look at it now because we want it to be a total surprise to you." And I tried to find out who the other name was from this fellow that was working for Huell Howser, and I guess he didn't pronounce the name properly, but his name was Min Shishido and he didn't pronounce that properly. So I says, "I don't, I don't even recollect that name, whoever you're trying to pronounce." And after the Huell Howser program, I went to look at that signature and there he was, and Min Shishido, the name was right on there. And I was hoping I could have said something about him to Huell Howser's program, but I wasn't given that opportunity so his name was not mentioned.

JA: So, that bring back some memories when you saw your name?

GI: Oh yes, because he was a family friend.

JA: Uh-huh. And your name was there, too?

GI: Yes. Both of us, yeah. I know that Huell Howser asked me a question: "What did Manzanar gonna do with 10,000 chickens?" I said, "Well, you gotta remember one thing, there was over 10,000 people in camp, so that's one egg to a person." [Laughs]

JA: That's great, that's great. What do you remember, do you remember celebrating any holidays or birthdays or anything up there?

GI: Well, the Japanese Amer-, Japanese people, you know, they had their own judo tournaments in there, and then they had all kinds of Japanese festivals in the camp, including having, having church service every Sunday, the Catholic, the Buddhist, the Christian, they all had their own individual church. So we were free to do what we wanted to do. We can, we can go worship any, any religion that we wanted to. So you can't say that, you know, our hands were tied in camp, because we weren't. The only thing I -- I'll say one thing about -- I used to go to Christian church just about every Sunday until I found out, I went to one service in Manzanar and he started preaching about the right and wrong about the war and this-and-that and I said, "Well, that did it for me." I don't go to church to listen to rights and wrong about the war, it's all political anyway, so I stopped going to church after that.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2002 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.