Densho Digital Archive - Taeko Joanne Iritani Interview (denshovh-itaeko-01-0011)

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TI: So life was easy for me because I was a child. And going to school, I remember my brother in his interview talking about that first year in high school. Because there was no one particular place. See, I went to a single room as an eighth grader. But high school students went from one rec. hall to another rec. hall depending on your English and your history and your math classes. And he said sometimes he'd be too far away to get home to our mess hall to eat lunch. So I'm not sure if he was welcome in somebody else's mess hall, or how those kids managed that. But later on, of course, they built the high school with adobe buildings that are still there, still in Poston.

KP: Another quick question about the way the camp was laid out. Most people who were down in Poston just talked about how hot it was.

TI: Oh, it, you know what was the proof of that? When we had our, the monument dedication in Poston, I don't know if you've seen that lovely monument. But we were there in November, I believe it was, and there were some people who fainted then, November. So what was it like in July and August for us? It was mighty hot, I'm sure.

KP: Well, in comparison, I mean, you were from Bakersfield, which is not known for being cool in the summertime.

TI: But it was not as hot as Poston. That hot desert, yeah. But you know, wherever you are, you accept the temperature. You don't, you can't change it, you accept it.

KP: So any, any other memories come up about the early years in Poston?

TI: The early years in Poston compared to the later when people are leaving?

KP: Yeah, we're gonna be getting to that.

TI: Yeah, because people were leaving. I remember one wedding I went to in Poston, that was lovely. But there were not too many of those occasions for us. Life just went on. I played with my friends, and I didn't have any other job to do. You ate together, and your parents did their work, and we attended classes. And I can't even tell you whose rec. hall we must have gone to to go to those knitting or crocheting classes. But I did, and my mother did her, learned her tailoring. She learned how to do tailoring, and she had that equipment. I've given some of those things to the Japanese American National Museum in L.A. Life was not difficult for me, but I'm sure it was difficult for the parents who had to, well, like one family had to go from Fresno to Jerome on the train with their little children, that had to be hard. And whenever we talked to children here, and we, every year we talked to them at the California State Museum. I don't know if you're familiar with that. In January, February, March, some years we talk to seven thousand children, and they come from all over northern California. And I've mentioned to the children, you know, "At that time, a young mother and her two children could be traveling on the train, and perhaps her husband had been taken by the FBI. And she had all you can carry with her children, and I know families like that." And then I also mention that, "And, you know, we didn't have Pampers and Huggies at that time." "Ooh," the children's reactions. But it's the truth. And if they had to go from Jerome -- I mean, from Fresno to Jerome, Arkansas, that was like five or six days. Because the train would be left on the siding while troop trains went through, and it'd take forever for them to travel. So life was much more difficult for some other people than it was for me.

KP: So do you have any -- kind of shifting gears a little bit here -- do you have any recollections... I know that it didn't really affect you, but the "loyalty questionnaire" that came around, did you know that was happening at all?

TI: I really don't, can't even tell you that I knew about it. I don't remember at all my parents talking about it or my brothers. I don't know if they were old enough. You had to be sixteen, I believe, to be one of the signers, and, of course, I wasn't. I was not avoiding it, I wasn't in on it.