Densho Digital Archive - Taeko Joanne Iritani Interview (denshovh-itaeko-01-0009)

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KP: What did your, did your father work in camp?

TI: My father was a night watchman, so he had to sleep part of the day. So you didn't stay around the, what the government called an "apartment," which is a single room with a light bulb hanging down.

KP: Euphemism.

TI: Euphemism, absolutely. But it was called an apartment. And you used your Sears-Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs a lot.

KP: Did your older brothers work in camp as well?

TI: Yes. My oldest brother worked, started as a orderly in the hospital. And, see, I interviewed him a few years ago. He was coming, going home from a meeting in Seattle at which time he had given the Yoneo Ono award to a rural volunteer, and that was up in Seattle. So he had worked with a group down in the Fresno, Visalia area where he helped them with their water and sewage and various projects with the rural people. And he was a volunteer, so they named the award for him. And he was going home from that. And so we sat down and I interviewed him. And the number of times during the interview that I'd say, "Oh, really? I didn't know that." My oldest brother. And there were so many things that I was unaware of. But he told me about how he worked as an orderly, cleaned up the hospital before it became a hospital, that whole area, helped with that. And then worked as an orderly, and then worked with the... there was a, I've forgotten the name of the psychologist or sociologist who had come to Poston, he wrote The Governing of Men, Leighton. Anyway, my brother worked under him in that group.

KP: What was he, what was he doing for Leighton?

TI: Well, he was just a young person, and someone got him onto that committee maybe to help with the gofer or whatever. And that's where he learned his philosophy, sociology, psychology. He's the one that used to be the thinker, but I didn't know that. Anyway, he worked there, and my next brother was going into the sophomore year, see, he was a freshman in Bakersfield. And then going into his sophomore year, and probably that summer, they started to build the school, the adobe, made the adobe for the school building. And many years, many, many years later, he told (me) he worked on the adobe. And that may have been fifteen years ago. And then after that, my sister said, "I did, too," and I didn't know that. [Laughs] See, you don't know what your siblings are doing because you have just you and your friends. We were playing. Had our games, we had our Girl Scout troop, I learned how to embroider, to knit, crochet, make paper flowers, such as that. We kept busy. Then, of course, friends, we go to the canteen sometimes. Life was easy for me. I didn't really work until one summer when I worked in the library and got eight dollars a month, that was my pay. My mother's pay probably was twelve dollars a month, regular everyday work. Every day, three meals a day. My father's probably was sixteen. Anyway, that was our life. Of course, my second brother loved it in camp, 'cause he was our athlete. He could pitch, he was the quarterback, backup quarterback, I think, for the high school team. But there are still people, if I meet them, who are from Poston, young men, who would say, "Oh, Block 19, Joe Ono." They remember him as the pitcher.