<Begin Segment 3>

RP: What, what about the landscape, the setting where this camp was placed? What type of reaction did you have when you saw that landscape? The mountains and this desert, did, were you... well, tell me in your own words.

MI: Well, I had never been that far where I saw a desert. So it didn't occur to me at the time. But, and I used to admire the mountains, which I still do. I could go anywhere. If I see a picture of that mountain, I could recognize it, I could tell you where it is. And I used to admire it and I used to look at it all the time. And then I would look at the sky and I'd say gee look at, you could see the stars like as if you could almost reach and touch 'em. That I liked. But the realization was in the afternoon when you had these dust storms. It was like, what is it, pebbles or whatever hitting your legs. And at those, in those days you didn't wear pants. Girls all wore skirts and bobby socks. So it was pretty round, pretty rough. But that was every afternoon, I remember. And you don't seem to have as bad a dust storm today? Do you?

RP: Occasionally.

MI: You do.

RP: We still get a...

MI: See, we used to get every single day. And so no matter how hot it was, a hundred degrees or more, you'd almost have to go indoors because otherwise you couldn't take it. And then it would subside. And the other thing was I used to love to hear the radio. And you could get radio connections -- that was when radio was permitted -- you couldn't get any of your favorite programs 'til real late at night. That's one thing I missed.

RP: What affected you most, the heat or the cold, for you? How did you adjust to those?

MI: You sort of, you know, hmm... it was cold. I don't take cold very well but somehow we managed. The heat was harder because you had to stay indoors when there's a dust storm. And of course there's no air conditioning. You can't leave the doors wide open. Maybe the heat. 'Cause we used to tend to sit outside at night. So there was, that had its good points because then everybody was sitting outside. There's this camaraderie, the familiarity. That was nice, you know. And I think that's why Block 32 was close. The young people always kind of gathered together, yeah.

RP: You started in Block 19.

MI: Nineteen.

RP: And was it just your immediate family that occupied that?

MI: No.

RP: Who else came along?

MI: It was my immediate family and then my distant cousin. I didn't even know he was my cousin until we went to camp. But he's a Maryknoll'er. But how we found out was through, I guess you had to tell where you were from. And it turned out that his mother was from the same place that my dad was from. And that's how we discovered it.

RP: What was his name?

MI: Henry Umeda.

RP: Umeda.

MI: Yeah, M-U... no. U-M-E-D-A. And so we had him and the six of us, so there was eight of us in this little teeny-weeny spot. That's why we had to move out of there. That was way, way too small. There was absolutely... couldn't do anything.

RP: And you moved to Block 32, which was not too far from Block 25 where the Maryknoll group was located. Did you have folks from the community that you lived in before camp also in Block 32 or...

MI: No. See, other than the Haras next door, who were part of our church at Maryknoll. No, they're the only ones I think I knew. The rest were all... oh, there was a Neeno, yeah. Hiroshi Neeno, his wife was a Maryknoll'er. So those would be the only ones that I would know.

RP: You moved into Block 32, Building 4, Room 4.

MI: Four, four.

RP: 32-4-4.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.