<Begin Segment 7>

RP: You said that on occasions, or maybe this was early in camp, that your father had brought some canned food and you did have, take some meals in your room. Was that just an infrequent occurrence or did you spend most of your mealtime at the mess hall?

MI: Mostly at the mess hall. But when it got to a point where they got a little bit worried that we needed a little bit of variety, or they didn't think, or they think we needed something more, yeah, then the canned food came out.

RP: What are your most vivid recollections about eating in the mess hall, and the food in your mess hall?

MI: Oh, I hope the cooks on Block 32 are not alive yet. I just, they were the worst cooks. We used to have a name. I forgot what we got fed on Mondays. Tuesday was always slop-suey. Now you know what that means. And so we'd say, "Oh, don't go eat there tonight. It's slop-suey." And then somebody would say, "Hey, it wasn't too bad tonight." Said, "You've gotta be kidding." So then we'd go, you know. What was Wednesday? Wednesday could be anything. Friday was always fish, smelt. Now my sister told me something just recently. That I go... she said that they refused to eat that fish because, see, smelt is something we used to use as bait when we went fishing. And here we're eating this darn fish. Well, she said that she and her friend were sitting on the outside somewhere and there was this big ice chunk of fish, and it was full of maggots. And I said, "Why didn't you tell us that?" She said, "We were scared to tell anybody what we were seeing." And I think that's why there was some sickness, yeah. My Terminal Island friends who are, are very knowledgeable about fish... I used to work as a dental secretary, and we get to eat lunch early and we did go eat at this one mess hall. And she said, "Oh, don't touch that fish." And we said, "Why?" She said that when a fish bites your tongue or you get a bite to it, the fish is no good. And I thought, oh, I learned that, to this day I'll remember that. So I don't know where they got the fish. Maybe from a bait store, who knows. But anyway, yeah.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.