Densho Digital Archive - Roy Murakami Interview (denshovh-mroy

<Begin Segment 20>

RP: So, what were your impressions of the camp and what did you do when you first got there?

RM: Oh, we had duties, I guess. You had to put the straw bed together, stuff the straw in the mattress, you know.

RP: You, you did that?

RM: Yeah, yeah. Fixed that all up. Things like that. Them days there's, there's cracks in the floor. Got to try to put paper down so that it won't grow.

RP: Tin can lids? Do you remember, do you remember taking tin can lids and nailing them...

RM: Yeah, yeah, they did that, too. But then that's not many that can do it. That's for those pine holes. But it's... I tell everybody that, hey, it was pretty good for us. Because I was young. I didn't know nothing about it.

RP: Your father, did he ever try to explain what was happening to you?

RM: No, we really understood him, though. He.. first thing he got over there he says... started going through the things and I guess he got hired as an assistant superintendent.

RP: Of what?

RM: Oh, farmers, rain crew, kitchen... what the heck was that other one? Oh, carpenters and garbage crews, waste, you know, waste, and what was the other one? Oh, some other one. He got a whole bunch of 'em.

RP: So he was in charge of...

RM: Yeah, they gave him a job that way.

RP: So he had a lot of responsibility.

RM: Yeah. He had the only car. They gave him old Plymouth. And he's, he was on twenty-four hour duty. So they gave him a car. He was the only one who had twenty-four hour duty.

RP: And a car all the time.

RM: Parked inside there.

RP: Right by the barrack or...

RM: Yeah. So, yeah.

RP: Did you ever drive around with him?

RM: No. He wouldn't let anybody drive with him. My mother wanted to go to the hospital once, there was some dentist or something like that, he says, "No, I can't do it. This is an official car." [Laughs] He was very strict on that kind of thought.

RP: Huh, very strict. Uh-huh.

RM: But he had fun. I guess it was fun.