Densho Digital Archive - Roy Murakami Interview (denshovh-mroy

<Begin Segment 28>

RP: Well, let's talk about this peace committee that your father was a major part of. This was after the riot, the camp was in turmoil.

RM: As I understand it, the police department didn't want to work that because of the danger, I guess. So...

RP: Many of them, you know, were considered inu. And they're, the charge was that they were on the death list, too, and during the riot some of them pulled off their bands and uniforms and threw 'em in the garbage can and... so there was no law and order in the camp other than the military police. So your father felt like...

RM: They, they... I guess they asked him.

RP: The administration asked him?

RM: Yeah, I think so. And he got the dojo to, I mean the, some of the students together and started... Takamatsu and Tashima and some other ones, Yamabe.

RP: So, did, did they actually act as a police force inside the camp or just in more subtle...

RM: Subtle... they would go to dances, two or three, I don't know what the number, but they go to dances and they sit around 'til the dance was over. If the trouble started they were there. Other than that, they didn't do anything else.

RP: But they were able to develop a, a very close working relationship with Ralph Merritt?

RM: Yeah, well, I think Ralph Merritt was probably the best director that there was at anything. His articles, his writings and stuff are in UCLA. I'm trying to get those, too. Because they got the Manzanar. But he was good. My father liked him really. He gave my father a letter on onion paper so he could carry it with him. And I don't know where it went.

RP: Do you know what the letter was about?

RM: No, I don't know if it was about his character or not. It was something like, like passport, I guess, I don't know. I saw it once or twice, but after that goes by. Yeah. Things improved quite a bit after that.

RP: Right. The trouble, quote "troublemakers" were sent away and, and so your father and the rest, some of these judoists were also, sort of negotiated a, what they called a Peace of Manzanar.

RM: Yeah, more or less. They would... in fact I have a friend over here in the [inaudible] remembers my father re-negotiating with the cooks in one of the kitchens. They didn't want to work or something. Something happened so he had to go in there and tell 'em let's do this way, that way.

RP: So he, right, so he did some mediation as well.

RM: Yeah. He, he always had that.

RP: Had that ability, leadership, but in a very soft way.

RM: Yeah, he was never hard, never hard.

RP: Which was the way of judo, right?

RM: Uh-huh.

RP: The gentle way?

RM: Soft. That's probably it. But he, he had a lot of stories, a lot of stories about his work, about his car. [Laughs]

RP: Tell us, tell us some more.

RM: Oh, he was the only one let out of camp to go see the dump. They had a dump over there for... so he had to sign out with a, I think it was a private or corporal for Oklahoma. Didn't know how to sign his name so he signed a cross, and he had a headache and so he was riding along and he says, "What's a matter?" He says, "Oh, I drank too much last night. I got a headache." So he says, "Okay, we'll go up to the dump and I'll park the car and you get out and sit under the tree and I'll stand guard for you." Because he didn't want the sergeant to come around and catch him, so. Then he said he had the rifle and was sitting there waiting an hour or so, you know, wasting the time. Yeah, a lot of things like that.

RP: So he, he went out and checked on the farm workers, too? He was...

RM: Oh, no, they had department, but he checked on the department. They had a rake crew.

RP: A rake crew?

RM: Yeah, that's a, that's a interesting thing. There were men over, I would think they were over sixty. So they worked, they'd go around the camp and have a rake and a bucket to take the trash and clean up around it and dump it and keep going like that.

RP: All through the camp.

RM: Keeping it clean.

RP: It was the cleanup crew.

RM: Uh-huh. But these were old men and it was a good job because you could just walk and cleanup you know. And they get paid $16.

RP: The rake crew... was he involved with the oil crews, too?

RM: Uh-huh.

RP: That would distribute the oil to every block.

RM: Uh-huh. Oil crew and... he had a lot of crews underneath him. He had no... just started getting more and was the head of it or helped 'em, that's all he did.

RP: And for, for all that he got $19 a month?

RM: Uh-huh. Oh, and there's a story about that, too. The superintendent got word one day, he says, "They're gonna fire me because I didn't do a right job." And my father said, "Oh, let them fire me. I'd say, I'd take the blame. I only get $19 a month." [Laughs] So, you know, it worked out.

RP: [Laughs] This was the Caucasian superintendent?

RM: Uh-huh.

RP: That's funny.