<Begin Segment 18>

RP: Tell us as best you can about the barracks that you lived in. Can you describe the inside, how they were set up?

RD: It was just like, just some buildings, you see big buildings with walls and everything else, and all the bunks lined up down there, and you got your foot locker there, foot locker. And I can't remember, I think at the end of the building was a, separate rooms for the sergeant and corporal, I think, that had their... like you see on TV, they got the, they got separate quarters there as far as I remember, and the rest were just, just all it was was just bunks there and nothing else, our foot locker. I always remember kind of telling the story myself that I would come home at nighttime, I'd always get sick and I'd heave up on my shoes. So I got so, I don't know how it happened, but I'd come home and I'd take my shoes and I'd throw the darn things someplace, and I'd wake up the next day and there they were, and I'd heaved in 'em. How they ever got back... one of the guys knew it and brought 'em back there or something just to make sure I get it or not, I can't remember. And we went to, I guess we did that in MPs, too, maybe I was in the infantry when we did that gas test, different types of gas, gas mask. We didn't have a building to do that training in, I don't think we did that at Manzanar.

RP: Did you do any, did you do any patrols around the perimeter of the camp at all by jeep or by foot?

RD: No, offhand I can't think of, of doing any patrolling around there. Outside of the guards, one on the gate and somebody on the tower all the time, twenty-four hours a day. That's about the only... and like I say, it's about every hour or two hours when you're on ship, the corporal of the guard or sergeant of the guard would come along and, checking everybody and make sure they're there and paying attention and all that stuff, you know. See if we need anything. They would bring us a gift or two.

RP: A gift or two? Oh, would that be...

RD: I'm not gonna say. [Laughs]

RP: We won't hold it against you.

RD: Huh?

RP: We won't hold it against you.

RD: Well, they used to bring us some cantaloupe and watermelon and stuff like that.

RP: [Laughs] Another federal offense.

RD: Not all of 'em did that, but we had a few, couple guards or sergeant of the guards were pretty good there. They'd bring us some fruit or something during the nighttime.

RP: It got awful cold in those towers some nights, didn't it?

RD: [Laughs] I guess. I don't remember too much about it, I just remember being up there, I can't remember whether... but I'm sure it got cold at nighttime, I know that, 'cause there was always snow on the mountains up there, Mt. Whitney and all that. Then the wind came down off that way, I'm pretty sure, blowing from the west there. I imagine it's, you remember sometimes tramping your feet up and down, wiggling a little bit, got all our clothes on, your heavy overcoat and everything. It wasn't very comfortable in there, there was no place hardly -- I can't remember whether we had, I don't think we had a chair to sit down on.

RP: Standing?

RD: There might have been something in there, I don't remember anything being in there.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.