<Begin Segment 11>

RP: Alright, this is a continuation of an oral history with Yo Wakamiya. This is tape two, and Yo, can you, do you remember the day that you drove in that army truck in the rain to Santa Anita?

YW: I remember it raining, and I thought it was like February, March time period. I don't remember exactly. And all I remember is we had a few suitcases. We were picked up at some local pickup spot where they told us to meet, and a bunch of us in a caravan of trucks were taken into Santa Anita on this rainy day.

RP: And you mentioned that your father had a truck that he used to haul his --

YW: Yeah, he had a, what do you call those things, anyway? Oh, panel trucks, right. And I don't know whether he drove that to Santa Anita and then, and then sold it to some buyer or whether he sold it before he left, but he did sell it. And that was it. We didn't have a car anymore after that.

RP: Can you describe to us what you saw when you first got to Santa Anita?

YW: I saw the guard towers, barbed wire fences, and a gate that we went through. And we went to a processing area to get assigned one of the (horse stalls), and so it's kind of like an unknown. We weren't sure what we were gettin' into here. But that was it, and then when we finally were assigned our stall, couldn't imagine what it was. I'd never been in a horse stall before. It was a two sectioned area. If you went in there was a front, front room and then they had a gate, put a horse in the back, I guess they could put two horses in there, but we used the whole facility for, for our family. And they gave us straw to fill our mattresses with and that was our bedding.

RP: That's perfect for an asthmatic.

YW: Yeah, it's wonderful. Just, just perfect for me, right? And so we slept on cots with straw mats that we stuffed ourselves, right? And then the cafeteria situation was, there was several cafeterias scattered throughout the complex and they were given names by color, so there was an orange cafeteria, there was a red cafeteria, whatever. I don't remember which one we were assigned to, but everybody was assigned to a cafeteria according to where they lived, so it was close by. Now, everybody had to do some work, had to get candy and cigarette money, right? So they hired us to man the kitchens, so we did our own cooking. We had a group of Japanese people who cooked and washed the dishes and maintained the kitchens. Can you imagine that? "Now that we got you set up you can cook your own food now." [Laughs] So the government provided the food and we provided the manpower.

RP: In, your father worked in one of those mess halls?

YW: Yeah, he, he didn't cook or anything, but he says, "I'll go get a job. I'll do whatever." Just to stay busy, right? So I think he was washing dishes for a while. And that didn't last very long, about six months and then we were kicked out of there, we had to go somewhere else, so we ended up in Rohwer. In Rohwer he did something else. He became a carpenter there. And then, I can tell you about that later.

RP: Your mom also worked in, in Santa Anita, too. What did she do?

YW: Yeah, she was helping with the camouflage job. They were asking us to help put camouflages together, so they had these nettings hung and we were stringing, not cheesecloth, looked like gunny sack strips of various colors, and we were stringin' it through the netting. But can you imagine? They're asking the inmates to make camouflage nets to protect ourselves, right? 'Cause they're gonna hang it over the Santa Anita buildings. And perhaps if they had extra they would ship it off to somewhere else that would use these, use these nets. But the inmates were being asked to help with the nets. I thought that's kind of rather, rather too much, you know. "First we jail you, now you can cover yourself up with netting."

RP: You remember seeing these nets out there?

YW: Oh yeah. Yeah, I went to visit my mother. I said, "What are you doing here?" She said, "They asked us to make nets, so we're making nets." But they're paid, took time away from the regular days, so days went by fast. But as an adult I start thinkin' about it, I wonder what's going on. They're asking us as inmates to make our own nettings. It didn't sit well at all and I thought, what is going on here? The other thing I noticed was guards in the guard towers, armed. But the thing I thought was humorous was there was a guard tower next to the baseball field, and the Japanese are quick to take up activities like sports, so they started sports leagues. That was just a continuation of the sports leagues that they had outside of camp. Right, so they just continued playing in the camps, and the, one of the guard towers was right (...) near home plate at this baseball field, so the guards had a good time. They just watched a ball game. And I thought this is wonderful. We're providing entertainment for them as well.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.