Densho Digital Archive - Helen Mori Interview (denshovh-mhelen

<Begin Segment 13>

RP: This is tape two of a continuing interview with Helen Mori. And Helen, we're talking about some of your experiences in camp. Did you, what do you recall about the experience of going to the mess hall?

HM: The mess hall?

RP: Yeah, and eating.

HM: Oh, long lines. Rain or shine we had to stand in that stupid line to get up to our, to get our food. The food was not bad. I mean, what are you gonna do. Cooking for three hundred people or so, you know, a meal. And I know towards the end I couldn't stand it 'cause they always gave us squid and I can't stand squid even now. And, 'cause they don't know how to cook it. They just cook it for so many people it's just rubbery and tough. And in the beginning I didn't like it because they served us food on the army plates. You know, and then all of a sudden it'll un-snap, and everything is on the floor, or same thing with the cups. I can't remember when the ceramic stuff came. They started using the ceramic stuff but...

RP: Were there any foods that you really enjoyed for the first time in your life?

HM: First time?

RP: You'd never eaten before and you said, "Oh boy, this is good."

HM: Not really. [Laughs] Not really. I can't recall.

RP: Did you, did you eat with your mother or did you eat with your girlfriends?

HM: In the beginning I must have ate with my mother but once they got married I'm sure by then I ate with my friends. Yeah. It was a strict thing where we all had to sit at the same table like that. We all knew each other in Block 21 and we were all friends. They never said that I had to eat with them, as I recall. I don't recall that.

RP: So, so squid would have been the most objectionable food you had?

HM: Yeah. I would say so.

RP: How about mutton?

HM: I don't think we had mutton. If we did I didn't eat it 'cause it smells so bad. I don't think we had mutton. Did you ever talk to anybody else at Manzanar?

RP: People have, yeah, people have mentioned mutton.

HM: They did? I must have not ate it then.

RP: The smell wafting out of the --

HM: Really?

RP: -- the little chimney.

HM: Huh, no.

RP: No.

HM: I probably said, "I don't want any." I don't remember eating it.

RP: Do you remember the, how they used to call people to --

HM: To go eat?

RP: -- to go eat? Do you remember the bells or the...

HM: I don't remember even the bells you know. Not really. I probably just was with my friends and they said, "Oh, it's time to go eat." So I just, we all went together.

RP: How about another... somewhat, a very objectionable experience was the, the communal bathrooms or the latrines.

HM: Oh, yes. That was terrible. Talk about lack of privacy. They didn't have any partitions. They didn't have any doors. You just... all these toilets were just lined up and you had to do your business in front of everybody. And everybody feels the same. Shower, same thing, it was like a army shower, spout, spout, spout, like that. Later on, the men in our camp built the Japanese bath, you know, Nihon furo, with cement. Ours was cement and a pretty big one. about like from the wall to end of this table. It wasn't real small but it wasn't big, real big either but big enough for like us kids, four or five could get in at once after we showered. Yeah.

KP: And where did they build that?

HM: Oh, in the, the shower room was one big room and then it was in this one corner. Yeah. That's where my mother wrote that poem about being in the Nihon furo but yet she realized she was still a prisoner. That was one of the poems that was in the bathroom. Anyways, what my cousin was telling me Sunday was, and she was already in high school so much worse. You know, I was so young yet. She says what they did was whenever they had to make a change or whatever, they'd take a towel and hold it under their chin... stuff like that. Or take a shower, they would take a towel to cover their front, stuff like that. And some people... or she said they'd go late at night, when they think no one else is there. But you know I was gonna... I told her too I don't know if she knew it, but when they closed the portion of the camp after the people went to Tule Lake, the Maryknoll moved to our block. Maryknoll was on Block 25. And from 25 on they closed the camp. And when the Maryknoll moved to our block they made a curtain for the nuns, a white curtain for the nuns. So when they weren't there we used it, you know. I mean, why not? Here, you just draw the curtain like this. But they did make a curtain for the nuns for privacy.

RP: So the, all, the, everybody in Block 25 moved in to Block 21?

HM: No. Twenty-five... every block -- we had thirty-six blocks -- every block from Twenty-five on, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty --

RP: Oh, I see.

HM: -- moved to the --

RP: Moved to the...

HM: -- empty rooms that were in the rest of the camp.

RP: Right, they occupied all the rooms.

HM: Yeah. Yeah.

RP: A large number of people went to Tule Lake.

HM: Yes. Yes.

RP: So you had an influx of different people into your block.

HM: Yes. Oh, not our block. Most of our block, we all stayed. I don't think anybody went to Tule Lake, in our... oh, there was a couple a families that went to Tule from our block. Very few, as I recall.

RP: You mentioned the store was --

HM: General store?

RP: -- relocated into Block 21.

HM: Oh, uh-huh, the co-op, uh-huh.

RP: Do you remember going up there for ice cream or soda or...

HM: I'm sure we did. I don't know if they, they had soda. I'm, I'm sure we went for ice cream and candy. And I think they sold clothes too and simple stuff. That's about all I bought. I don't know if my folks bought anything there or not but if I bought anything it was just that kind of thing. We didn't have any money, you know. You figure the salary ... the professionals were getting what, nineteen dollars a month? And then other, other workers were getting what...

Off Camera: Sixteen.

HM: Sixteen or less. So, and I don't know what my mother did for a job in camp. Maybe she didn't even work. But my stepfather, he was a policeman in the winter and a mounted policeman in the summer. And after, I think it's before Tule Lake even, our block manager left camp for, I don't know how he got out. He was from Hawaii. He left camp and my father became a block manager for our block. So he must have got... he was paid the whole time, policeman and block manager.

RP: We'll talk about that in a, in a little bit.