Densho Digital Archive - Helen Mori Interview (denshovh-mhelen

<Begin Segment 9>

RP: Do you recall anything about your trip to Manzanar?

HM: All I remember was we went by train to Lone Pine. And the whole time there were soldiers with fixed bayonet rifles, standing on each end of our car, you know. And all the shades had to be down. They wouldn't let us even peek. We had to just leave it down. We couldn't even peek to see what was going on or what was out there or nothing. They really watched us. That's all I remember.

RP: And you, it's always tough to try to recall your state of mind at that time, but can you remember as a child of eight or nine years old...

HM: I just thought it was sure taking a long time. We left L.A. Union Station in the morning. And we were riding and riding... especially you can't even see the scenery outside. You're just sitting there lookin' at the other people in the train. It was so boring and long, real long.

RP: For a kid.

HM: We didn't even get to stop to do our business probably 'til Lone Pine. I don't even remember stopping. Maybe they did, but I don't remember.

RP: Do you remember the first, the first time you saw the camp? When you actually went in and saw the camp?

HM: Went into Manzanar? I just thought, wow. I thought how dusty it was. Dust was flying all over the place. And they made us line up. You know, all of us had to line up to get our shots, so many on one arm, so many on the other, the very first day I think. That's all that I remember. And then we were assigned our block and what barrack and stuff like that. I didn't even notice the beautiful Mount Williamson that day. All those mountains, the beautiful mountains, I didn't even remember any of that the first day...

RP: Well, your arm was probably hurting pretty bad.

HM: Yeah, I know. Oh my gosh. I though oh, I hate needles anyway, even now.

RP: And which block were you assigned to?

HM: I was in 21-8-3. Eighth barrack, third room.

RP: And so it was just you and your mom.

HM: No, our room had eight people, the Maruki family, mother, father, three high school aged kids, my mother and me, and a widow lady.

RP: Oh, Mrs. Denowa?

HM: Yeah, Denawa, Denawa. And she had a cat, which I loved.

RP: How did she get a...

HM: She snuck it into camp somehow. I guess it was in a basket or something. Sort of like our cats I recall, sort of stripey, brownish cat.

RP: Oh, that was nice.

HM: Yeah, we were not allowed pets so nobody had pets but she did. She had a... maybe that's where my love of cats started.

RP: The cats of Manzanar.

HM: Yeah, the cats of Manzanar.

RP: Huh. So, the Marukis, where did they come from? Were they also from Los Angeles too?

HM: I think they were from L.A., yeah. In fact we went to L.A. this past weekend. And I was talking to my cousin. He's, he's my first cousin that went to, that lived in Riverside, went to Poston. And his wife was also in Manzanar. And I didn't know her then. But Manzanar only had like a few twins, you know, identical twins. And she's one of 'em. And I remember my girlfriend, Fujino, every now and then we'd go sit in the firebreak and wait for the twins to come by. 'Cause they're identical. You couldn't tell one from the other. They're identical twins. And after the war she marries my cousin from Riverside. [Laughs] Anyway, we went to go see her during the weekend, him, and she was telling me that she, after she graduated from high school, she went to Cleveland to work 'cause they were making arrangements for a lot of the older kids to go out of camp and work and all that. And then she got word that, you know when the questionnaire came out? The "no-no" something, whatever that is. When that came out a lot of people went to Tule Lake 'cause they were "No-Nos." And so what they did was, we were in -- 21, 22, 23 -- so block 20, from 24 on they closed the camp where everyone else had to move to the other part of the camp. And she was, and her family was one of 'em. She was in Block 26. So she was one of 'em that had to move to our side of the camp. So when the war ended there was no one to help her, the parents, because they had, the kids, people had already gone out of camp, you know, her sisters and brothers. So she was the only one able to come back. So she came back to help the parents leave camp. But her train from Cleveland to L.A. got here after the bus. She says at that time they used to have a bus that used to go to Manzanar once a day. Which I didn't even know 'til I talked to her. And she said that the bus had already left and she thought, oh what am I gonna do? Eighteen year old girl in downtown L.A. and I mean, you know, near the Union Station probably. She didn't know what she was gonna do. And then she bumped into this guy that was in her block in camp. Lucky thing. So she explained... he says, "What are you doing here?" or something. So she explained you know that she came back to California to help her parents leave camp. So he helped her from there, took her to Koyasan, which is a Buddhist church in Japantown, sort of, you sort of go through, it's, it's further back. Not on First Street, further back. But he took her there and they were using it like a hostel. So she stayed there 'til the next day when the bus was gonna go to Manzanar. And that's how she got to Manzanar. And I didn't even know something like that used to go on. I didn't know they had a bus that went there once a day.

RP: So, you must have been a little...

HM: I got sidetracked. What was your question?

RP: It must have been a little crowded in there with eight people...

HM: Oh gosh. There was just barely room for the beds and the oil stove. That's all. 'Cause you figure the rooms were only about twenty by twenty, if that much. Probably about twenty by twenty I would say.

RP: Tell us about Grace, Rose, and Kow. Did you kind of take to them right away? I mean you were...

HM: Oh yeah, they were nice. They were real nice. But they were so much older than me. They were in high school already and I was what, third grade.

RP: So they kind of looked after you a little bit or...

HM: Not really. 'Cause we're all, you know, all Japanese. No one's gonna hurt you. It was, I mean, we're... age difference was too much. Yeah. [Laughs]