<Begin Segment 13>

RP: What was school like for you in Jerome?

OM: Kind of interesting, I thought, like I said I'm not too bright as far as schooling goes. I didn't like it that much but I guess there was some competitiveness in our family 'cause my kid brother and my brother above me were, you know, good students. They were very good students. They never got a B, hell, there's no such thing as a B. You try to keep up with that, it's pretty tough. But it was... I carried my troublemaker status even into the classroom. It wasn't only me, there was a bunch of us... you know the camp used to have these hot... in Arkansas it was coal, they burned coal, they didn't burn oil or anything, but you burned coal. And I don't know if you've seen those pictures of the heaters that they used to have in the room. You take a rubber comb, you take a tooth of that rubber comb, you'd throw it up on top of that stove and the smell's pretty bad after a while. [Laughs] You know, they just kind of mischievous kind of stuff. Or we used to eat garlic and go to school. We're all garlic and pretty soon the teacher would ask you to leave, well, that was okay with us, you know. Yeah, we were bad, we would've spent more time today in the principal's office than... they didn't have principals in those days. We would've spent a hell of a lot more time there I think.

RP: How about your mom and dad, did they work in the camp as well?

OM: My mom worked in the kitchen. My dad was physically, I guess he didn't have... you know, he used to be a drinker, he was an alcoholic I think. He never claimed that but I think he was. But he kind of ruined his health, either before camp or right after camp. And he didn't work but my mother worked as a kitchen helper, something like that in camp, in Jerome. And she also signed up, like I said, in Tule Lake for that as a cook but I ended up doing that. So they weren't, you know, not that a job was that important in camp.

RP: How about your other brothers and sister?

OM: Well, we were all in school so, except my older brother, after he graduated from school he was, I guess, he could've been a '41 grad or something like that, maybe a '42 '42 summer. And as soon as he got to camp he only had to finish up just a little bit so as soon as he finished he went... he left for Chicago. And that was the first split in the family. And so, you know, if there was a breadwinner, I guess it was him but he went out of camp and I guess it wasn't that much of a... it sounded like it was glamorous to go out and be on your own and work and all that but, you know, even with a high school diploma or whatever you had, you can't get much of a job, you know. I guess he did okay but he didn't, you know, and he was a kind of guy that if he had some money, he's going to spend it anyway. So there really was nobody, my brother my sister, my older brother and sister were still in school so there was really no work.

RP: You mentioned in your write up here that this was the first time that you attended Buddhist services?

OM: Yeah, that was in Tule Lake. That's probably the first time, like I said before, we didn't have... we weren't very religious, although I used to see my mother put her hands together but I think that's... I don't know if that's Buddhist or what you would call Shinto or whatever. Because I don't think she... I really understood what she was praying for or praying to or whatever. But in camp, in Tule Lake first time I went to a church, a church service, a Buddhist one, and I didn't get much out of it then either. But that's the first exposure of a organized church.

RP: Do you recall other social events in Jerome, dances, movies?

OM: Well, we were kind of... our block, one side was, one part of the barracks, each barrack, each block had a barracks that was supposed to be for recreational use. And our barrack, one part was taken over by, I think it was Maryknoll, was a church. And then the rest of it was for recreation and they used to use it for dance. And I didn't know how to dance, we never thought about dances. And so we used to kind of sneak around looking to see a boy and a girl hugging each other, this and that, we thought it was great, you know, but afraid to even ask. Well, I don't think it was even thought of kids our age going to a dance. I think the kids, the kids that went to these dances were out of high school or high school age. And we weren't there yet, you know. We probably thought all kinds of thoughts, you know, but we never had the guts to ask. [Laughs] Yeah, like they say in Japanese, inaka, that means country, country hick, you know, that's probably what we were. Wishing this and wishing that but no guts to do anything.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.