<Begin Segment 8>

MR: What did you do for enjoyment at Heart Mountain?

MY: Well, while I was in Heart Mountain, I was going through the ages of fifteen, sixteen, and we went to dances. We had a lot of sports programs. Our high school sports teams played with teams from outside of camp, and that was always very exciting. We went ice skating in the wintertime, and in the summer, they flooded out a big area so that the kids could go swimming. And we attended movies, church, dances, every weekend. And typical of the age, we were very much interested in boyfriends and the latest band music and things like that.

MR: What did your mother do in Heart Mountain? Did she work there?

MY: Yes. I believe most adults got a job if they were physically able to. My mother and the lady next door worked in the latrines. It was their job to be janitresses, and they got along very well together, and they actually had a lot of fun. But then after work, my mother was able to take embroidery courses, and she didn't take flower arranging, but she had time now on her hands to do some of the things that she was always interested in because she no longer had to worry about feeding the kids and herself. She didn't have to worry about the rent or anything like that. And then she and the lady next door also had some seeds sent into camp, and they had what they call victory gardens, and that was always nice. They had a lot of vegetables growing, but they always try to outgrow the other one, you know. "My cucumbers are doing better than yours, and my beans are growing taller than yours." And there was a lot of competition, but it was friendly, fun competition.

MR: Were the gardens like right outside the door or somewhere else in the camp?

MY: It was just behind the barrack.

MR: Sometimes the camp life was really difficult for families, children went off one way, parents another. How did that life affect your family?

MY: There wasn't much of that in our own family. I believe it happened more with boys than the girls. I think the girls tend to be home and to eat with their brothers and sisters and their mothers. There were not as many men around as women it seems. But... and occasionally, we would go and have lunch with our friends, but it didn't happen as often as a lot of stories that I have heard.

MR: I want to go back to playing ball with teams from outside camp. Did your teams go to their schools, or did they come to yours?

MY: Both. We had a very good team. It seems like the boys' basketball teams, the girls' basketball teams, we were always shorter in stature and all that, but it seems like they were much quicker. And so as far as winnings are concerned, we did quite well. And we also had what we called a pep club. A whole bunch of girls would get together, and with our pom-poms, we would cheer the boys on or cheer the girls on, and it was a good time. And because it was in a camp situation, the games were viewed by everybody, you know, the old folks, the little kids, and all the students alike, so it was a lot of fun. It was always a time for great fun.

MR: How did it feel to leave camp for these games and then have to come back?

MY: No, just the teams left. The internees didn't leave. But when we had teams coming in to play, then that's when everybody turned out. I imagine the players who were able to leave camp enjoyed it very much because, you know, it was freedom out there, and they usually had dinner out before they came back.

MR: Did you ever leave camp for shopping or work?

MY: Yes, we did. My sister worked as a teacher for a while. But later on, she worked in the social welfare department, and the person in charge was a very nice, understanding person. And what she would do was take her workers outside of camp for a day at a time, and you know, she'd rotate the person. And so when it was my sister's turn to go outside of camp, this lady invited the whole family to go too, so we spent a day in Cody. And first of all, she took us near Yellowstone Park to see the scenery there, and then we returned to Cody to go to dinner, and it was just very nice just to be out.

MR: Did you stay in camp the whole time?

MY: I was in camp about two and a half years. I left finally to go to school. What happened was my mother again was worried about leaving camp when the time came that we were able to do so, and a recruiter came from this place called Seabrook, New Jersey. It was a food processing plant, and they wanted a hundred or more people at one time, and so she felt that there was safety in numbers, and so she decided that that was the time for us to leave. My sisters had left camp earlier. One got a job as a student domestic. She worked for her room and board and was able to leave camp with her friend. And so my mother and I went out to New Jersey, and we went in a couple trainloads, and we worked there for... well, I worked there for about two years until I saved enough money to go to college. And this place was about a mile not a mile but an hour away from Philadelphia, so I entered college in Philadelphia.

MR: Were you in camp when the "loyalty questions" were asked?

MY: Yes, but it didn't involve me because I was too young at the time. But when we left, we had to fill out the "loyalty questionnaire."

MR: Do you remember the discussions that were going on?

MY: Oh, yeah. It was a very hard time for a lot of families. By generations, a lot of families were split. You know, the parents thought that they couldn't answer those questions a certain way; whereas, the child felt that they had to be loyal and all that. It was very hard, and it was in our camp where we had the... where the draft resisters were very strong, and there was a large number of them.

MR: What came of their resistance?

MY: Well, they ended up in jail, and then a lot of people in camp looked down on them. They thought they were, you know, being very disloyal, and it was a tough time for them. But now I think as the years go by, people give them a lot more credit than they did during the war years and feel that they were very strong to stand up for their rights of what they thought was right.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.