Densho Digital Archive - George Nakata Interview (denshovh-ngeorge

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GN: So life went on in camp. Yes, we ate what seemingly was strange food because a lot of us were not used to a lot of western food at that time, but we got used to things called Brussels sprout. Never knew what that was. Never did become my favorite, but ate it anyhow. Brussels sprout, my golly, that was something else. And cow tongue, hated that, and later on, smelt. But there were a lot of things that I did like. I liked the pancakes, and I like certain things that they made, their macaroni and spaghetti and few other things that they came up with. So we had a good time. And then later on up in the upper blocks, they had a canteen, and we can go there and, not often because we didn't have the money, but we can buy some snacks. And we were lucky in Block 34 because Saburo or Sam Kondo operated the theater. That was there in Block 34 and so-called hired us to sweep the floor couple times a week, and so three of us would sweep the floor, and we would gladly sweep the floor. We would have done it for nothing, but I think we were paid a quarter or so. Anyhow, when sweeping the floor, invariably, we would find a nickel here and dime there. Once in a while, we'd find a quarter. And as soon as our sweeping chores were over, we'd high tail it up to the canteen to see what we could buy. So that was a great job we had at camp simply sweeping the floor after movies for Mr. Kondo.

My father was an assistant in the mess hall, $16 a month. The chief cook got $19 a month. They worked pretty hard, three times a day preparing the meal for everybody, you know. There's no such things as vacancy. All the rooms were taken. All twelve barracks, all six compartments in each barrack were always full, and no question, they were more than full. Some people had five or six children, so I don't know how they did it, but we made do. And come lunch time, dinner time, there would be a short line, and you'd go there. And a funny thing, people would kind of sit where they do every day, and they'd line up a certain way. And after a while, you kind of ended up sitting with the same people day in and day out, so it was kind of funny, the eating regime that we kind of went through there in Minidoka.

Later on, I think they felt after the first many, many months of having a machine gun nest and having army personnel kind of eye us very closely, they decided that we Japanese and Japanese Americans are not war mongers. We're not there to do any disrupting. We were very peaceful, law abiding cooperative people, so they gave us passes to go out, so we did go out, and we went fishing in the canal. First time that my dad got a real fishing rod and a reel, and he taught me how to cast the line out there into the middle of the canal, and we'd catch what were called suckers. And they might not have been the most delicate fish to eat, but they were still a pretty good size fish, so we would be thrilled at catching these suckers in the Minidoka canal. One of my really warm experiences that I treasure is to go out after greasewood, and we would go for quite a few miles, and our landmark would be the water tower. We'd try to not to go too far that we can't see the water tower, but we'd take different routes, and there'd be a lot of adventures. We'd run into rattlesnakes. We'd undercover a coyote cave, bones inside. We'd see jackrabbits running in front of us. We'd see live scorpion. But amongst the sea of sagebrush, every now and then, we'd see a greasewood. It's a different brush. It's got a heavy oil content in its wood. It takes a high gloss when you peel the bark off, and my dad was really quite a pioneer. He got some of the first greasewood pieces being this artistic part of his self came out, and he brought different greasewood pieces back when no one went greasewood hunting, and he made things out of them. I don't mean the obvious cane, but he made a bird. He made a tsuru, a crane, made a dog. He made a lion. He made a fruit basket. He made many, many things out of greasewood, and suddenly, a lot of people were going after greasewood, and suddenly, they were having greasewood exhibition contests and giving awards for the best greasewood piece. Mr. Niguma one of the pioneers in Nihonmachi, a longtime family friend, was there, and he and his daughter, Sakaye, lived not too far, couple blocks away, Block 35 I believe, Mr. Niguma just admire the greasewood pieces my dad had, so he would always say, "Shige-san," he would say, "please take me with you to your secret." My dad would tell him, "Niguma-san, you just go after greasewood. There's not a place that's a secret place. You just kind of wander around out there amongst the sagebrush and you stumble on to different greasewood pieces. The trick is to get the most gnarled up ones and the most unusually shaped ones and then use your great imagination to figure out what you can make with this." It's all right, just take me with you, so I was the third person. And so Mr. Niguma, my dad, and I made numerous trips, greasewood hunting. And by that time, we'd either get something at the canteen or my mother would save a little rice and make some nigiri musubi for us, pack a tiny little lunch, pack a little water, had a really warn out dented Thermos bottle at that time. That and a saw and a little stick in case we run into a rattlesnake, that's all we had, and we kind of marched out there amongst the lava rock formation, amongst the coyote caves, and we would get greasewood. And we would bring them back, we would peel off the bark, and my father had one can of Johnson floor wax. I don't know how he did it. He made that go for three and a half years. We would polish, I got sick of greasewood, but now, I'm so fond of it, still have a piece in this room that won an award. But greasewood became sort of our recreation.

And why is Mr. Niguma so important to me? Mr. Niguma had his son Tsu and he had Mitsuko, later ended up as Mrs. Kelly Kayama, had Masako who married Sugai in Ontario, had Sakai who married Aki Nishimura who was a vice principal at Benson High School, but Mr. Niguma also had Yoneko Nadine Niguma who later became Dozono, three children, Keiko, Robert, and Shozo. And Keiko, of course, is my wife for a good many years now. Keiko who never ever met Mr. Niguma, and yet somehow, I had the opportunity to know Mr. Niguma well, go greasewood hunting well, many, many times with him, greatest time with Mr. Niguma. So I'm able to reflect back and tell Keiko about her grandfather that I knew well that she never knew. So Mr. Niguma is a very, very special person to me. And one other sidebar on Mr. Niguma. Mrs. Josuke Nakata, my father's partner in the Nakata Brothers Fruit and Vegetable Stand, Mrs. Nakata was gifted with a talent and skill that probably is nowhere in medical journals anywhere. It is the ability to put your hand on top of -- not touching of course -- but on top of a hot plate, heating the palm of your hand, transferring that heat to an ailing body part, a strained muscle, a pulled ligament, a torn muscle at times. And unbelievable as it sounds, people that might have suffered a stroke that may have been paralyzed on one side of their body, that one arm doesn't move or one side of their mouth doesn't open fully, she was able, through this heating technique, able to cure them, and somehow, the one person she taught was my father. For months, he trained under her. I consider her a master, and he learned how to transfer this heat. And Mr. Niguma, after returning to Portland, suffered a stroke, and for days, my father gave him the heat treatment. And gradually, I could see Mr. Niguma eating more properly, moving more properly, and finally, he was almost back to normal. So it was really quite a thing that medical doctors who've gone through and interned probably the formal way would not even consider this, but I've seen it personally up close. And ironic as it sounds, after Mr. Niguma passed away, his son Tsu had almost the identical stroke. So Tsu Niguma came over to our Park Hotel then after the war for several treatments every week that went on for months, and Tsu Niguma, like his father, was treated for his ailing body also by my father. So it's kind of a side note of Mr. Niguma, greasewood, and that experience that really originated for me in Minidoka, Idaho.