<Begin Segment 9>

DF: What do you remember about activities you did in camp, mealtimes or were you --

AT: Just going to meals and showers. You know, I can remember there were things there that I could not eat because they were given --

DF: Like what?

AT: Well, because you get a lot of organs. I cannot eat an organ. There's heart, liver, none of those things, and that's what we were served a lot of. I know that when they found the miminawa, the ear mushrooms, that my brother was telling us that Dad would trade ear mushrooms for chicken. And with the chicken, then you could have chicken with the ear mushrooms, and it was very tasty. I have no idea. I don't know because I can't remember doing that. I can't remember our meals other than having to walk to the cafeteria for our meals. Washing I didn't do because my mother did that.

DF: Where did she do the washing?

AT: In an area that was set aside for all the washing. We were in a hut, we were in a block of, in Jerome where that was situated right next to the elementary school. I don't know where our mess hall was. I remember walking to it, but I don't remember it.

DF: How would you describe the space that your family had to share?

AT: Oh, it was very small. My brother tells me that it was, Mom and Dad had a cot, so they slept off the ground, but we slept on, the children slept on the floor. But he said that was fine because we were accustomed to sleeping on the floor. That's what we did at home in Hawaii, so that wasn't a hardship at all other than the cold. The cold was the most miserable thing, the cold and the dampness in the swamp. That was probably the worst thing.

DF: So you had cots, you had a wood stove, anything else?

AT: Oh, yes. I'm sure my father as clever as he is, he could build anything, and he did. He built us chairs. He built us a cooling unit. I don't know that we had a vegetable garden, but many people did in camp. They would grow their own vegetables, but I don't know that we did.

DF: Can you describe the cooling unit?

AT: It was made of chicken wire, and Dad had some kind of contraption where the water ran over the wire, and there was a fan in back of it. So as the fan went through the wire through the water, it cooled our apartment. The water then fell to the ground in a hole that Dad had dug. And in that hole, Dad put logs so he could have his own mushrooms growing rather than going into the swamp to get them. I guess going into the swamp was kind of frightening because there were lots of water moccasins, lots of snakes in the water, in the swamp. And so if you didn't have to do that, you were much better off. So Dad realized that he could do that himself, so he built a little garden of mushrooms by just digging a hole and having the water coming off of the cooling unit.

DF: What activities did you do in camp? What kept you busy during the day and at night?

AT: I have no idea. I have no idea what we did. We listened, we listened to the radio. That was the one thing that we did have. We had a radio that worked. My mother earned money by, she made chenille flowers, and she also sold the materials to make them so everyone in camp had little hobbies. Well, Mom's hobby was to make flowers. She was very clever with her hands, and so she would make flowers and sell them. And my father was very clever with his hands. He would carve birds, and I wish I had some of the birds he carved because they were just little birds that you could use as pins. Then he'd put a pin on the back of it. But he'd carve them and then paint them, and they would sell them. Now, I don't know who bought them, but I think it was someone outside of camp because they could get out and go to Phoenix. They could go out. If you chose to go out into the city, you could. You could go out.

DF: What was it like having your brother born in camp?

AT: I don't know. He'd probably tell you he knew nothing about it. I don't remember that it was any more difficult than just living there daily. They had a hospital there, so Mom was, delivered in the hospital. They had a doctor. I don't think he suffered for it. I don't think any of us suffered for it. I can only remember that it was not a hardship for me because I was too young to remember any of it. My father many years later when they had the, before reparation, and they featured my mom and dad in the paper, and they had a big meeting. They had a conference about reparation, and they wouldn't allow, my brother would not allow my father to speak. They wanted my dad to speak to tell them how he felt about it. My brother said, no, you're not going to say one word because you were one of the few people who have always felt that this, although it was a hardship while you went through it probably helped our family more because we had so many advantages because we went to camp. Because we went to camp, he became a teacher. Because we went to camp, he taught the military. Because we went to camp, he was able to go back to Japan with the occupational forces, and we lived a good life there. So he's never regretted. He never regretted any of it. He said we suffered while we had to, but then our life turned, and it was such a good life. He would never, he never felt that he was harmed by any of it. He only looked at the good side of it, and that's the way I feel about it because I was too young, and we lived a good life that, he says if we had lived in Hawaii all of our lives, we probably never would have had the advantages of going to the mainland to live, going to Japan to live. He says, "I'd probably would never have been able to afford to send all of you children to school, to college." He probably would have sent the oldest son, but he would have not sent the rest of us to school. He says, "As it turned out for us, it was a good thing."

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.