<Begin Segment 18>

SG: When you first saw the camp, what did you think?

GA: Well, it was very, very discouraging because as I say the wind and the dust, the dust storm, and you must remember that the camp was still under construction; therefore, all this dust was being created with the wind blowing it up. It was just a terrible mess. It was a very unwelcome arrival.

SG: What were your rooms like?

GA: Just one room, bare room with a potbelly stove in the middle and cots, that's all, no chairs, no tables, one light hanging from the ceiling, one bare light. And our room was a, since there were only three of us, it was the smallest unit, and so it must have been about oh, I'm guessing 10 by 12 something like that, one room, three of us. The bathrooms were, we had to go outside, walk about 50, 75 feet to get to the bathroom and the shower room too. We had no plumbing, no faucet, no water inside the room.

SG: And were you able to choose your own room?

GA: No. They had assigned it to us, the larger the family, the larger the room.

SG: What was the overall feeling that, of the camps?

GA: What was our feeling?

SG: Yeah, overall feeling of the people when you arrived at the camps?

GA: Oh, I'm sure everyone was very discouraged because of the, first of all, the wind and the dust. The fact that these, we were only provided one room for the whole family was just a very despairing feeling.

SG: So it sounds very difficult.

GA: Oh, it was, yeah. Then we went to the latrine, the, what do you call these, toilets were just placed in a row, no partitions between the toilets, so we had no privacy at all. Same as the shower, the shower heads all lined up, no partitions.

SG: They didn't separate men and women?

GA: Oh, yeah, they separated men and women all right, but there was no other privacy.

SG: How was it, how were you able to get through the, these difficult times being evacuated and sent to the expo center and sent to the camp? What made you be able to go through it?

GA: I really can't remember that. We just assumed that we had to do this, so we did. No one, as I recall, no one really said no. We just followed instructions, not much we can do about it, I don't think. Even if we objected, I don't think there was a thing they could do.

SG: How did you, once you settled into camp life at Minidoka, what was that like?

GA: Well, I was very much in a very low mood, depressed mood because of all this. I don't know how to explain it, but it was just a very down and out feeling to have to go into someplace like that. Well, of course, we had the same situation, almost the same situation in the assembly center one room per family with latrines and toilets, no privacy. It was just a forlorn feeling.

SG: Were you able to get furniture eventually?

GA: No, no furniture, no. You can make it, you can build it if you wanted to, and you can go out and buy it if you wanted to, but I don't know how you would bring it in, so everybody did without. Some clever people did make their own furniture.

SG: Where did they get the materials?

GA: I think like we did, I decided to make a sort of a dresser for my girlfriend at that time. We went to steal lumber in the lumber store yards, storage area, just took the boards out. That's where I got my lumber.

SG: Was it pretty easy to sneak the boards out?

GA: Oh, yeah.

SG: Did anyone ever get caught taking --

GA: I don't think so. I'm sure they realized what they were for, so they didn't object to it nor did they put us in jail or anything like that.

SG: So even though they knew you were making furniture out of this wood, they looked the other way?

GA: I think they did. There was not that much furniture made. In my case, it was just this one small dresser, so very little lumber that I used. They couldn't make too much for the rooms because the rooms were too small anyway. When the beds were in there, well, you take three in our family, three beds in one small room, there isn't much else, much more room to put furniture.

SG: Where did you, where were you able to get the other materials or tools to build that dresser?

GA: I don't remember where I got them now. I don't, I must have had a hammer. I could have taken the hammer, but I don't remember. I don't remember that. You also have to remember like when they have a family of say of five kids, mother and father, seven beds in one room, there isn't much room for much else.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.