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HS: And every Christmas, the block would get together and there'd be a contest on Christmas decorations, so we created the Christmas decoration and they would award prizes for the best decoration, humorous decoration, or whatever. It's a volunteer effort as well. I recall that first year, we had the theme of families from our block that were not necessarily split up but members of the family had relocated away from the West Coast, gone to New York, had gone to Cleveland, near there, so we built a so-called replica of the barrack and had streamers going from the barrack to the map of New York, map of wherever the family members were. And our family had a phonograph player, old fashioned one that would, you could repeat, it would play the record and play it over and over again if you didn't stop it. So we played the record "I'll Be Home For Christmas," award-winning theme. That was good. We called ourselves, we called ourselves the Tutty Fruity Thirty Tutties, nickname for our committee.

[Interruption]

HS: Well, as a result of our award-winning display for Block 32, we, in that way I guess it was a Christmas celebration for a lot of us, first Christmas there in the internment camp. For me and for our family, it was not a real big thing. Even before World War II, we didn't emphasize Christmas all that much. We didn't have, really have resources. We had a Christmas tree, and we'd put that up so we'd know it's Christmas, love the smell of the old Christmas trees, the old fashioned way. But it, for our family, it wasn't a big thing. So when we were interned at Christmastime, it was not a big thing.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.