Densho Digital Archive - Henry Sakamoto Interview (denshovh-shenry

<Begin Segment 13>

HS: By virtue of the canal running through or running alongside the camp, there were, and it was a big irrigation canal about the size of a small river I would say was very, very swift. The water from that canal provided the means to create a off canal swimming pool, and I think we, Minidoka was, might have been the only internment camp with a swimming pool for the internees. I remember spending a lot of time at the swimming pool. It's muddy water, but what the heck, you know. You can stand that. Also, the canal provided the means for the residents in the different blocks to tap into the irrigation water, and the irrigation water would come, would come to all the different blocks at certain times of the day. So with that, you could create your own gardens and supplement the food on the table in the mess hall or, supplement by eating little snacks, whatever you grew in your quarters. And I remember my dad, he grew a lot of different vegetables, but I remember particularly, he grew radishes, radishes. And with radish, you can create this pickled variety of vegetables that the Japanese do called tsukemono and you eat that along with rice, and Mom used to fix quite a bit of that. I delighted in the fact that my dad was able to grow vegetables independently. We could have some independent food to eat. But... and I mentioned that when the rocks and the gravel became available and we would build walkways within the blocks so that we could traverse and get from our living quarters to the mess hall or to the bathroom or whatever without having to walk in the mud when it rained. And then the irrigation that came to the blocks, you had to create little diversions and avoid the walkways that were constructed. So, it was created, led to a lot of ingenious methods, although very rustic, of availing yourself over the water. This... well, when we were, when we needed to walk through the muddy surfaces to get to the bathrooms, this led to another kind of creativity where if the person had access to old lumber, 2 by 4s or whatever, then he would build the Japanese style slippers, what they call the geta, G-E-T-A, geta, where there were wooden things but you could create enough, what, height on the geta to walk through the mud without getting your feet wet or dirty, and so that's another example of creativity. And the availability of scrap lumber if you could find it led to the, those who had carpentry abilities and had the tools led to the building of furniture to use in your own apartments, so called. And there was, in the sagebrush area, you could still access sagebrush and that led to another area of creativity for some of the artistic people. They would find a piece of greasewood that had shape and form, and they would take that and peel the bark off and rub it and rub it and rub it and develop a polished piece of art with a form that they thought was, replicated something else that they were familiar with, so, using nature to its, what, to a dream accomplishment, I guess. Also to supplement the food in the camp, there was, under the authority of the camp were acres and acres of land devoted to growing of vegetables, different kinds of crops, and served by the irrigation ability, and that produce was delivered and divided amongst the several blocks, the mess halls within the blocks. Also, after a period of time, there was, created a pig farm for meat for the camp, and it was a benefit, grow your own meat, and I suppose there was a lot of pig feet available provided by the different blocks. But one disadvantage to that was the smell from the pig farm. When the wind blew the wrong way, then it would direct the smell from the pig farm down to the camp, and the pig farm is really stinky. It doesn't smell good. But anyway, so we were availed of different kinds of, different kinds of smells from the assembly center to the internment camp, what a memory.

And then, well, I think the internees, people in the camp, they had to, they resorted to their own creativity for their entertainment. There were movies once a week, maybe twice a week, and they were fairly recent movies, and I can't remember what it cost, a dime or quarter or something, so that was okay. But there were opportunities for people with talent to put on amateur shows, things like that. There were, there was a Kibei group. Kibei group is a group that spent some time in Japan. Although they're born in the United States, they received some of their education in Japan, then returned to the United States before World War II, and so they knew the Japanese language quite well, could speak Japanese fluently, and many of the Kibei group served in the Military Intelligence Service for the United States Army being interpreters and translators over in the Pacific area. But the Kibei group within the internment camp, they were pretty musically inclined, played the piano, played the harmonica, and things like that, so they were a great group to put on entertainment. And then not to mention many of the younger girls during their formative years and even before World War II, before internment, they would go to Japanese dance classes, odori. They would learn the Japanese form of dance, a graceful and non-raucous and non-erotic form of dance, very, very gentle and graceful. So those girls would have the opportunity to show their talents and put on and participate in these talent shows.

And what else, examples of creativity, I guess. There were people that like to sing and this was pre-karaoke, and we would have assemblies in high school or even grade school I'm pretty sure, and they would ask for volunteers that would like to perform, and the high school would have assemblies and time for these people to perform, and it's pre-karaoke. And so therefore, without accompaniment even, because there weren't too many pianists during that time that were familiar with a lot of the pop, popular music of the day and didn't have the sheet music, for example. So these singers would perform a cappella and sing popular songs and [inaudible], "I came here to talk for Joe," a lot of the songs of World War II. To keep the rhythm, they'd have the microphone and tap their feet to keep the rhythm, but it was great, good stuff. And then in high school, we'd, it's part of the assemblies so rowdier people would put on, one act plays, things like that, try to develop a script just for fun just to make the kids laugh, and that was fun. Then I participated in one memorable play. We set up a stage and had a curtain and closed off the stage. When it came time for the performance, one of the traditional ways a Japanese play opens in that you are going to open the curtain, you get two blocks of wood and clap them together. You start off slow and go faster and faster, clap, clap, clap, and the curtains open slowly, slowly, and then as the clapping picks up, you open the curtain. Well, most of the kids in school, Nisei were familiar with that, and when we did that, it brought the house down, no talent, they're just clapping the wood. But when you're in an internment camp, anything is good, you know. [Laughs]