Densho Digital Archive - Isao Kameshige Interview (denshovh-kisao

<Begin Segment 13>

AC: You had also mentioned that you played a lot of basketball in the camp, and that you actually even played against Parker High School. How was that?

IK: Rough. They were pretty big fellows. Well, I don't think they did anything on purpose, but they were rough players. [Laughs] I don't know if they played that way in their league or not, but we gave 'em a bad time. I mean, we gave 'em a good battle. We had some pretty good players on our team. In fact, there was one kid there that I admire. His name was Moose Kurimura, I mean... well, his name was Kunimura, anyway. Moose was the older brother, and this guy, he could really... I mean, he'd be falling backwards and he's shooting, and he'd still make the basket. He was our top scorer, and I really admired him. But he lives in Gilroy too. But we played, like you say, we played a lot of basketball. Well, you got to do something to keep them, especially over there, we played at night because daytime it's so hot, you couldn't, it was so hot you couldn't even walk around. There's no air conditioning, what we had was water coolers for our homes. And some people, like what we did was our group, our kids, they had one apartment there, one room, and we made a trapdoor and we dug a cellar, and we used to go in there and play cards or whatever. And it wasn't very big, it was only probably about ten by ten or so, well, it wasn't even that big. And we'd crawl in there, but it was cooler down in the basement, see, and we made our own. And some of those other people, they used to... see they used to say if it's dark it's cooler, so they used to close up all their windows and everything and just stay in there and sleep, read or whatever.

AC: So what did you do with the dirt that you dug out of the cellar?

IK: We just hauled it out. We used buckets and we just dumped it outside.

AC: No one said anything?

IK: Oh, no, you could do that if you wanted to, but it's a lot of work. [Laughs]

AC: So what did you use for lighting when you were playing cards?

IK: Well, we had made an extension into there. We improvised. [Laughs] Well, see, you have a lot of electricians and plumbers that have to work in there, and they'd help you out. If you needed something, why, they'd try to get it through requisitions or something, get it for you. But it was tough when it was hot. You could never go outside.

AC: Explain to me, how did this water cooler work?

IK: Oh, they still had 'em. It looks like a regular cooler, except you had to have water that drips through the radiator. And the air comes through that water and it cools you off. They have a fan behind that radiator and it cools you off. And you had to buy your own, of course. We had catalog books that we could, whatever we, if we needed something awfully bad, we'd send through the catalog and get it.

AC: And you'd save your money from working these jobs?

IK: You didn't make enough to. [Laughs]