Densho Digital Archive - Isao Kameshige Interview (denshovh-kisao

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AC: So your mom had an operation while you were in basic?

IK: Right after I got done basic.

AC: How did you feel about all of a sudden, my gosh... this was over, she was still in Arizona, right?

IK: Yeah, she was in camp, and she was in the camp hospital. And she didn't look good, but she survived it. By the time I left, she wasn't up and about, but she was able to speak to me and everything, so she was all right.

AC: How was it going back to the camp after being away for so long?

IK: Tell you the truth, I don't remember traveling. I mean, it just, you just try to get the train that you can get a hold of. Well, there's an experience that I'd like to tell you about. I was going from Fort Douglas to Camp Blanding, and we were on these... these weren't troop trains, these were regular passenger trains we were on then. And we stopped in San Antonio, Texas, on the way. And they let us off to go eat at this restaurant, and we had a half a day, I think, layover there, and so we could do whatever we wanted. And I was with, oh, half a dozen... there was four of us all together, that we were going together. And this lady come along, we were just walking on the street, this lady and her daughter come along, and she asked us if we'd like to go see some of the flowers that are in bloom. And we says, she got a car, so she says, "You can ride with us and we'll take you to see some of these flowers and gardens." So we said, "Sure." We had nothing else to do, and so we got in her car and she drove us to this garden and showed us all the flowers and how pretty they were and all that. And went to another place, and she wanted to know if we wanted to go to a museum and things like that. And then she said, she wanted to take us to her home and serve us tea, so we said fine. So we went over there and she was serving tea, and I was talking with her and with her daughter. And she started asking where we were from and all that. Actually, I found out she thought we were the Chinese people that were at the air base over there learning how to fly. They had a lot of Chinese people there that was learning how to fly, and they thought we were Chinese. [Laughs] And when I told her we were Japanese, that we were in the army and we were going to Camp Blanding, she kind of, her attitude kind of changed. [Laughs] So she took us back and said goodbye and that was it. I'll never forget that. But there was a corps of Chinese pilots that were training over there in Texas at that time, and she took it for granted that that's what we were. But anyway, that's the way things go, I guess.

AC: So at the camp hospital where your mom was, what was that like? I mean, did they have, like, real doctors, or just interns?

IK: No, they had real doctors, because they had a lot of doctors that was interned. Must have been good doctors as far as I know. They were good doctors, yeah.

AC: Well, I mean, heart specialists, that's pretty specialized there.

IK: Well, they might have got somebody in to do that, I'm not sure. But there must have been other heart patients there in that big of a camp.

AC: Was it a good hospital, was she comfortable there?

IK: Well, it was clean, it was neat. They had it fixed up pretty nice. Of course, it was still the barracks. It wasn't segregated into rooms, it was one hall. And she was in one of the rooms, of course, and they were all, just like what we did in our rooms, they had blankets for privacy, and that's about all they had. But it qualified as a hospital.