<Begin Segment 9>

JK: When you went to the assembly center, what was your first impression when you entered?

AO: The only thing I remember was the smell of the horse manure, because it used to be a horse barn, where the assembly center was. And the smell just was overwhelming the minute you walked in to that area.

JK: And what about your living quarters? What were they like?

AO: Living quarters were, one large area was divided up into portions with plywood, plywood walls and canvas doorways covering the doorways, no rooftops or anything, it was all under this one big roof. So there was hardly any privacy going on anywhere.

JK: And what was your daily routine like for you? You were fifteen?

AO: Yeah, I had turned sixteen in April, and we went to the assembly center in May. So being sixteen, I was able to get a job there. I remember Mas and I both had jobs in the pantry, which was dishing out butter and jam and things like that. Then they found out that she was only fifteen, so they fired her. She couldn't work until she was sixteen, so she couldn't work there. But I worked in the pantry there for the few months that we were there.

JK: Did they pay you?

AO: Yes. I think I was being paid minimum wages, which for a pantry worker was eight dollars a month. Then skilled workers were getting sixteen dollars a month.

JK: What about your mom? What was she doing?

AO: She was a waitress in the mess hall.

JK: Did you go to school at the assembly center too?

AO: Yes, they had classes, but there wasn't anything much official. They were just more or less trying to finish up the school year, 'cause this was in May when most of us would have finished school in June. And so they were just finishing up some of the class works, but there wasn't that much schooling going on.

JK: Did they have activities for you to do?

AO: Oh, yeah. We had a ping pong tournament, table tennis tournament. I mentioned that I won the tournament there, and when I won the tournament, I was playing in the finals against a fellow named Sab Ikeda, whom you may know. But I had a wide hit one time, and he reached way out to retrieve it, and he dislocated his arm, shoulder. So he had to quit, so I won the championship from him.

JK: And was this the championship just for the assembly center?

AO: For the assembly center, yeah.

JK: Did they have basketball there for you, too?

AO: They had basketball, they had a gym there, they had baseball, we played baseball outside, too. There were a number of activities going on.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2013 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.