Densho Digital Archive - Mary Haruka Nakamura Interview (denshovh-nmary

<Begin Segment 14>

LT: Well, in 1944, your husband went into the army.

MN: Yeah, he was on reserve, and then they finally called him. So he went in to report, and while he was there, Dr. Akamatsu in camp said that he had kidney trouble. So they examined him, and they confirmed it, and they released him, so he was there three months. And then when he came back to camp, they sent him to Boise, and they had to take one kidney out. So after that we were back in camp, Minidoka. And I got pregnant and I had my daughter in September. They were supposed to, Dr. Nerys, when he examined me, he said, "You've got another month to go, so you'd better get out of camp and establish with a doctor out of camp." But I was due in September, that was my due date, and it came on my due date. And we had taken everything to Filer, to my husband's brother's place where he worked, and then she came, so we went, there was only a chief nurse there in the hospital, everything else was closed up. So my husband had to come in and bring the baby in to nurse, I would nurse it, and then when they got ready to leave, she was born on September 18th, and we left maybe eight or ten days later to Filer. And they closed the hospital; there was no more hospital at the end of September. Then they closed the camp in December, Minidoka camp. But we were in Filer.

LT: So you were the last, or one of the last to leave.

MN: Well, my daughter was the last to leave the hospital before it closed.

LT: Okay. What was it like to deliver a baby in camp?

MN: Didn't have any problems. She was small. But they didn't have incubators then, so there wasn't anything else they could do.

LT: What was your overall feeling about the World War II camps?

MN: Well, I think we enjoyed it. We were young, we didn't know any better. So actually camp life was good.

LT: Okay. What was good about it?

MN: Well, we had lots of friends, we did everything that was fun, and we didn't mind the food. So actually, for young people it was okay. It's the Isseis that really had it bad.

LT: And how was that?

MN: They're not used to any of the food, and they didn't have the company that they would associate with, and they're not that friendly with people. You know, like us kids, we can get friends all the time. They didn't seem to mind it, though, it wasn't bad.

LT: Anything specifically about your parents, your father? How did he adjust?

MN: He did okay, I guess.

LT: Do you think there were special things that they had to do to help them adjust to this new life in camp?

MN: Not really, I don't remember.

LT: Did you think about the reason that you were in camp?

MN: Well, we had to evacuate because of the order. We just did whatever they said to do.

LT: Okay.