<Begin Segment 9>

TM: Can you describe while you were at Minidoka any memories that you might have of your living quarters?

FP: Yes, yes. It was very uncomfortable, and the walls that were created if we packed the whole family in there with extended members would be just blankets hanging there. And cold, cold, cold. And I'll never forget the dust, the dust and windstorms, and mother trying to protect me by wrapping me around, her coat around me as we went to the latrine and/or the cafeteria. And, let's see... oh, I do remember like an incident where my little brother was, we were out on our trip, just either walking around, and we were near the barbed wire gate. And my little brother Dickie heard something, it was a rattlesnake rattling its coils, and he was starting to crawl towards it, and we got, my mom got to him right away. Oh, that was so shocking that it reminds me, my other memories are... they're odd memories, but they're traumatic to you as a young child. I remember being potty trained by my Auntie Mizuhata, and let's see, and things like that. And the cafeteria, I remember the long, long set tables, okay, and there was one very kind of a bulky, strong guy, a Japanese guy that was serving as a waiter or a cook, and he would bring, if we went a few minutes early he would bring us some tempura sweet potato, right. So we grew quite attached to him. Later it turned out that he was a gangster, kind of like mafia style, you know. But he loved the youngsters, he would bring tempura sweet potatoes to us, 'cause he knew that we loved it. Because, really, there wasn't much in the way of treats for us, you know, right.

TM: Do you remember any play activities, or did you have any toys at that time?

FP: I don't remember much in toys. What we did were maybe from branches and twigs or whatever, you know. And then, well, of course, we'd play things like jumping rope or something like that. But then, let's see... but mostly when you're about three years old, you're under the skirts of your parents. And by that time Dad was gone. After a period of time, Dad was transferred over to Anderson Dam. He was considered trustworthy enough as a foreign alien to be transferred to Anderson Dam where he had, where he had skills as an accountant. So that's what he did at Anderson Dam, and then visit us occasionally, like on the weekend or so, right.

TM: And Anderson Dam is in Idaho?

FP: Yes, not too far from Minidoka.

TM: Did you have friends and relatives, family friends and relatives in your block or there in the...

FP: Yes, yes.

TM: And who were the relatives, the other relatives that you might not have mentioned?

FP: Well, my Uncle Mizuhata and his wife, and his two children, right. And then there were other friends there that occasionally Mom would recall, and she said, "Oh, we were in camp together," you know. And she would introduce me. And it was a close, tight-knit community, just really tight-knit. It was like the attitude was -- and this was partly cultural, too, the Japanese tend to be somewhat, very supportive and community oriented, you know. So the ones that had been trained were the local nurses and the local, well, the doctors, the Nisei were a little young to be, have really highly trained people like doctors. But the local nurses and the local teachers would often teach... of course, it was right before I started kindergarten. I do remember in the Minidoka Interlude book that we have, that we have that. And that we did have a unity built up there. So that affected me. So for the rest of my life, I realized that working together collectively and being community oriented, you can do things that you cannot do individually, and you keep each other's moral support up in times of very difficult trials like camp was.

TM: For your father, he was working at Anderson Dam and coming home and visiting occasionally on weekends?

FP: Right.

TM: Your mother and your grandmother, what were they doing with their time? Were they just concentrating on raising you kids?

FP: Right. Most of it was just concentrating and raising me. And I think they were involved with their lady friends. You know, where they could go walking along... or they might have had a type of job, like there was a farm there where they raised crops. And when we went to our personal pilgrimage to Minidoka, it showed. This area here was a crop farm where everybody, where the community went to raise their crops and things. So they might have been doing the gardening or something like this, or working in the kitchen. It soon became almost self-sustaining.

TM: So for you, going back to your earliest memories, do you have any other vivid memories that you can think of at all?

FP: Let's see. Lot of blowing wind, dust, dust, dust everywhere.

TM: Cold?

FP: Right, right. And... that's okay, it'll come back.

TM: Do you remember a feeling at the time about this place? Or even looking back about, did your parents ever talk to you about why you were in camp later, or even then?

FP: They tried to avoid the subject. For a long time they wouldn't discuss it. It was like, "Oh, it's behind us, it's behind us, let's move on, let's move on." And, "Let's integrate, let's integrate." And not just integrate, but actually assimilate, assimilate. And so that thought came through quite strongly, right. And so maybe that was a helpful feeling because the Japanese believe highly in education, you know. And so we were geared toward, "Get a good education." And then in terms of, like, Grandpa would often say, "Oh, we've got to educate our children so that they won't go hungry." And so being that mentality of a farmer, he would say, "Okay," his thinking was more like community college level training, you know. So one aunt is a very meticulous seamstress, and uses her skills to... and she was in sales with that, for the neighborhood and things. And then the other was, maybe for the older teenagers, maybe mechanics or something like this.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.