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HH: After that you...

AI: Yeah, after Salinas, I remember I was a brat because at assembly center, I used to run through the women's lavatory. And here I am, a seven-year-old kid, running through the women's lavatory. Then I guess in July of, near July, we moved from the assembly center to Poston, Arizona. And I remember getting on this train and it was hot. They pulled down all the shades, and I remember going through the windy, train was going through all these windy tracks and going back and forth moving very slowly. And it was very hot, and I remember they used to have these, ice between the trains, the cars, and my mother had given me a Boy Scout knife. And I would pick on the ice, and I remember eating the ice on the way to Poston. And then once we got to Poston, we got there on really a bad day because I remember a sandstorm. And I used to hold my hand up and I couldn't see the end of my had because the sandstorm was so bad. Then the straw mattresses in the cots, and we had to wet down everything and then the one-room barracks for the whole family. I had two brothers and one sister at the time. My younger sister was born here in Seabrook. So my father... so I guess there were five or six of us in that one room. My grandfather luckily got another room for bachelors. So that was camp, I mean, that was quite a traumatic experience.

HH: You used to wander around the countryside within the concentration camp.

AI: Oh, yeah. The camp, I walked with a kid named Bobby Tokiwa. He and I used to walk all around the camp, so we wouldn't go through the barbed wire fences, but we walked the whole perimeter of the camp. And to this day, I must have traveled around the camp so many times, I could draw the whole camp. If somebody gave me a piece of paper, I could draw every block in the camp, including the swimming pool, I knew where all the canteens were in the library, in the school, and where all the cars were. So yeah, he and I were brats again. [Laughs]

HH: And walking through the perimeter, you got acquainted with some of the wildlife around there?

AI: Oh, yeah. They had a creek running through, or stream running through the camp, too, and we used to go fishing there. And I remember one time we saw this bass in this little pond, I don't know, might be ten feet in diameter by five feet across, and we saw this bass, and we said, "Well, if we can catch this fish by draining out all the water." And so we took the whole morning to take out all the water out of this hole. [Laughs] And we caught the bass, but we didn't realize it was going to be so much work and took a long, long time, I remember that, just to catch this one lousy fish.

And then, yeah, the rattlesnakes. There were rattlesnakes all over the place, and yeah, we used to climb trees. And whenever you see a, you can hear the rattlers go off, and you can go in that direction. And you kind of see, well, you were kind of well camouflaged, but you could eventually find them. And then we'd climb the trees and throw rocks at them, branches at them. [Laughs]

HH: Eventually you moved out of Poston, and where did you go?

AI: Well, let me say a little bit more about Poston. Poston, you used to have to take salt tablets, and I did not take salt tablets, I said, gee, they taste terrible. And I got the sunstroke. In fact, I remember jumping into the swimming pool, in and out, learning how to swim. And I got, I became delirious, and I got sunstroke, and then they sent me to the Camp I hospital. And I was in there for a whole month recovering from this sunstroke. Then I realized what the salt tablets meant. So when I got out of the hospital -- this is in third grade -- and I took salt tablets from then on.

And then I stole a coping saw. I remember they used to have, the older people used to make these birds, okay, and they had a special shop in camp, and Bob Tokiwa and I, I kind of knew. I said I wanted him to break this window, because I knew a coping saw was in this room. And he broke this window and I said, "Hey, Bobby," I said, "I wonder what's in that room," knowing full well what's in that room. So I got on his shoulder, climbed in, and opened up the window and I got this coping saw. The coping saw is what the kids wanted because with the coping saw you could make guns and all the toys you wanted. Because you had a lot of scraps of wood and we'd make all these, whittle out all these guns. So between the coping saw and my Boy Scout knives that my mother gave me, I made toys for everyone. I made all kinds of toys. And that was quite a toy, I mean, quite a tool. And my mother said, "Where did you get that coping saw?" and I kind of hemmed and hawed, and she said, "Return it." [Laughs] So I remember running back and throwing the coping saw through the broken window. So we made our own toys back then, because there was just no, we didn't have money to buy toys out of Sears catalog or anything like that. So I remember as a kid, we made all our toys. [Laughs] So I learned how to swim in camp, which we had a big swimming pool. My uncle kind of threw me into the deep part, and I was drinking water, as I recall, and that was kind of a terrifying experience because I swear I was drowning. And he pulled me out, and I decided, "Well, I'd better know how to swim." [Laughs] And then my uncle was quite a swimmer, as you recall. He was the swimming champ out of all three camps that were there. So I always used to look up to him.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.