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Play MovieSection below cleaned by Mei Li I ('11) and Alexander F (intern). Please report errors to: info@tellingstories.org.
So you were able to look outside the train and see the scenery?
I understand that with some trains they made them pull down the shades when they went through towns and whatever. That might have happened with us and as well, but I don't remember that part of it.
That was for your safety?
I think that they didn't want other people to see us.
While you were in the assembly center did you ever think you were going to be moved again?
Yes, they told us this was temporary. But, we didn't know where we were going to go.
What was it like to arrive at Minidoka?
The train was very close by Minidoka as well. In fact, when I went there a couple of years ago, we saw the tracks. And then we were transported by bus and by army convoy trucks. We were taken up to our barracks, where we were going to live.
What were the barracks like?
Why don't I describe a block to you. There were, I believe about 50 blocks. Each block had 12 barracks and this was set up like an army camp actually. There's six barracks on either side of the block and then in the center there was a mess hall, and then right on the other side of that was the men and women's shower and toilets and the laundry room. So that's the way each was structured. Now the barracks housed like six families, they had six units. There was a small unit on either side and then next unit was the largest one I guess, and then they had the two in the center that were kind of the middles. The ones on the ends would hold two to three people. The next ones would hold five or six people, and the ones in the middle, four or five, something like that. So we got of the six, for six people. Now the barrack itself was constructed very hastily and they had the two by fours still sitting out there, but no insulation on the inside. And on the outside all they had was tar paper that was nailed down with strips. That was, that was it. And then they had a kind of a pitched roof. Each room came with a little potbelly stove to burn coal or whatever and that was your heat. But you had to go to the laundry room to get a little bit of coal, a little bit of wood or something to burn in your stove. It came with six cots and six blankets I believe it was, and that was it. That was the extent of what was furnished in the rooms.
Where would you put your belongings that you took with you?
When you put all the belongings and all the people in one room it was crowded. My brothers then were gangly teenagers so it was even worse. First of all then my sisters decided to put all the beds lined up. This room was, we think about twenty by twenty five feet. And so we lined up all the single army cots together on one side, so that left a little bit of free space on this side. There was one five-foot closet where we put everybody's things, everything in there. Then my father decided we needed something in the way of furniture or whatever, so he happened to be very handy. There was some scrap lumber left from the building of these barracks. Unfortunately the Seattle people who had moved in a month before us took a lot of our lumber, so it was really difficult, but we finally got a few pieces together and father made a bench for us and some boxes so that we could store things in them and sit on them. Then he put up some shelves so that we could have them for our toothbrush and our little dishpan, for when we went to go take a shower. And, so, for camp living it was, you know, it was adequate.
What were your first impressions of the camp when you first arrived?
I just remember thinking, ‘Where are we going to live?' Everything looked the same, you know, block after block of block. The dust was incredible. The Army convoy trucks would go and this dust would follow us in these big swirls and everything you said you had to do it between gritting, all this grit on your teeth. It was just really something.
So was it like sand or something?
They said that it was like a volcanic ash, basalt. That's what they told us later. I think the other thing is that they cleared all the sagebrush. There was no vegetation either so there wasn't anything to hold down the dust. It was really bad. And then when it would rain, the dust became mud, thick mud. Until they put the planks down so that we could walk we were losing our shoes and getting stuck and screaming for help.
Were you more scheduled at Minidoka or were you more scheduled at the assembly center?
Once we moved in they were very concerned that we try to have as normal a day and a life as possible. So what they did is they started schools. There were two grade schools, one for the Seattle side and for our Portland side—this is what we'd call them. And then there was one large high school. And the grade schools went up to sixth grade and then from the seventh grade on it was all at the high school. They tried to keep us busy by having the schools. At the schools they tried to have different activities. I remember I volunteered to be one of the school guards. If you look at the picture there are about fifty of us school guards. Remember the sixth grade is the top grade now so it was fifth and sixth graders. So there were about fifty of us. There was only one road that went through camp. Maybe a car or a convoy truck or a bus or something that went by there—oh maybe one every five minutes—but man when it was my turn to direct traffic it was wonderful. I had this flag and I put out my arm, held back all these children to go across this one road and then this one car would go by. Then I would let them all go. I think it was wonderful that they thought to do this. I think we only had maybe two or three turns to do that because there were so many of us to do it. But it just made us feel really pleased that we were doing something.
You mentioned you would stop all the children from crossing while the car was crossing. Was the car some in-camp army truck or something?
See, we were not allowed to have cars. We were not allowed to have bicycles or anything else. Yes, so they all belonged to the government. Some of them were, as I said the army convoy trucks. Those army convoy trucks transported the workers who worked in the administration building, which was near the camp gate—like my sister went to work there—and they would pick up all the workers then bring them back and so forth. Then they had some cars. I don't know who they were, but they were there. Then occasionally a bus or two would go by.
What did your father do?
My father—they wanted to make him a block manager—but he was very shy. He didn't like that kind of thing so he didn't do that. It was starting to turn cold and we didn't have many clothes at that point and we didn't know quite what to do, but the army gave us a lot of rejects. These were World War I jodhpurs. You know what jodhpurs are right?
What are jodhpurs?
Riding pants. They gave us a whole stack of them in the canteen and they said, “Well, if the men want to wear them to stay warm, you know, go ahead.” First of all these are Japanese men who are very short and these jodhpurs are, you know, big. They stick out and they're way down to the ankles and so forth. But my father had been a tailor at one time and he had a treadle—I don't know where he got this treadle sewing machine—but he had a treadle sewing machine. He got one, cut it up, and made patches. He made it fit and put in the most beautiful crease down the front. They looked pretty good. So after that everyone came and asked him to convert their jodhpurs into straight pants. Now this is not the younger people. The younger people wouldn't be seen with them, right? But the old men didn't care. They wanted to be warm. So my father made these pants for everybody and he wouldn't charge them anything because he says, “Who's making money? No one's making money.” So he did it for people. He was also as I said, handy with a hammer and he would make furniture for other people, you know. He made an outside bench for somebody and he made a room divider, one of those bivalve, bi-fold I guess, dividers. We don't know where that man got this beautiful redwood, but it was beautiful wood. Father fixed that for him and there was some left over wood. He says, "I want to pay you,” and he says, “No, no.” So he said, “Here, you can have the rest of the wood.” So then we had one. And that's the way it went. Father was busy with just trying to get our lives in order so that we could just live comfortably there.
Section below transcribed by Greg W ('10), cleaned by Alexander F (intern). Please report errors to: info@tellingstories.org.
Did you make friends when you were there?
Again, lots of friends. I never had so many friends, never saw so many people with dark hair in those days—my hair was dark. It was wonderful because as I say, you just, you know—and this was right in your own block, there were people your own age, so you could go have lunch with them, or whatever.
What were the newspapers like?
The camp people had put together a little mimeographed newspaper that was called the Minidoka Irrigator; in that, it would have little articles about camp happenings, any news about celebrities coming into the camp, anything that was going on in the high schools. They had a May Day queen—that kind of stuff. So all a lot of what was going on at camp they put in there.
Were there activities that were set up?
That's a good question. When we first went there, remember, we could only take what we could carry. So there were no bicycles—nothing much for the little the children. There were no slides, there were no swings, nothing like that—sandboxes, there was nothing like that. The only thing that they had was baseball. Baseball was big, so they had bats and that kind of thing. We played softball—that's what we played in the sixth grade—and then the older kids played baseball. But there really were very little in terms of things that were set up for us. There was a canal there and we were warned, “Do not swim in the canal.”—I think it was a cemented, rounded canal—and you can imagine how tempting that is to kids. There was no place to go swimming because there were no swimming pools. Kids would go in there and many of them drowned, unfortunately.
Aside from that did you have any consistent worries of things you had to keep in mind at camp?
No I think it was just around school and around playing and that kind of thing. I don't think there was anything besides that. The usual kind of thing that kids worry about and think about.
What was the food like did you make your own food?
No, there was a mess hall and some of the camp people were the cooks and some of them were pretty lousy cooks. And ours was one of them, he wasn't very good but you sort of pick and choose whatever you felt you could eat. Of course, remember the war was going on too so there was rationing, and so instead of butter they had things like terrible tasting stuff they called apple butter. We got a bit tired of that, we couldn't stand things like they would make things like mutton stew, and it smelled so bad and no one could eat that. So it was difficult sometimes what we would do, we would get little bread, my sister worked as a waitress in the dining room for a little while. And she would bring back some bread and remember we had this little potbellied stove, then we would make toast on that potbelly stove and—lets see how would she do that? They did have milk so what she would do is heat these five gallon mayonnaise jars you know those big ones. She would put some milk in there and she would shake it like this, and shake it like this, and shake it like this, until it would separate and there would be a little bit of, a little bit of butter on top and we would put that on our toast and it was that was the best tasting toast!
Really, was it good?
Oh delicious! We could make it just the right brownness and mmmmmhhhh and yes it was crispy!
Did you go to church while you were there? Did you continue any sort of religious or Japanese school or any sort of extra activities?
They did have church there. They had the Christian churches there I'm not sure if they had the Buddhist churches there. No, I didn't go I went to Sunday school though, I did go to Sunday school there. That was in the same building where we went to school on a regular basis the one thing that I remember from Sunday school is that they took us to summer camp. One time, we got leave camp to go to the salt tooth mountains. You know where Ketchum is? Its right there, I remember I was so carsick I could hardly stand it, but we were hoping we would see Ginger—no not Ginger Rodgers, Sonia Jaime and Dick Powell because they had just made that movie, "Sunset Serenade." I think it was called and they had made it up there and so we thought, "Ooh, maybe we'll get to see them" but there was a camp up there and so we went camping there. They brought in a couple of other churches with their kids. So we had those kids there and then the highlight of the trip was to go on a ski lift and go across and I was so scared because it was very, very steep down there, but it was an interesting experience, I enjoyed it.
Oaths and Military
So did you ever think about what was going on outside the camp? Did you have any opinion on the government or the war or were you too young for that?
I was still maybe eleven or twelve maybe. I think I was still just thinking about boys, and whatever else was going on; leaving adult things to the adults.
Were young men ever drafted?
Yes, there was this questionnaire—have you heard about the questionnaire? The loyalty oath so everybody had to fill that out and then the no-no boys and you know all about that part but from our camp we had the largest number of people in the army. There were almost a thousand people who were either drafted or enlisted. Some of them enlisted because they wanted to prove that they were real Americans; the others got drafted as the war progressed. First of all, some of the men they were very young men seventeen, eighteen and so forth. There were four D's, I can't remember what they were, they couldn't join the war even if they wanted to but then as the war went on they were getting desperate to have soldiers then they were all re-classified 1-A, and they were drafted and went in.
For those who enlisted can you think of any reason why so many might have enlisted from Minidoka as opposed to other places?
I don't know why more from Minidoka I only know the reason was they wanted to prove they're loyalty. They really wanted to say, "hey look this is not right what your doing to us we're loyal Americans." And I think that the I mean it was a very huge sacrifice.
How many people do you think enlisted or were drafted?
I have no idea about the numbers being enlisted and drafted, all I know were there were 1,000 people on this board and we had the highest casualty rate. I don't remember how many, out of any of the camps. We had the most who joined and the highest number so it was pretty—I was concerned because my brothers were starting to get up there and so you know my oldest brother did go on to college and then was drafted.
