INTERVIEW WITH JANET MORITA
Janet Morita (J) interviewed by Katrina Crosby (K) on Friday, June 16 in Orange County.
K: So today we are at Janet Morita (Morita is that correct?) home which she has graciously opened up for me to visit. It is currently around 11:15 am on Friday, June 16 2017. To begin, I would just like to tell me when you were born and where you grew up?
J: Okay, I was born in Anaheim on October 20, 1934.
K: What generation American are you?
J: Third generation. My parents were born in the United States as well.
K: Did they grow up in Anaheim as well?
J: My mother grew up in Inglewood and my father was born in Yuba city which is in the very North part of California, and then moved to Orange County in, let’s see, it would be the early 30’s. He was born in 1903 in Yuba city.
K: Why did your family choose California as a place to live?
J: I think because of the parents of the two families came here and they just settled here. They just never explored beyond California because they liked it here because they were involved in farming. It was the ideal area for farming.
K: Absolutely. There are so many farms!
J: Oh yeah!
K: So can you tell me a little bit about your family life, and did you have any siblings? What was the dynamic at home like?
J: I do. I have two brothers and two sisters and, like I said, we grew up in Anaheim which was really predominantly a German community. In fact, Anaheim stands for “Anna’s Home” which is German. So our community had no other Japanese families in the area. We basically grew up with mostly, I don’t know, do I use the word caucasian or white?
Both: *laughter*
J: Okay so we were sort of not really in touch with a lot of Japanese families just because of where we lived and I’m trying to think of some questions that you might have related to that.
K: Oh just what was the dynamic at home like?
J: Okay, both parents. My mother was not working at the time prior to World War II, she was a homemaker. We went to a local school in Placenta which is just north of us. We had a school closer but it was a segregated school that only Mexican children could go there so we could have walked to that school but we were not allowed to go there. So we took the bus and went to Placenta and attended elementary school there. At that time, my two brothers were not born. They were not born until after we returned from camp so they’re much younger. One brother is eleven years younger than I am and the other is twelve years younger. So they’re much younger.
K: So when you were young how did you remember first hearing about the war?
J: From my parents. We didn’t have television. The main way of communication was radio or if you went to the movie theater then they had newsreels that you could see, but we heard about it. That World War II or the bombing of Pearl Harbor occurred on December 7 so we heard from my parents who heard it on the radio and shared that information with us.
K: Was there a change in how your parents were acting with what was happening outside? And if so can you describe that change?
J: Their attitude- You mean once December 7th occurred?- Oh yes, yes. They were very concerned because obviously the war was against the Japanese and they just felt like perhaps things would change for us. And it wasn’t that much long after that that everything changed but yeah, that’s how we first heard about it from the radio.
K: I’m just going to back this up in case that my audio decides to fail for some reason on my phone before we get through the whole interview and then see that it didn’t record anything.
K: So when Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which ordered Japanese Americans to relocate, what were your first impressions?
J: That didn’t mean a lot to me until my parents explained to me that this could make a big difference in our lives and it wasn’t much longer after that that we realized, or we received notice. Let’s see it was from December to March or May (I'll Have to look on there for the orders we received) but we have received notice prior to that we were going to have to evacuate.
K: How old were you at this time?
J: Seven. I was Seven years old.
I can give you the dates, May of 1942 was when we were told we would have to leave and go to the camps. I do have an order other than that order which was Executive Order 9066. There’s a special document I can show you for the people who lived in our area and what we could take and what we had to leave behind and the day we had to assemble at the train station to leave for the camp. So I’ll show you that document so if you’d like you can take picture of it or something.
K: That would be great! At that time when you’re family got that letter, how did they react?
J: Panic. My mother was very very upset and my father too. He was more of a stoic person and he was just very calm, but not my mother. She was very upset and the fact that we had to leave our home which was very new at the time they had just built that home and we were living in a citrus ranch and the thought of leaving... and she was just so upset. Cried a lot because for one thing leaving the home, but also leaving friends, leaving your pets behind, and the concern for her children. What are we going to do? What are we going to take? What’s going to happen to us at this point? Dad kept saying we were going to come back and my mother said we would never be able to return. I just know that that’s not going to happen. But my father was very optimistic and kept saying we’ll come back. We’re coming back. But it didn’t happen that quickly.
K: Which camp did you go to again?
J: We went to Poston, Arizona.
K: Did you ever experience prejudice or racism before this bill was signed into action?
J: Not really, I wasn’t aware of it. If it was happening, I wasn’t aware of it. It was more after.
K: How old were you when you were placed into an internment camp?
J: Seven years old.
K: Can you describe that day when you were forced to move?
J: Yea. Maybe I can back up a little bit because prior to that the FBI came to our home. They confiscated cameras, radios, and anything that they considered that would be used for spying, or spying for the enemy. And we had Japanese dolls, my mother had a beautiful set of dolls that she had used to set up and assemble for Girls’ Day, and they were all taken away. Some of our dishes and those types of things were taken away, supposedly for storage but we never saw them again. They disappeared. So the cameras I’m sure was because they didn’t want us to document anything once we went to the camps because no one was allowed to have cameras. And of course we didn’t have cell phones then, we didn’t have any of the modern conveniences or those things for recording that you have now.
K: What happened to your belongings/property?
J: We were very fortunate in that once again, my father being very optimistic and very sensible, a very wise man, asked neighbors if they would be willing to watch our home and take care of the property for us while we were gone. They agreed and of course they stayed in the home, rent free, and were able to harvest the crops because it was citrus. Dad allowed them to keep that income as a thank you for watching our property. We were very fortunate in that we had a place to come back to unlike many of our relatives. My uncle, at that time, had a grocery store in Los Angeles and he panicked. There were dishonest people who came and took advantage of the families and bought property at such a low low rate. But a lot of people felt as if they would not come back so they wanted to dispose of the property as quickly as possible. But we were fortunate, we had a place, we had a home.
K: When you first arrived at the internment camp, what were you thinking?
J: It was not a great experience ‘cause we had a dusty ride from the train station to Parker, Arizona, which was the closest major city. Then it was a dusty bus ride from there, and when we first got there we just saw people stuffing their mattresses with straw. I found out later, that those mattresses were actually body bags that were used in the military when somebody died. They put them in those bags, and that’s what we had for mattresses. So we had cots there, but my first impression was that this was a very dusty place. Living conditions were much different than what I was accustomed to. I have a lot of pictures because fortunately a friend who was with the FBI documented a lot and was able to get hold of a lot of pictures that I can share with you on what the camp looked like, the straw and the building materials that they used for the camps, and so forth.
K: And how were the conditions in camp?
J: We were in a barrack … I’m trying to give you dimensions… I probably have to look for them. They were like army barracks and they were unfurnished. The outside walls were made of tar paper only, there was nothing else, just tar paper. So you could actually punch your finger through it. The floors were, this was put together very rapidly because it all happened very fast, and so the floors had large cracks in it so when we had a dust storm or anything the sand would come up from underneath the foundations. The barracks were built up off the ground and so the sand would come up and we would have sand and dust all over inside. The windows were not very secure and not very airtight. Anyway, I’m trying to see if I can find the dimensions and I can give them to you, I have them some place. Oh, here, the barrack actually was 20 feet wide and 100 feet long. It was divided into three sections and we were in one of those sections. The entire family lived inside one section with no partitions or anything, you would just have one big room with no running water, no heat, no cooling, nothing, no bathrooms. We had to use a bathroom that was centrally located for the entire block and so if you needed to go to the bathroom you had to go a distance. They had showers there, but they were like gang showers, and that was called the latrine for the toilets and the showers and they had a laundry room. The laundry room almost became a meeting place for all of the ladies. They would come together there and talk and talk, about what was going on, and gossip about whatever.
K: So at this time were you the only child?
J: No I had two siblings at that time, two sisters. I was seven, my younger sister was four, and another one who was just three months old. Two sisters, yeah. My mother's concern was do I have enough diapers? Because you know it was all cloth diapers, no paper diapers or anything like that. Anyway, she had to use one of the bags to pack a lot of diapers.
K: You mentioned it was in Arizona, how did you get adjusted to the climate?
J: It was about 114 degrees in the summer and inside those black, tar paper walls, it would get to be over 120 degrees inside with no cooling whatsoever. In the winter, it would be very cold. I don’t know the temperature then, but it was very very cold. I should tell you too, that besides the mattress, we were on cots, army cots, each of us was issued one army blanket. That’s what we were issued. We could bring our own pillows, but pillows took up so much space and you could only have one suitcase per person. So you were very limited in what you could take and you had to take your necessities.
K: Did the baby get a suitcase?
J: Yes, so that helped. That was all diapers.
K: Did you have to make adjustments to where you were living to try to block out the sand?
J: Oh yes, after a while the people got innovative. My father happened to work in a warehouse, he got a job. Not all of the people could get jobs, but he happened to get a job there and because he was working in a warehouse where there would be major crates coming in and with different types of things being distributed in the camp, he saved the lumber from the crates and did some adjustments like blocking off the windows a little bit more, maybe plugging off the floors, and then there is something called excelsior- I don’t know if you have ever heard of it - but anyways, it’s like shredded wood, really fine shredded wood, that came as packing material. He designed something for one of the windows where they could drip water through it and it would sort of drip through all of this excelsior and then cool it as much as possible. So if there was a breeze then the wet thing he put in the window would sort of cool us down a little bit. They did the best they could to make adjustments, and then he also saved some of the lumber and built chairs for us to eventually start a school because there was no desks and no chairs for school for the children. So there was lots of months where we had no school whatsoever. For one thing, there was no teachers and no classrooms. So that came much later, several months later.
K: So how long were you out of school because you said you were in school when living in Anaheim and then taken away?
J: Yes, I was probably without school for 5 months, but they had to find teachers. There were a few teachers, Japanese teachers, within the camps. Many of them volunteered, caucasian people, who volunteered into the camp to teach, which was very nice. At least there was some form of education.
K: Was their grading as in first grade, second grade, etc.?
J: No they sort of clustered us together. Maybe 1 to 3 would be in one group, because they didn’t have enough building space to have individual classrooms. Also, there was a distance in walking to whichever block you were in. I’ll show you how the camp layout was because we were in several barracks within a block. We were in Block 22, and I was in Block 22 7A. I won’t ever forget that because that was our barrack number, where we were.
K: I have heard something about family numbers?
J: Yes, our family had a number: 24122. My husband’s family had a number too, which I have written down.
K: And then were you grouped together as a family?
J: Yes, yes, yes. All of us, there were five of us, were within one roof. My grandmother and grandfather were in the next room over with my aunt and uncle. There were five in that one. And then there was another part and another section of that barrack where there was another family. They weren’t related to us.
K: During this time, how were your parents and what were they doing?
J: My father worked in a warehouse and my mother did not have a job. My father at one time earned $7 a month, and then he got promoted to $12 a month. If you were a professional, because they did need doctors and nurses, they got $19 a month I believe to work there. They finally set up hospitals because people got sick and babies were born and those kinds of things, so they needed to have medical practitioners there.
K: What were the conditions of the hospitals?
J: Very bleak, just the bare necessities. Because they had to wait for supplies to even come in for the hospitals. I don’t know, but I think there was only one per camp. There were actually three camps: Poston 1, 2, and 3. And we were in Camp 1, but there were three different camps. Not located adjacent to one another, it was quite a distance, but they were along the Colorado river.
K: Did your family keep up any traditions while at camp?
J: Not really, we couldn’t take anything with us. So even the Girls’ Day I mentioned with the dolls and stuff, we didn’t have any of that. So as far as traditions, no. We were Lutheran so it wasn’t like we were practicing a religion there that was common. Probably many of the people were Buddhist, that’s my assumption, that most of them would have been Buddhist based on their background. So no, and we didn’t have church.
K: Did they ever make a church?
J: No, not that I’m aware of because I know that we never attended a church or were invited to any church there. There were volunteer groups that came in later, probably Christians, who came in but we did not stay the full length of time in camp. We were fortunate to be able to leave, but it was not an easy move, but we did. We left camp early before the camp closed down.
K: How did that happen?
J: My father kept applying to Washington D.C. to the war relocation authorities saying “We want to leave, what can we do?” He didn’t get any answer for quite a while. About a year later, they said we could leave because the governor of Colorado would accept Japanese American families on the condition that you are provided with some type of employment so that you’re independent. My father agreed to that. So the family that was watching our home brought a truck to us that my dad owned and a car that was being stored. We had means of transportation for leaving Poston, Arizona, and going to Colorado. We ended up in Littleton, Colorado, and were provided with very bleak kind of housing, but we had freedom there. The owner of the property there had a restaurant and my mother was a cook there and my father was a groundskeeper, for the restaurant was a number of acres. He helped raise the vegetables for the restaurant then. That’s how we ended up in Littleton, Colorado.
K: Going back to the camp, how did you get along with other families?
J: We got along well with them. There wasn’t a lot of conflict so we all felt that we needed to be supportive of each other. The sad thing was that because people were unemployed, there were men and women doing nothing, helping eachother out, playing a lot of games. Monopoly was so popular, and then there was a Japanese game that I don’t know how to play called Go. In fact I even have the board and the little pebbles that go on it. It must be like a Checkers type of game. They played a lot of games for entertainment because there was nothing else to do. My father did order grass seed. The only way you could get supplies was through Sears or Montgomery Ward. Montgomery Ward was probably more - have you even heard of Montgomery Ward? - it was mail order and that’s how we would get some things when they saved enough money. My dad was very popular because he had the grass seed, so they would plant a little grass around their barrack to make it seem a little bit more like home. At least we had water, so a little green was nice.
K: Did you have any pets before leaving?
J: Yes we did. We had a dog but we had to leave the dog behind, and unfortunately the dog died while we were gone. But we were not allowed to bring any pets with us.
K: Did you know anyone who snuck them in?
J: No, no. It’s amazing that there were 120,000 evacuees and they were so obedient. I think that was part of the culture of the people of that time, that you always obeyed authority. They didn’t have a rebellion and no one questioned it. In this day and age that would be a lot different. No, I asked my mother “Why are we doing this? Why are we going? Why do I have to leave my friends and my school?” And she said, “This is for our protection.” She kept telling us that, she didn’t believe that but kept telling us, “We’re being protected by going to camp.” So, I believed it. That we were there for our protection.
K: While you were in camp did you see any rebellion ever form?
J: Yeah there was occasional rebellion, but what could they do? They couldn’t escape because it was all surrounded by barbed wire and military police posted in various places all along in towers so if you left that desert place, where would you go? We were so isolated that you would probably die trying to leave that place. So I think in a way we were there for our security *laughs*.
K: What was the hardest part of being in the camp?
J: Leaving friends and leaving my school. Leaving, believe it or not, even the piano teacher. I had a really great life, I was taking dancing lessons, and doing a lot of things that were fun and it all changed. So for me, that was the hard part. So having to make new friends and meeting new people, it was just different.
K: So did you make any friends at camp?
J: Yes. Some of those people we still know and have kept in touch with. Because you find after a while if you are talking to Japanese people you ask, “Oh were you in camp?” “Yes, yes I was.” “What camp were you in? What block were you in?” And that sort was a common denominator for reacquainting yourself with people.
K: What did you guys do as friends in the camp?
J: We played marbles. We used to shoot marbles. We didn’t have real marbles, so in order to make it there was a type of mud that you could get from the Colorado river, along the river bed if we ever got a chance to leave. You would be supervised but you could leave for a while. You could make these marbles out of the mud, and if you made the round marble you could keep rubbing it in, and polish it, and make marbles out of mud believe it or not. So we would play marble games, hopscotch, whatever we could create on our own. A few people must have been smart enough because they had Monopoly games there and cards. The adults did a lot of carving when they had a chance to get their hands on wood. They made birds - in fact I’ll show you some- they carved birds, made rings out of peach seed, they got really innovative on what they did. They went fishing, they were able to go to a canal which was in the boundaries of the camp. They would use bread dough for bait and make hooks out of safety pins, and catch carp. After a while they did have entertainment, they would bring a movie in and you would take a chair or whatever, a blanket, and watch a movie. That was very rare, but it happened. We just sort of had to create our own type of recreation.
K: You mentioned that you were able to leave camp sometimes, under what circumstance was that allowed?
J: Oh no, leaving camp meant we left our barracks. We still were within the boundaries, we couldn’t get outside the fence.
K: So you mentioned that you did attend school in camp, can you elaborate a little on that and what it was like?
J: The teachers had to make up their own curriculum because we didn’t have text books. So it was whatever they decided to teach us. I must have been in the fourth grade, third grade maybe, age seven. So they would just make up their own curriculum and I wouldn’t remember what it was. They didn’t even have a report card or anything.
K: Was it difficult making the transition back to school after?
J: Yes it was and we were really an anomaly to the people there [In Colorado]. We were the only Japanese kids in the school there, well there were two of us because of my little sister was too young to go to school. The teachers were very kind, and I think they might have prepared the students for our arrival so the kids were very very kind to us so that was really nice. I don’t have any bad memories of that at all, so that was good. It was a good experience for us.
K: So how long exactly were you interned for?
J: Let’s see, from May of ‘42 to May of ‘43, that’s when we went to Colorado.
K: Can you describe the day that you found out that you would be leaving?
J: Excitement. Very happy. Even though we were going to a strange place, we were thrilled to leave. I knew my parents were very excited because to them it was freedom. So we were really blessed, and it was sort of a sad kind of a day because they were leaving people that had become friends within the camp. I think too, that the people in the camp were very envious like “Oh my gosh, they get to leave”. But, my dad was a very right man and he just kept hounding them that we want out. This is not right, we need to leave. Please provide some means for us to leave, leave this camp. We were blessed.
K: What was the hardest part of adjusting from camp life back to regular life?
J: Coming back to California was tough. When you come back to your own home and same school, and the environment has changed completely. The amount of prejudice that we experienced, was for us, as well as my parents, probably overwhelming. Places that we used to do business with, places where my father did business, because in the meantime the citrus grove that my dad had had been run down. The people did not maintain it like it should have been. Consequently, my dad had to pull out all the trees and decided no more citrus, and started raising vegetables. And tried to peddle it at the local markets and people were not very nice. They wouldn’t take his produce and so he had to find people who would accept the produce that he grew. When we went back to school there were different students there, we had a few friends that were still there but we got called ‘Japs’ all the time. When we got on a bus people would say, “Move over, we don’t want to sit near you, you’re a Jap.” There were different people who would come into Southern California because there were war camps here and so people from the South had to move into this area and were coming to the schools while their parents worked in war camps. They were manufacturing whatever was necessary for the war, so it was not a good time to come back. It was very hostile because we came back before the war was over. We were the first family to come back to Orange County in December of 1944 and the war wasn’t over until ‘45 so there was a lot of hostility. In the meantime, the auto club cancelled my dad’s insurance. They would not cover us. National Geographic cancelled our subscription. There was just mass hysteria in the United States in general so it was a different climate. It took a long time.
K: So you said you went to Colorado after camp, when did you transition back to California?
J: December of ‘44.
K: And why did you go back to California?
J: Because we had a home to come to and we were fortunate to have that home. Most of our friends and relatives did not. They sacrificed whatever they had, so once we returned and the camps were closed, which had to be closer to ‘45, just before the war ended. We had many families come and live with us. My aunts and uncles, my grandparents came to stay with us while they could get themselves established. It was like a revolving door. We were like a hotel because we had a home and my parents were generous in that they allowed people to stay. As my dad became more successful people would come to him and he would allow people to borrow money. So he helped a lot of people.
K: And were all of your belongings still there for the most part?
J: Pretty much. So yes we were very fortunate that we had a place where we could store things.
K: What was the easiest part of transitioning if there was anything?
J: Maybe just friends who lived in the neighborhood and had not moved away. They helped to make us comfortable. They really helped to get support from the neighbors in the area. When I say neighbors though, these were all citrus ranches in Orange County and Anaheim, so a neighbor could be 5 miles away. Not next door, because we lived in a housing tract. It was a home in a middle of a farm.
K: And you said that the people were in war hysteria after you returned, when did that ever calm down? Did it ever calm down?
J: It took a few years for people to accept us which is really so sad. There was even a Chinese restaurant in downtown Anaheim with a big sign outside that read, “No Japs Allowed”. And people who were Asian would wear badges. I don’t know if you ever heard of Sammy Lee, but he was an Olympic diver who was Korean. He wore a badge around him that said, “I am not a Jap” which is really very sad, but it was a sign of the times. People were ashamed of being Japanese, I was very ashamed of being Japanese. My parents tried to speak to me in Japanese and I said, “Don’t ever try to speak to me in Japanese. I am an American.” And, consequently, I didn’t learn the language which is very sad. We just felt so much prejudice and if you went into Anaheim town, which was a small town during that time, very small. Just with one main street, and people would throw things at us. So I used to just stay in the car, it was just too scary to get out to the car. My mother would run into the store to get something and we just stayed in the car because people would call us names, throw things, and it was ugly then. That’s just the way it was.
K: And so after you went to school, did you go to College in the area?
J: Yes I did. I went to Anaheim High school. I wanted to go there because I knew I could get a better education than the Placentia school district which was primarily Hispanic at that time and they didn’t offer any sciences of anything. So I went to Anaheim High School and graduated from there and then I went to USC. I earned a scholarship so I was there for four years and then I went to dental school and became a dental hygienist. But things had changed and gotten better. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but when I was at USC, I got very active in politics there. I ended up being president of Associated Women’s Students there. But that took time for people to accept that I was just there to get good grades and have a profession, but I made some very good friends there which was very nice. So I always stressed to my kids the importance of education and so did my parents. I have to be grateful to them because they never had a college education and they kept saying that I had to study hard and prove to people that you are a good person and prove to yourself that you can believe in yourself and be successful. I just retired a few months ago from dental hygiene. Practiced for about 60 years.
K: Did you ever keep in touch with the people you met in the camps?
J: Yes a few families. We still do keep in touch, maybe a Christmas card exchange or something like that, but yes we do.
K: Now looking back on your own experiences, what is some advice that you would like to give to future generations?
J: Never to prejudge people. That’s where the word prejudice comes from. I think you have to look, not at their facial features, but at the person and what’s inside their heart. Always believe in people and strive. We are very conscious of race in the United States, and I still think of myself as Japanese but I think of myself more as an American. I hope that people will give everyone a fair opportunity to show that they are good and to see the good in people. I have a strong religious faith too which has gotten me through a lot of things, and I think that’s so important whatever your faith is, to have something important to fall back on and give you the support that you need because sometimes words is not the same as being able to pray and feel the comfort of our Heavenly Father.
K: And lastly, is there anything you would like to share with me that I did not ask you?
J: I suppose that maybe if I share pictures with you that might bring out something or stimulate some questions for you to ask.
(Con.td)
J: This was a notice from the Defense command and the fourth army. This was specifically for us to assemble and the time we had to assemble. This told us what we could bring and what we could not bring with us when we went to the camp. So these documents a lot of people don’t see, but these were specifically for us in the Anaheim area.
K: Where did they put these posters?
J: They were posted in downtown Anaheim and I was fortunate enough to get a copy of this because someone who works for the city of Anaheim said he checked in the archives and found this.
J: This is a layout of the camp and how they were set up.
J: Look at all the families all dressed up, you’d think that they would be going someplace really important, but they probably put on their best clothes to go and then packed the other stuff
K: So there was a reparations of $20,000 after the camps closed, how did your family respond to that?
J: What my mother did which was pretty generous of her, when she received the money she donated it to the Japanese National Museum. The one in Los Angeles on East First Street. Because she was so grateful and because if it was not for the people in the JACL which is Japanese American Citizen's League, and some of the legal team, we wouldn’t have gotten anything. So anyways she was so grateful she just turned the money over to them. My father, unfortunately, had died prior to that and here he was who made the biggest sacrifice I think.
J: Worst meal - mutton stew
K: Did they give you dessert ever? J: I think it was canned peaches and fruit. I can’t even remember though it was nothing that memorable. They had a lot of apple butter. We had so much of it I kinda got tired of it. It was always out on the tables, it was always there.
K: Were you there for any holidays?
J: Yes but we didn’t have access to anything like we didn’t have a Christmas tree, so we couldn’t really celebrate any of those holidays there. It was a little different. A lot of the flowers they would make by hand out of crate paper. My aunt and uncle were married in camp, so all of the ladies in my block got together with crate paper they had ordered from the catalog and they made roses out of it, and a bunch of flowers, and stuff for their wedding.
K: Was crafting a big part of life there?
J: Crafting was a BIG part. There were some people who were artists who were really talented and they did artwork there.
J: This is something they would do if they were bored. This is primitive compared to the other people. It was my aunt and uncle doing some. They just had safety pins to put on the back.
J: They had to order all of [the paint]
J: Certain months there were a lot of mosquitos. When you’re close to a river, there were a lot of mosquitos.
K: Were people getting sick often because of the conditions?
J Yes they were getting sick. There were people who passed away in camp, you know like the elderly. The heat alone was for some people intolerable, really.
K: You mentioned you didn’t get fresh fruit but did you get fresh vegetables?
J: No it was cans. Everything came in cans. The families would save the cans because they would be in one gallon cans. Speaking of mosquitos there is a thing called the Mesquite tree, and it had bean pods. They would take those bean pods and put them in the can, after they dried them out, and then burn them. It would give off smoke and that smoke was enough to repel the mosquitos. Some people got very innovative. In the next barrack over, I don’t know how risky that was, but they tunneled underneath their barrack and made a little cave. It was much cooler down there so many people would like to congregate at their place because they had a nice,cool cave underneath their barrack. And it held up pretty nicely and it kept the heat from, because that tar paper is black tar paper and it gets hot. A good 120 or hotter inside the barrack so you didn’t want to be inside.
K: On days like that would you be able to go to the Colorado river and swim?
J: Yep on days like that people went to the canal. I was too young though so I didn’t go.
J: When we came back here, we wanted to go to the Plunge, I think it was called that at that time, at the Anaheim City Park. We weren’t allowed to go there except on Saturday when they drained the pool. The white kids could go Monday through Friday, but Saturdays were for the Mexicans, any blacks, I think there was only one black family in Anaheim during this time, and the Japanese. Saturdays before they drained the pool because the water was the dirtiest and no white people would have to go in on that day. That’s prejudice.
