camp?”
“Concentration camp,” she corrected. “Relocation camp is what they call it now to make themselves feel better. The book is about it. I was in that camp during the war.”
“Oh. It must have been pretty bad.”
“It was bad. The only nice part was you could see Heart Mountain. It was beautiful. Sometimes when I look at the cover of this book and I see the picture of Heart Mountain in Wyoming, it makes me think of Mount Fuji in Japan.”
“Were you born in Japan?”
“Heavens, no. I was born in Seattle. My father owned a hardware store before the war. I didn’t even visit Japan until the 1960s. I always wanted to see Japan, and I realize now I went at the perfect time, before the dollar became worthless!”
“What was Heart Mountain like?”
“It was just a collection of barracks at the foot of a mountain in Wyoming. The summers were unbearably hot, with all kinds of bugs biting at you. The winters were incredibly cold, with icy air coming out of Canada. I was a teenager then, but I still suffered from the cold during the winter. The old people really suffered. We used to joke that the average yearly temperature at Heart Mountain was great. It was the individual daily temperature that was lousy.” She poured the tea as she talked. “It seems like a lot of the camps were put in locations where there were extremes in temperature.
“The barracks at Heart Mountain were just little tar paper and rough board things, so they did nothing to stop the cold and they seemed to increase the heat. The lids from tin cans were in great demand because they could be used to patch knotholes. We were in room F of our barracks, which meant we had a little bigger room. Each barrack had six rooms, of three different sizes. The rooms got smaller in size as you approached the middle.”
“How big were the barracks?” I asked, interested.
“About sixty feet in total.”
“And your entire family lived in just one room in the barracks?”
“Yes. We had these rusty old army cots from the First World War and we strung blankets across on string to give some privacy. Something like a shelf to hold your possessions was actually a luxury. That’s because wood was so scarce. Every winter we would scrounge around for wood to burn to keep us warm. But even if you were lucky enough to find enough wood, the little potbelly stoves in the barracks would hardly take the frost out of the air on some cold mornings.
“The first men into the camps actually built most of it. My father was in that bunch, because they figured that if he owned a hardware store he must know all about construction. He told us the first group of men were convinced they were being taken into the wilderness to be shot. The guards on the train were real mean and they made the men sit in the same position for days. Sitting still for days doesn’t sound like much punishment, but after a while it can get to be agony if you’re not allowed to even stand up and stretch. They could only get up one at a time to go to the bathroom twice a day, on a regular schedule. If you didn’t have to go when it was your time, well, too bad. If you had to go at any other time, well, you just had to hold it.
“When they finally got to Heart Mountain, they found a bunch of tar paper and lumber dumped off by the side of the train tracks and they were forced to build the camp. My father said the materials they provided were junk, and a lot of the men didn’t know what they were doing. There was hardly a right angle in any barracks in that camp. He said he thought someone was selling the good lumber and such on the black market. I know the chefs at the camp were selling sugar and milk on the black market. It got so bad that the children didn’t have milk to drink and there was almost a riot over that.”
“I remember they gave us boiled squid and rice for weeks on end. I know squid is supposed to be a delicacy, but to this day I still can’t eat it.” She picked up her
“Concentration camp,” she corrected. “Relocation camp is what they call it now to make themselves feel better. The book is about it. I was in that camp during the war.”
“Oh. It must have been pretty bad.”
“It was bad. The only nice part was you could see Heart Mountain. It was beautiful. Sometimes when I look at the cover of this book and I see the picture of Heart Mountain in Wyoming, it makes me think of Mount Fuji in Japan.”
“Were you born in Japan?”
“Heavens, no. I was born in Seattle. My father owned a hardware store before the war. I didn’t even visit Japan until the 1960s. I always wanted to see Japan, and I realize now I went at the perfect time, before the dollar became worthless!”
“What was Heart Mountain like?”
“It was just a collection of barracks at the foot of a mountain in Wyoming. The summers were unbearably hot, with all kinds of bugs biting at you. The winters were incredibly cold, with icy air coming out of Canada. I was a teenager then, but I still suffered from the cold during the winter. The old people really suffered. We used to joke that the average yearly temperature at Heart Mountain was great. It was the individual daily temperature that was lousy.” She poured the tea as she talked. “It seems like a lot of the camps were put in locations where there were extremes in temperature.
“The barracks at Heart Mountain were just little tar paper and rough board things, so they did nothing to stop the cold and they seemed to increase the heat. The lids from tin cans were in great demand because they could be used to patch knotholes. We were in room F of our barracks, which meant we had a little bigger room. Each barrack had six rooms, of three different sizes. The rooms got smaller in size as you approached the middle.”
“How big were the barracks?” I asked, interested.
“About sixty feet in total.”
“And your entire family lived in just one room in the barracks?”
“Yes. We had these rusty old army cots from the First World War and we strung blankets across on string to give some privacy. Something like a shelf to hold your possessions was actually a luxury. That’s because wood was so scarce. Every winter we would scrounge around for wood to burn to keep us warm. But even if you were lucky enough to find enough wood, the little potbelly stoves in the barracks would hardly take the frost out of the air on some cold mornings.
“The first men into the camps actually built most of it. My father was in that bunch, because they figured that if he owned a hardware store he must know all about construction. He told us the first group of men were convinced they were being taken into the wilderness to be shot. The guards on the train were real mean and they made the men sit in the same position for days. Sitting still for days doesn’t sound like much punishment, but after a while it can get to be agony if you’re not allowed to even stand up and stretch. They could only get up one at a time to go to the bathroom twice a day, on a regular schedule. If you didn’t have to go when it was your time, well, too bad. If you had to go at any other time, well, you just had to hold it.
“When they finally got to Heart Mountain, they found a bunch of tar paper and lumber dumped off by the side of the train tracks and they were forced to build the camp. My father said the materials they provided were junk, and a lot of the men didn’t know what they were doing. There was hardly a right angle in any barracks in that camp. He said he thought someone was selling the good lumber and such on the black market. I know the chefs at the camp were selling sugar and milk on the black market. It got so bad that the children didn’t have milk to drink and there was almost a riot over that.”
“I remember they gave us boiled squid and rice for weeks on end. I know squid is supposed to be a delicacy, but to this day I still can’t eat it.” She picked up her
Similar Books
