What do you wanna hear, hear a little about the prison? Well, (clears throat) we had still thirty days in quarantine first, where they give us all kinds of examinations, it’s the first time I got poked in the rear and almost about jumped out of my shoes. And uh, they gave us IQ tests, and they, they were surprised at the high IQ’s of all the, the Niseis there. Most of them are from the Midwest and probably didn’t have too much education, you know so their IQ’s were real low.
After we were incarcerated there, we had a choice of any prison jobs if there was an opening. And uh I worked in the parole office for a while. And available [inaudible] files of the different prisoners, there’s a lot of military prisons in there, mostly from Europe. And so many of them are in there for rape, and all that sexual type of activities against the French girls, girls of other countries that they were in, and then after working there for awhile, I transferred over to the sheet shop, where they make sheet metal, buckets, and things like that. Might as well learn a trade [chuckles].
Date: May 9, 2006
Location: California, US
Interviewer: Lisa Itagaki
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
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