I had been to Puyallup a few times when it was the fairgrounds of Western Washington.
Little did I know that I would replace the pigs and the cows and that type of stuff,
you know, 'cause they, they restructured the fairgrounds and the parking lots into these
temporary hovels. And they had a hell of a lot of nerve calling it "Camp Harmony."
But anyway, it was... boy, it was a real traumatic type of living, where you're in the former
stalls where the pigs and the cows and everything else were.
Families of six and seven were crowded into one little spot.
Santa Anita racetrack, for example, suddenly
became a community of about 17,000 persons. The army provided housing and plenty of healthful,
nourishing food for all.
The government painted a rosy picture of these detention centers, and downplayed the prison-like
conditions, calling imprisoned people "evacuees," "residents," and even "colonists."
After a few months, detainees were transferred to ten long-term camps across the country.
These were in remote areas on unused desert or swampland.
At each relocation center, evacuees were met by an advance contingent of Japanese who had
arrived some days earlier, and who now acted as guards.
Officially they were called "relocation centers," but many, including President Roosevelt, commonly
called them "concentration camps."
We had this chain link fence all around the camp. And we lived maybe quarter of a block
away from the fence, and the fence was guarded by soldiers who walked back and forth with
their guns on their shoulders. I went up to the fence, and I heard a rustling in the grass.
I really was kind of wistful for what was outside the fence, and thinking,
"You know, I used to be able to do that." Then there was a snake that was rustling around in the grass.
I saw it and I put my foot out like this, and it must have frightened him 'cause it
wiggled right underneath the fence. And I thought, "Oh, that garter snake has a lot
more freedom than I have, it can go under the fence and go away, and I can't do that."
Relocation centers are not normal and probably never can be. Home life is disrupted.
Although government films acknowledged that life was not ideal, they never addressed the
injustice of the camps.
Two-thirds of those incarcerated were U.S. citizens, and there were no hearings or trials
held to determine if they did anything wrong or were dangerous.
I just felt that all this liberty and crap was all crap. You read so much about democracy
and all this, and it was a real eye-opener to see what could happen to citizens and what
does citizenship mean. 'Cause it just bothered the heck out of me to think that
I tried to be a good citizen, and man, they're tossing me into joints like this. I didn't like it.
I can't imagine anybody liking it or having positive images of being locked up.