Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Tsuguo "Ike" Ikeda Interview I
Narrator: Tsuguo "Ike" Ikeda
Interviewer: Alice Ito
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: September 27, 2000
Densho ID: denshovh-itsuguo-01-0018

TI: Well, the one thing was missing was presents. Really wasn't much to give each other. But we were able to decorate the dining hall, each dining hall decorated, crepe paper or other creative ideas. And we ended up having contests between dining halls, who had the best. So we were able to travel, look around. And, by the way, earlier in camp, I used to go with a group of kids that loved to eat. And we'd keep sampling every dining room. [Laughs] They finally figured this out, that they were running out of food, so they gave us coupons. And so we had to live, stay in our own, one dining room. That ended my excursion of eating so much. But it was, the joy was of Christmas was music and the decorations that were set up. And there were, I don't know of any -- I knew that some of the kids in elementary school were given Christmas gifts from people from different churches that donated, sent gifts, but for the teenagers, there was no gift exchange. But the thing was all of us were treated equally that way. We were all deprived of that, so, but we also had a pleasure of socializing and using our creative ideas and motivation to decorate, so we loved that competitiveness. So Christmas was great.

One of the songs we used to sing was "Don't Fence Me In." That was a special meaning, being in the camp, had a unique experience of don't fence me in. Keep, knock down those barbed wire fences so we could feel our senses. And I, just heard on cable TV just the other day, that song being sung, and it felt nostalgic.

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