Densho Digital Archive
Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community Collection
Title: Frank Kitamoto Interview
Narrator: Frank Kitamoto
Interviewer: John DeChadenedes
Location: Bainbridge Island, Washington
Date: April 14, 2007
Densho ID: denshovh-kfrank-02-0010

FK: Being one of the first groups there, I'm sure that a lot of the facilities weren't up to snuff yet, as far as toilet facilities, and the barracks and so forth, that they were still building a lot of the things there when we got there. And the conditions were probably not as good as, as they were maybe later on, although they probably still weren't very outstanding. I know my mom said that first week there, everyone got diarrhea. And then I remember somebody calling it the "Manzanar runs." But they said, she said, that this elderly Issei, first-generation woman came up to her and said, "They're gonna poison us and we're all gonna die. And we'll never leave this place." My mother told her she didn't think that was true 'cause she didn't think America was that way, and it was the food rather than the fact that they were actually trying to poison us. But, but that feeling probably was real to some of the older people there, 'cause they didn't know how they'd be treated.

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