Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Charles Oihe Hamasaki Interview
Narrator: Charles Oihe Hamasaki
Interviewers: Martha Nakagawa (primary); Tom Ikeda (secondary)
Location: Culver City, California
Date: February 24, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-hcharles-01-0018

CH: But going back to North Dakota, get off the train, shivering. "All you guys line up." Four row, like in the army, like a platoon, platoon was how many? Ten guys this way and four guys this way, I think, army. In fact, I remember. A platoon, all that playground all line up. Every morning you got to do that, and you're shivering, 'cause we didn't have nothing. Cold. That's why third day they gave us shot, flu shot or some kind of shot they gave us. It wasn't flu, it was some kind of shot, and all these old people, older people, they got sick, you know. So since I was the youngest one, youngest one, I did all the errands for these, and I did lot of things. So I got to know the officers. That's why they all treated us good. But first two months, there was three or four guards entering that barrack. And there was, barrack was, consists of fifty people. One, one aisle got twenty-five, and other side got twenty-five, so fifty, we had twenty-five barrack all line up, and there's a fence in between, maybe say twelve this side, or fifteen this side, and fifteen this side, all barrack. From all different part of California and West Coast, anyway. And they had a big regular fort. Long time ago, they didn't have a barrack. They had a big fort like a hotel. They were, all rest of the people was in there. And the other half, there was German prisoner over there, all fenced in.

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