Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Ben Tonooka Interview
Narrator: Ben Tonooka
Interviewer: Martha Nakagawa
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: February 6, 2012
Densho ID: denshovh-tben-01-0016

BT: My second job was in a mess hall and cleaning tables. And I had a funny incident. Seemed like nobody ate the heel of the bread, every table had just the heel left, so I started throwing them away. Then I felt like someone was staring at me, so I turned around and this guy was lookin' at me, giving me a dirty look, you know. He says, "Don't throw those away." I said, "Well, nobody eats it." He says, "Well, we use it for something else." I said, "Oh, okay."

MN: Now, when you ate at the mess hall, who did you eat with?

BT: My friends. This is, this is one of the sad things that happened in the camp, is that it broke up the family structure because we no longer needed our parents, you know. We know when the, time to eat. So at first we used to eat with our family and then later on we started eating with our friends, so we really lost contact. That was a sad part.

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