Yaeko Munemori Yokoyama

YAEKO MUNEMORI YOKOYAMA
Family # 3695
Camp: Manzanar, CA
Address: 34-5-5

I had just finished my nurse’s training at Orange County Gen­eral Hospital and passed my RN exam when the war broke out. I was supposed to go to Berkeley for my fifth year, but was grounded to a 5-mile radius and could not travel. In retrospect, it was a good thing, for if I had gone north to UC Berkeley I would have been separated from my family.

I’ll never forget the day they came for us on a pickup truck. We could only bring what we could carry. My mother was recovering from a stroke and we had to hoist her up into the truck, which took us to a train depot with Greyhound buses. It was an all-day ride to Manzanar. No one knew where we were going. The bus drivers had been instructed not to talk.

We finally were released at Manzanar and all our belongings were scattered amongst the many other evacuees. It was dusk already and we went search­ing for our things. We registered and were assigned to tarpaper barracks. If there were four in your family you had to share with another family of four and that is what happened to us.

The mess hall gong rang and we lined up for “dinner,” which was three Vienna sausages and rice. My mother was so sick I brought her food home in a WWI mess kit – no cover and by the time I got “home,” the rice was brown from dust and sausages cold as stone.

That night the moon was out and I could look across the room where the other family slept. I saw a leg on the floor, detached from the body. I was so scared; then the man grinned and his gold tooth shone in the moonlight. He told me not to be afraid, as it was his prosthesis, which he removed at night. It was so cold, the winds swept down from the snow covered Sierras. The straw mattresses got lumpy or stuck you as you moved about for a comfortable position.

With my RN degree, I helped set up the Manzanar Hospital and helped them train the nurse’s aides. We were short of personnel and it was necessary to get people trained to take care of the sick. Before the hospital was built we had barracks where the wind and dust came whipping through the cracks.

One man in his weakened condition was removed from a tuberculosis sanatorium in Seattle and traveled the long distance to this forlorn place. His temperature was rising, he could hardly swallow – he finally died one cold, windy night on my shift. I didn’t know what to do with the body – there was no morgue. I woke one of the doctors at 3:00 a.m., shivering in the cold, we had to decide what to do with the corpse. We finally found an empty room in one of the barracks and locked the door.

As time went on, we adjusted to the miserable situation, but we made our own fun, and sang a lot. That Christmas we went caroling to the hospital patients. We sang “Silent Night” in Japanese for the old folks. Tears were streaming down their faces.

After one year I relocated to Madison, WI.

Wind and Dust
This wind and dust I have to bear
How hard it blows I do not care.
But when the wind begins to blow –­
My morale is pretty low.
I know that I can see it through
Because others have to bear it too.
So I will bear it with the rest
And hope the outcome is the best.
– George Nishimura, age 16 (Manzanar, 1943)