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| "I didn't want to live in a place that looked so depressing..." | |
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In the internment camps Japanese Americans lived in barracks (they looked like long houses). The largest space was about 20'x25' for a family of five. There were six living quarters in each barrack. It wasn't very clean inside these because they weren't well made. The dirt would come in with ease. In some barracks, the only thing that separated the living quarters between families, was tar paper. There were holes in it so you could peek into your neighbor's room. You could have also hear what your neighbor was talking about. |
| The food that the Japanese Americans would purchase while they were in the camps cost about $.45 but sometimes the price was dropped to about $.31 per person, a day. Foods that made up their meals were hot dogs, pickled vegetables, dry fish, rice, macaroni, and in some camps liver. Lunch or dinner was sometimes pickled vegetables, hot dog and macaroni. Foods such as butter and sugar had to be rationed because the food had to be sent to the soldiers to eat. Also because it was during the war, it was harder to get foods like that. |  |
Japanese Americans also grew vegetables and later were allowed to raise livestock such as chicken and pigs. Four camps had beef herds, and Gila River (a camp) also had a dairy. They sold and ate the vegetables they grew and by the end of 1943 an estimated 2.5 million lbs. of the vegetables had been sold. If you were in the internment camps and were not working you would receive $1.50- $4.75 a month. If you were un-skilled labor, you would get $12.00 a month, $16.00 if you were skilled labor, and $19.00 if you were a professional. | |
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At Camp Jerome, wood had to be chopped to heat the internees' living quarters. People went out to chop wood and only received peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for chopping all of the wood. |
| A person that I interviewed told me that in the internment camp, Jerome, there were sand storms. She was in one and the sand went in her eyes and all over. Also it snowed in some of these camps. At Amache/Granada in Colorado and Heart Mountain in Wyoming winter temperatures dropped to minus 30 degrees. At the other extreme, at internment camp Minidoka in Idaho, the average temperature in the summer was 100 degrees.
This is what the people in the internment camps had to endure. | |
Sources: http://www.du.edu/~anballar/Camps_Population.html http://www.scu.edu/SCU/Programs/Diversity/exhibit2.html http://www.du.edu/~anballar/Questions_and_Answers.html http://www.kent.wednet.edu/KSD/SJ/Nikkei/RelocationCamps.html http://members.aol.com/EARTHSUN/Manzanar.html Manzanar- by Armor, John and Peter Wright Our House Divided by- Knaefler, Tomi Kaizawa Interview- Mrs. Hara
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