Chang Style Novice
06-29-2004, 08:15 AM
History Detectives just had a piece where they tracked down a former resident of the Tule Lake "relocation center" for Japanese Americans during WW II, an artist, some of whose art work from the camp was in the collection of a curious fellow.
Which reminded me of one of the more wonderful indomitable-spirit stories . . . You get to be my age, anything reminds you of a story.
Back about twenty years, as the final polish was being put on the reparations for the relocation, I was working with a Japanese American fellow about my age. We were in the darkroom and the radio ran a story about it, and I asked Ralph what had happened to his family at the time. He replied that his parents were lucky, as they had family in the St. Louis area and were able to spend the war there. "But my cousin was at Tule Lake, and he tells of how he used to sneak bread out of the mess hall, and he'd go down to the beach with a box and a stick and a string, and he'd trap seagulls."
"Seagulls? ****! I've eaten seagull as a part of survival classes, but you wouldn't do it by choice. Were things that bad that they had to eat seagull?"
"No no no no no. He'd have lipstick or nail polish that he'd get from his mom and the other women, and he'd paint red circles on their wings and let them go."
Note: do not roll around on a darkroom floor laughing; they are very rarely cleaned.
Which reminded me of one of the more wonderful indomitable-spirit stories . . . You get to be my age, anything reminds you of a story.
Back about twenty years, as the final polish was being put on the reparations for the relocation, I was working with a Japanese American fellow about my age. We were in the darkroom and the radio ran a story about it, and I asked Ralph what had happened to his family at the time. He replied that his parents were lucky, as they had family in the St. Louis area and were able to spend the war there. "But my cousin was at Tule Lake, and he tells of how he used to sneak bread out of the mess hall, and he'd go down to the beach with a box and a stick and a string, and he'd trap seagulls."
"Seagulls? ****! I've eaten seagull as a part of survival classes, but you wouldn't do it by choice. Were things that bad that they had to eat seagull?"
"No no no no no. He'd have lipstick or nail polish that he'd get from his mom and the other women, and he'd paint red circles on their wings and let them go."
Note: do not roll around on a darkroom floor laughing; they are very rarely cleaned.