Description
Navy #3247 (Mil. Govt) F.P.O. San Francisco Monday 7 May 7 pm (Still on duty) -and what's more, Sweetie, I've got another 3 to send you - plus 3 others I can't send thru the mail for various reasons: one shows too much of the camp overall, another certain parts of it too close up, a third has the school sign and name of the island on it, and I don't want to cut that one up. These are the last pictures of this caliber that I can count on sending you (they'll be other snapshots, of course, when I get time to take them). Remind me to tell you sometime how I got them. The 3 still to come are of Charlie Frankel's players and I want to find out a little more about them first. But let me record a comment of Slicer while I still remember it (Tel and I got copies of some of them for all the men, but asked them to let us censor the letters because photographs like this are hard to get [pg 2] and we didn't want our hard-won acquisition to be too widely known). Says Slicer to his wife concerning the one female pictured (I quote with permission) - “This gal apart from her theatrical activities, has a lucrative position (sic) in the profession of whoring” and he goes on to comment, a la Slicer, on Japanese love-making - “Formula for Japanese Romance - no nose-rubbing, no kissing, no Braille system. In short, no romance.” But to get back to the enclosures- Quonset Hut interior: Tel, looking less like himself than I do (or do I, I hope not? - well, just a little frozen) demonstrating the wall charts used in English class. (Poor girl in left hand picture hasn't really anything interesting to show…) Ikeda is third from camera in the row I'm at the end of - dark pants, comparatively dark shirt. Not much use identifying the rest of the teachers, who purposely turned their backs to the camera; they’re the only group in camp [pg 3] who continue to object to having their pictures taken, though even they are breaking down. Half the Nisei are present” beginning with Mujamoto, more or less leader of the group and the one with the heaviest responsibilities - he's third from camera in left hand row, in profile and wearing glasses - the others are Tanumoto (facing camera and smiling - can't make out whether he had his rather becoming trim beard at that time, or whether it's just shadow); Morimoto, with the sailor cap on and looking characteristically glum - he talks that way too, and mumbles, but is our second most useful man, the one who manages farm and suiji; looking the other way is Imaizumi, a young squirt who's long since left us to work for the FEA and whom we’re not particularly anxious to have back. No sense of responsibility. Not the copy of Life. That was in hopes we might break into it with this and other pictures and a story, but I guess they've never got there. It seems reasonable to us to suppose, though, that if a Life [pg 4] photographer were to come thru here he’d find our setup worth making a story. The setting is just about half of the Japanese teachers’ office in their 2/3 of the Quonsets. There's a main front door on the left, out of the picture toward you. Classroom Scene: More or less speaks for itself. This is one of the 10 rooms in each long building; there are 12 such benches in each. I believe this a 4th grade class. Notice how boys and girls are divided (I guess a lot of American schools do that); the 3-strip Masonite blackboard; little girls’ haircuts (only one is recent, but they are all cut that way); the furoshiki or bandana package of bright colored cloth in which about 2/3 of the children carry their books, the other 1/3 using a sort of handbag affair of which you see a couple of examples (furoshiki, not very clear, is big girl near center). The lumber is American, the once light blue ceiling is composed of canvas tarpaulins and the noise in any given classroom is terrific. Arthur says [pg 5] it's the same way in Japan, though - Japanese school children recite as noisily as they are brought up to be quiet and deferential at home, and it doesn't seem to occur to the teachers to manage things otherwise. Footrace - Note bare feet, schoolboy caps, some of them wear scout insignia on the latter - international fleur-de-lys - and a few the Japanese sakura (cherry) device worn by schoolchildren as well as by soldiers. Scout camp (one of 3 tents used for outing purposes, and located in a thicket of willow-like trees just off the school farm) Had to cut 3 holes in this one - all the troop flags had the name of the island on them. Troop 2 is the Korean group (Japanese are Troops 1 and 3). K. School Principal Mom, formerly the scout leader, is on extreme right; next to him is Iso, Japanese head of all [pg 6] scouting here and the only one who really understands scouting and its internationalist views. Behind on the right, where the ground slopes away, is a somewhat trampled field of sugar cane. Girl Scouts eating cane - Isn't this a gleeful picture? I don't know how the photographer got them laughing that way; they so often simper or run away. But they’re getting much less camera shy. Little girls are dressed somewhat better than this (note skirt made of camouflage cloth, probably heavy waterproof material) by now, with sufficient yard goods having reached the trade store. It is good to see the change in her made in the appearance of the camp in general; it makes a lot difference in people's morale when they have some little thing to begin taking pride in again. My sympathies are not always (in some respects, not often) with the adults in camp, but all of them are with the children [?], nearly always, anyhow. Goodnight, precious Warren
