To view video, Click Here. Sarah S. describes the harsh living conditions and lack of privacy at Jerome.

"When we went to Jerome, our barracks were not finished. When I say finished, you know, they just have the outside wall, the inside was all just unfinished. The winds were coming through between the boards, and when you come from Hawaii where it's warm and to come to a place that's cold, and where they had to have furnace, coal furnace, to heat up the room. Fortunately, all the single guys who were interned with my dad, they came and helped to put the plasterboards to double, to insulate the rooms and that, warmed up. And they gave us a room, oh, a little bigger than my living room. They put six of us, not two rooms and, but can you imagine my parents having no privacy and the four kids sleeping in the same area? And this is what the government did."

Sarah S. Interview - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

Sarah is a sansei female. (Mother and father born in Hawaii.) She was born February 1925 in Peru. She spent her prewar childhood in Peru and Hawaii. Her father was picked up by the FBI and detained after bombing of Pearl Harbor. She was incarcerated at Jerome incarceration camp, Arkansas, and Tule Lake incarceration camp, California. She renounced her citizenship in order to stay with parents, and was expatriated to Japan. She regained her U.S. citizenship and returned to the United States.

Courtesy of Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project