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Poston - unbearable heat

To view video, Click Here. Rudy T. describes suffering through the unbearable heat at Poston.

"And the day we got to Parker, Arizona, 114 degrees. And later on, as I thought about all this that happened the day we got there, people were fainting like flies, because none of us prepared for any of this. And the first thing they said when they dropped us off at the barracks, "There's the baled hay, there's a mattress cover in the barracks for each one of the beds. Fill it up with hay. That's your mattress." Well, hell, you never used a mattress. It was too damn hot. We used to sleep outside. And we're dumb, see, because we don't know nothin' about scorpions and stuff like that. And finally, one guy hollers, "Hey, look at all this damn thing crawlin' around under our beds." And they were scorpions, see, because the body heat. And the scorpion liked heat. So we found out they were scorpions, and you liable to die if they sting you. [Laughs]"

Rudy T. Interview - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved

Poston was located at 320 feet of elevation in southwestern Arizona on the Colorado River Reservation in Yuma County (now La Paz), 12 miles south of the town of Parker. The Colorado River runs 2 1/2 miles to the west. The 71,000 acres in the lower Sonoran desert are near the California border. The harsh climate featured hot and humid summers and cold winter nights. Dust was a constant problem.

Population Description: Held people from Arizona, Oregon, and Washington. Salinas, Santa Anita, and Pinedale Assembly Centers in California as well as Mayer Assembly Center, Arizona, sent their populations here.

To view facts and photos of Poston, Click Here to view Densho's interactive Sites of Shame map. Then click on the red dot corresponding to Poston. Courtesy of Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project