Excerpt about childhood memories of Honouliuli
By Doris Berg Nye (2009)

Child’s memory of Honouliuli

From p. 27 (printed booklet transcript) ; p. 21 (reformatted transcript in Destiny):

So that at Honouliuli, I liked Honouliuli, and I’ll never forget the cardinals.  There were cardinals all over the place, and sometimes I hear them today.  I had my thirteenth birthday there.  Actually I had it before Honouliuli, but it was celebrated at Honouliuli, and Emick—I forgot Emick’s first name—who was the head chef of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, he was in the camp because it was thought that he could poison all the troops when he was a chef.  So he was kept at Honouliuli.  And he made my birthday cake.  And that’s when I went into the kitchen there.  And it was a big kitchen and it was a big area.  And I remember the halelili (outhouse) and it was like, “oh so shame” to go.  The outside.  If you had to go, you had to go to the outside, and for me, as a young girl, it was (that) everybody could see when I went to the bathroom.  And you’d have people looking as you went in, and looking at you, oh, so shame.  And the guards up there too.  But I made friends with the guards, and the guards were just young kids themselves.  But what I did is, I brought funny books for them.  So I would have that when I came.  There were big plants.  This is the first time I had ever seen them.  (They) were castor bean plants.  And the castor bean plants were on a little slope. 

Author: Nye, Doris Berg

Item: selected excerpts

Source: Oral history interviews, Nye, Doris (Berg)  [oral history interview with JCCH volunteer Florence Sugimoto, 3/4/2009]

Page #: 27 (from printed booklet) – p.

Call No./Location in RC: OH Nye  (T 51387)

Translation from Japanese? No