Blog Thread
- OTees of Block 5 Minidoka
OTees of Block 5 Minidoka
Jun
3
Teenage Antics - During WWII Incarceration of Japanese
I agreed to attend and meet 97-year-old Auntie Onions. Lisa picked her up with a couple other 90+-year-olds, Hidy and Marti, living across Lake Washington in the Greater Seattle east side. They kept waiting for Knuckles and she finally came.Then they continued their conversation about going to Broadway High School over 80 years ago and where they grew up in Seattle’s International District. Onions exclaimed, “We used to get together all the time, but now, this is the only way I get to see all my friends?”
When Junko and Mary joined our table, the girls started joking, “How are the OTees doing?
“Tell me about the OTees,” I implored.
Lisa added, “My dad was also one of the OTees. They all got jackets alike. I have a picture.
Junko started to explain, “Well, I was 14-years-old when we got taken to ‘camp’. We were some of the first ones, rounded up in Seattle and taken to the Puyallup Fair Grounds and Area D. As other families arrived, our parents told us boys to help them carry things. We made it a game to scout out the cute girls and would holler ‘Haba Haba’. Some of us kids got jobs to help like passing out things for meals and such. We whispered ‘Haba Haba” when a cute girl was coming around.
So, I smile at Onions sitting across the table, “I know you were one of those cute girls. You were 15 when you were incarcerated, right?” I interjected. Tell us again how you got the name ‘Onions’.“
Typical of Nisei girls, Auntie put her head down, flaped her hand at me and demurely declined. Especially with all her friends around, it wouldn’t have been proper to talk about herself. I convinced her later it was important to share her stories for the sake of the grandchildren.
Going on with Junko’s story. With close living quarters, community toilets, community showers, body parts and excrement exposure, figuring out who could come up with the most outrageous put down and name calling was the daily challenge, especially for the guys.
Junko continued, “When we got to Minidoka in Idaho, a bunch of us were part of block five and created the OTees. we considered ‘Stinkys’, ‘Poopys’ and other Japanese language descriptions. But thinking we needed to be a little more sophisticated and decent, we chose the name ‘Odorless Turds’."
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