"Waiting in a Breadline"

"Waiting in a Breadline". Manzanar. , Three times a day, hungry people lined up outside a mess hall-in blistering heat and freezing cold, in heavy rain and during ferocious dust storms. , , Once inside, "they plopped food on our metal plates," Lilly Kitamoto Kodama, who was a child in Manzanar, recalled. Among the foods she disliked was "this blobby blop of gooey stuff that was all green in color... it was canned spinach." , , "There was enough to eat, but the quality and variety was sorely lacking," Wilbur Sato said. "We had to eat what was provided." , , And too often, lamb was on the menu, Yoshinori Tamaki recalled. "We'd go see the menu in the morning. If there was lamb stew on the menu, we'd try to go somewhere else," he said. "We just couldn't stomach the lamb." , , Many of the cooks were inexperienced. Teenager Frank Yamani earned $16 a month cooking large tubs of rice in the mess hall. "You had to cook that rice just right or else they're going to complain to you," he recalled. "The cook before, he burned the rice, and everybody complained. They couldn't eat it." , , Food improved somewhat, but the rushed and noisy eating environment did not change. , , One mother observed, "Even if we are in camps... some effort should be made to maintain a normal atmosphere. Lining up for meals, getting food slopped at us all on one plate is making many feel like hobos and tramps waiting in a breadline for a handout." , , The US Army built this mess hall at Bishop Air Base in 1942. The National Park Service moved it to Manzanar in 2002 and restored it to match a Manzanar mess hall.