white christmas in camp

"Born and raised in Los Angeles, I was a city boy who never saw snow in the winter, but you always heard about Christmas’ based on books. New England was where it snowed and all that good stuff. Well anyway, my first year in camp it starts to snow during Christmas. The block fathers built a simulated chimney in the mess hall with a stage and Santa Claus came from the outside through the mess hall window through the chimney into the mess hall where we are celebrating Christmas just like we used to read about. You know, snow and a real Santa Claus and that was the first year Irving Berlin’s white Christmas came out. And man, to me that was my first experience of a real Christmas. Even though we were locked up that didn’t have any bearing on how happy I felt. The only gift we received was some stuff that was sent by a Christian church outside. I got a bar of Palmolive soap. It was hard to get so this was a great present. Most of us got nothing else."

- Robert Uragami, who at the age of fifteen was incarcerated in a concentration camp in Amache, Colorado. He was a student at Amache High School in 1942, the first winter he spent in camp.