The Incarcerated Family: Conditions and Administration
The mess hall was instantly caught between competing public images. Though the nuclear family and family table proved to be the images of choice to display
Politics and Mess Halls
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Americanness, communal living and eating was the image that proved that these dubiously regarded Americans were not being “pampered” at a high cost to the taxpayer, a rumor that plagued the WRA, particularly in 1943. In publications ranging from pamphlet to film, the WRA notes that meals gener- ally cost much less than the allowed forty-five cents per head and were served economically “cafeteria-style,” meaning that just as in schools, factories, and other large institutions, individuals lined up to obtain food from servers and carried their trays to long communal tables.5 The “cafeteria-style” meals, por- trayed to outsiders as a financial compromise that still allowed families to eat together, were seen as the heart of the camp problem for incarcerees and the WRA administrators and sociologists, as well as sympathizers.
The WRA strove for a uniform mess hall organization within the incarcera- tion camps. Most mess halls were built to serve three hundred people and fea- tured standard tables and benches as well as plain institutional tableware. Each hall had a dedicated cooking and dishwashing staff of incarcerees, most of whom were paid the standard $16 (skilled) or $12 (unskilled) rate per month. Incarcerees lined up at mealtimes, even in inclement weather, and, according to most accounts, ate quickly and departed as soon as possible. The crowds— particularly before the incarcerees developed habits and schedules—were the chief obstacle to family dining, as the mess halls at various times were serving far more people than they had been designed to do. In her famous memoir Nisei Daughter, published in 1953, Monica Sone describes her first meal at the camp in typically quasi-comic style:
Our family had to split up, for the hall was too crowded for us to sit together. I wandered up and down the aisles, back and forth along the crowded tables and benches, looking for a few inches to squeeze into. . . . My dinner compan- ion, hooked just inside my right elbow, was a bald headed, gruff-looking Issei man who seemed to resent nestling at mealtime. Under my left elbow was a tiny, mud-spattered girl.6