<Begin Segment 10>

LT: Had you ridden a train before?

TT: Huh?

LT: Had you ridden a train before?

TT: No, it was the first time I rode on a train.

LT: Well, so your first ride on a train, you and your family arrive at the downtown train station, your neighbor takes you, and you have two pieces of luggage. You don't know where you're going. Do you remember what you saw at the train station and how you felt and what you did?

TT: Well, I saw all my friends and everybody from the valley that was there, so there was a bunch of us.

LT: What did it look like when you saw them?

TT: There's a bunch of people there waiting for the train. You get on the train.

LT: How were they dressed?

TT: Just casual dressing. No fancy dresses. [Laughs] And those days, the girls mostly wore dresses. Not too many wore pants in those days. I guess older folks, I guess they just dressed natural, like going to town or something like that.

LT: And what was the mood? How did people react?

TT: I don't know. It wasn't loud. Maybe some people were talking to each other, but I didn't hear no loud voices or nothing. I guess everybody was in shock or something.

LT: Okay. Do you remember boarding the train, what you saw, where you sat, what it felt like when you sat down?

TT: Well, all I remember is we all got on, you kind of sat with the family in one, couple of seats or two or three seats that was facing each other. And that thing, nighttime they turned that into a bed. But I don't remember where I slept or anything like that. Maybe we slept on the floor, I don't know.

LT: Were you by yourselves, was there a guard there?

TT: Each car had a guard, I think. I remember having a guard, though. They didn't say too much to us, and we didn't say anything to them. Or maybe some of them might have talked to them, but then I never did.

LT: What did the guard look like?

TT: Just a young American soldier that was in the army. I remember they all had a rifle, and they were just one individual at a time. I don't know if they were going in every car or what, but there was one in our car, in the baggage car.

LT: When the train started to move, do you remember what you did? Did you look out the window, were there other people who came to see you off?

TT: Just the people that took us down there, I think about the only one. I didn't see any large crowd or anything, come to watch us or nothing like that, just the people that brought everybody. So each family must have had somebody bring them there. And then all I remember is this one neighbor, he got a job as a bridge, guard on the bridge by the Bonneville Dam. So I told him when he was leaving and all that, so he said he's looking out for us, and we were looking out the window, but we never did see him.

LT: So once the train was moving, what was the mood like on the train with your family and with other passengers in the train? Do you remember what you saw, what you talked about, what you did?

TT: Well, actually, we didn't talk too much because we just were with family and there wasn't other friends. So we didn't say too much. Hard to remember how I really felt, those days. It wasn't a good feeling, but it wasn't a bad feeling, either.

LT: Well, eventually the train stopped and you were arriving at the assembly center, Pinedale. And when I spoke with your father, he said, "No station, just wild place."

TT: Yeah, just an open field.

LT: Okay. Can you describe what you saw when the train stopped and you got out?

TT: All I remember is a bunch of buses waiting for us to take us to the camp from there. It was just an open field right next to the railroad track. So those buses took us to camp. When we got there, they checked us in. They had Niseis from Sacramento already there, so they were doing all the paperwork and whatever they had to do to check us in. And they assigned us where to go and all that stuff, where to eat and all that.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.