<Begin Segment 16>

[Translated from Japanese]

TY: You were going to an Assembly Center. How did you know that?

YI: What?

TY: How did you know that?

YI: We went by bus. From over there.

TY: Did you hear from others? From other people?

YI: No. Together.

TY: Well, how did you know that? That you had to go?

YI: Because we had to go. All Japanese.

TY: Then, were your children all right? You had children of various ages.

YI: Well, it was for everybody. Some people, people in Idaho or Denver, could leave of their free will. There were some who went there because they didn't want to go to camps. Some people.

TY: Before you went to the camp, did you think about going toward the east? Or did you not move to another area because you didn't have relatives?

YI: Well, if you had relatives, you could go there and work in farms.

TY: Your family didn't have relatives in the U.S, did they?

YI: Besides, all the members were already (at the camp).

TY: Yes.

YI: At the camp. There was a service there, too.

TY: At that time, Satoru was thirteen years old, Etsuko eleven, Kazuya nine, Noriko seven, then Akira, Hiroko and Shinya. They were four, two and one. They were very young. So according to their age...

YI: Shinya was just born in December of the previous year.

TY: Only six months old. And also some people had to close down their businesses. A lot of hardship.

YI: Yes. We didn't own anything. But business owners had a hard time. They had to close down.

TY: Yes. Then you had to go to Puyallup. Did you know you were going to Puyallup?

TY: Puyallup?

TY: Yes. When you moved out, the destination...

YI: We all went there first. There was a horse race track there. I heard there had been horses there.

TY: Well, the Issei were the enemy of the American people, but the second and third generation had U.S. citizenship. They had to move out, too...

YI: No, everybody took it. So some Nisei who were a little older said they would not move out. Those who refused to move out were sent to prison.

TY: What did you think about that? They were American citizens but they had to go (to camp).

YI: There was no such law, they said.

TY: What did you think about it?

YI: We didn't have U.S. citizenship and so we had to go.

TY: But those second and third generation people with U.S. citizenship also had to go. What did you think about it?

YI: Well, according to the law, we may not have had to go. But you know, if you stayed, you might have gotten hurt. That would be worse. I think it was better for us to go. Some strong-minded people went to a jail. And here were Mr. Ando or Mr. Abe, who studied law, refused to go and were in a jail for a long time. In Seattle, Mr. Gordon Hirabayashi did not go, either. So other Nisei all over the area refused to go. But at the end they were all released from the jail. Of course, according to the law, they should not have been in jail. They were Americans born in the U.S. There was no law to send them there.

TY: By the way, I hear that you had to pack your things without knowing where you were going or for how long. And you could take only what you could carry by hand.

YI: Uh-huh.

TY: Then you had small children and there was a limit to how much you could carry by hand. Your luggage...

YI: What?

TY: You carried your belongings with you when you moved out of your house.

YI: Oh, yes. Clothes and such.

TY: Since you had small children, you could not take very much, I assume...

YI: That's right.

TY: The amount of things you could carry yourself.

YI: I wanted to take as much as I could. So I bought a sleeping bag and other things. I stuffed everything into a cloth bag and another bag and carried them.

TY: You carried your child on your back and carried bags with your hands.

YI: I think there was a limit to the amount of luggage you could carry. I still have the old bag with a number on it.

TY: Is that right? The bag from that time?

YI: Yes. From that time. There were numbers for each family.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.