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JA: Okay. When were you advised or did you know that you would be moved from Pinedale to another location?

MH: Oh, no. They told us as soon as Tule Lake was ready as a permanent concentration camp, we'll be all shipped over there. And they said there will be a Seattle volunteer group that's already there in advance that will have the administrative and the hospitals and cafeterias and different things like that kind of organized, so that the group that's going in there will be comfortable, is what they promised us. And so -- which is true -- in three month our group, we were taken over there again by train into Tule Lake. And when we went there we were greeted by the Seattle group, which was very nice of them to all come out, and made everybody comfortable and paperwork taken care of and everything that goes with it.

JA: So this in September of 1942?

MH: That we all went there, yes.

JA: Now this Seattle group, that you mentioned that was the advanced party of sort from Puyallup, who made up that group? Were they JACL members largely?

MH: I have a feeling they had asked for volunteers probably. Probably the, whoever is in charge of the administrative or something must have gone over there and asked if there would be any volunteers that'd be willing to go to Tule Lake first and get things organized, straightened out, and everything. So that was quite a group that went from Seattle, and they really had everything well-taken care of. It was wonderful.

JA: Okay. So you were, you felt that it was wonderful and was that the general consensus of the people in Bellevue?

MH: Yes, uh-huh. Of course, I had relatives going down there so I was very pleased with them and friends from my church, from the Congregational Church, some young couples that we knew, my husband knew and everything, so they were all down there ready to volunteer. So all these things were just special. It really was, to think that they had gone there and taken care of everything for us so we don't have to start from scratch like we did in Pinedale. It was already taken care of in Tule Lake, the major part of it. And then, of course, you have to organize your own block, when you get in your own block and everything, but they had it kind of organized and set up for you.

<End Segment 42> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.