<Begin Segment 61>

JA: Okay. And well, eventually you're allowed to leave Minidoka. When did that happen?

MH: Yeah, that was in 1945. You can go home if you wanted to go home. That's what I understand. So I understand the Yabukis came home, is what I heard the story, but we didn't come home. We decided we'll go home, and try one more time out to Caldwell and see if we can make enough money, all of us. So I took Dad and Mom and my two brothers and see if we can make some money so we can buy a car. And we need a car when we get home to Bellevue, we figured that out. And we need some spending money to get home, too, so we better figure that out, so that's what we did. And so we all worked that summer there, but in the meantime, my sister got married and she married a California boy so she was in Idaho, Twin Falls, Idaho. And my other sister had already left and she was in Kansas City, Missouri, studying in the business college, and she got into a nice home over there so she was over there. And so just my youngest sister and my two brothers and my dad and mom was with us all the way up to Caldwell farm and worked out there in the sugar beets and onion. And then we came home in the fall to Bellevue, from there.

JA: So other families had returned to Bellevue before you.

MH: Some of them, not very many, I hear. I heard just the Yabukis, is the way I heard. I didn't know that until just recently, I heard the story.

JA: But you made a family decision to go to Caldwell first.

MH: Uh-huh, first.

<End Segment 61> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.