<Begin Segment 9>

AI: Well, we're getting a little ahead now...

MK: Okay.

AI: ...but just at the end of your experience at Santa Anita, you were, and your family were there for several months during the summer. So was it about September or so that you were removed to...

MK: I think it was around August.

AI: ...or maybe the end of August.

MK: Yeah, yeah.

AI: And so what was that like? Once again, you were being moved...

MK: Yeah.

AI: ...and what happened? Were you put on train again?

MK: Yeah, I remember that we were put on the train. We had no sleeping quarters or anything. We, we slept on the benches inside the train. No shower, nothing. I don't know how many days we stayed on the train. Actually, from what I understand, they actually went through parts of Texas to go to Wyoming. But I'm not sure about that. Anyway, it took a long time. And finally we, we reached there, we peeked out of the window, all we could see was all these mountains and these canyons and stuff and all. The first time we saw these kind of places. We said, "Gee, what a desolate place this is." No, no cities, no homes. It was kind of a shock to us.

AI: When you got off of the train, what happened next? Were you put on a bus or trucks to go?

MK: No, we were put on a truck. The truck picked up all the suitcases and the, they already had the quarters picked out for us, what block, what this and that, this and that. All we did is just follow what they, what they ordered us to do, and we went.

AI: Was your family still all together in the same room and the same barrack?

MK: That's right.

AI: All of you in one room?

MK: No, we had two rooms.

AI: Two rooms.

MK: Two, two little, C and D, I remember, two medium-sized rooms because we had, we had nine in our family -- seven children and two adults.

AI: And all in two rooms.

MK: All in the two rooms. There was no privacy at all. [Laughs] I guess everybody, I'll be honest, everybody, I would say, did the best they could under the conditions. It was sad, but it took a little time before the Japanese Americans realized what was happening and they got the courage to speak out. At Heart Mountain, we had a lot of that.

AI: Well, now, in this particular barrack that you were in, you and your family, were you together with other families from the Mountain View area, or was it all mixed up?

MK: I think our block was mostly Santa Clara valley people. The rest were Los Angeles people. So I think, I think Heart Mountain was mostly Los Angeles people, and a big percentage Santa Clara valley people, and a sprinkling of San Francisco and Washington. So what made I think Heart Mountain very vocal was we had a lot of Los Angeles people who had an understanding of what politics were really about. I would say the people in northern California were very naive. You would think the people in San Francisco would be more like the people in Los Angeles, but it's not true. They were just as much squares as people in the Santa Clara valley.

AI: So it sounds like in some ways, the Los Angeles people maybe had more awareness or knowledge of politics because...

MK: Oh, yeah.

AI: ...they brought...

MK: Well, in Los Angeles, they were already talking with the politicians even before the evacuation. If you read Deborah Lim's report, they were talking to the Navy Intelligence, FBI, volunteering information to the FBI, which the people in northern California, maybe they had a few of them like that, but it wasn't organized like Los Angeles.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2001 Densho. All Rights Reserved.