<Begin Segment 51>

TY: And I think about that time, I think they started, real restrictive. Curfew and... you remember that?

MY: Yeah, yeah.

TY: And so whenever we went anyplace we had to be sure to be home by -- I forgot what time -- eight o'clock?

MY: Ten, I think.

TY: Was it ten?

MY: I'm not sure.

TY: And I remember taking a sleeping bag over to my friend's place sometime, and we stayed overnight. But...

MY: So do you remember when the evac-, the curfew order came? Because the Executive Order --

TY: Well, it was sometime in the early part of the year, I know, but I can't -- do you have any record of when the curfew was...

MY: Was it January?

AI: I'm sorry, I don't have the exact date.

MY: The curfew, there must be some record of that. And so I remember that, and so that was kind of the precursor of the evacuation.

TY: That sure changed our lifestyle, because we had to work around that every, anyplace we went, we had to work around the time.

MY: Make sure that we got home. And then another thing that we -- I think we were very much aware of, is that for any groups of Japanese Americans, not to be seen in groups on the street.

TY: Yeah, at a time.

MY: Yeah, because I remember thinking, oh gosh, on December 11 -- 7th, remember we went to, we went as a group? The choir went to the concert and so forth, and that we can't do that anymore.

TY: Yeah, yeah.

MY: We can't go anywhere as a family, because we were, for -- I don't know whether we felt like we were forbidden to, but we knew that we shouldn't travel in groups anywhere, with more than two or three people in it.

TY: After that, I think we stayed home much of the time, really.

AI: When was that, that you had that sense of, that it wouldn't be good to travel in groups?

MY: I think it must have been after the evacuation order came, and we began to hear about the, the people who were being removed -- we heard that there were some Japanese who were being forced out of their homes after two weeks, and therefore we had to hurry up and get our house in order. And, during, and I do remember, my father had many friends in the immigration service, and they came and picked up things from our house, to store in their basements. Mr. Schwandt, and various, Mr. Spangler. They were just incredibly helpful. And we, I think Mr. Bonham must have organized that, because people simply offered to, opened up their homes to, so --

TY: And also when we, thought about evacuation, I thought, I can't -- the thing is, I can't remember, and I was trying to look back to see, think back to see how I decided to take what with me, because you just had limited luggage to take. And I have no idea what I took, and what I didn't take.

MY: Yeah.

TY: Do you remember? Your decisions that you made about taking --

MY: Yeah, I do. We had to, we had to take some clothes, and I remember putting a dictionary in there, my Webster's Dictionary that I -- and I remember taking couple books, and those -- and then Dad had those, Dad had those notebooks. They were notepads, and it had a, it had a kind of a red cover, with a big chief on the front. And it was made, it was newsprint. They were little pads. And he had a whole stack of them in his roll-away desk.

TY: Oh, I don't remember that at all.

MY: Because he used to write --

TY: Write, yeah.

MY: -- he used to write senryu --

TY: Senryu and stuff, right.

MY: -- and things like that that. So he had a whole bunch -- so I remember taking half a dozen of those and putting it in my bag, and that was when I wrote Camp Notes. Unfortunately, it was newsprint. The paper was newsprint. It was newsprint and they had little lines.

TY: Yeah, they did.

MY: And so about years, 1976 -- I mean, by the time that I got it out, I was carrying it around for a long time, it just fell apart. The newsprint was, it was just disintegrating. They had turned yellow and... and then I had written in pencil.

TY: Oh. No, but I think, if I recall, those note paper, if you used regular ink, it blotted, it smeared a little.

MY: Oh, yeah, yeah. That's what -- I don't know. For some reason -- I thought it was before, I was working in the hospital at night, and I used pencil and I was writing it in pencil. So by the time I got to it, and then Alta was, when I was publishing my poems, she was looking, we were looking through it, and the more you handled it, the more it fell apart. And then half of it was faded because the pencil, and then I used to write very light, small, handwriting was very... couldn't read the handwriting half the time. So then I, but those are the things that we, I think we packed. And mostly clothes, probably. It's like packing, packing for a trip.

TY: Yeah, obviously it was clothes, but I was wondering what other miscellaneous item I might have decided to take with me, and I don't remember what they were.

Jeni Y: Do you remember taking any toys?

JY: Well, I talk to the high school and junior high kids a lot, about the internment and so forth. And you know that picture? Of me carrying this little --

MY: The wood cabinet? [Laughs]

JY: Yeah. And so they ask, "What do you have in it?" And I didn't really know, but I started making things up just to make it interesting. [Laughs] But I know I had a baseball glove.

MY: Yeah.

JY: And I know that when we got to camp, one of the first games I, we played every day was Monopoly. And so I have a feeling that we might have taken at least those two things.

TY: Oh, we must have taken Monopoly with us.

MY: And you had --

TY: I remember having Monopoly game, set with us.

MY: Yeah.

JY: Oh yeah? Well that might be -- and I wasn't sure whether I was making that up or whether it really was for real. [Laughs]

MY: But I remember, you know the poem that I wrote about your collecting the snakes in the mayonnaise jar?

JY: Uh-huh.

MY: And somebody asked me, "Where did he get the mayonnaise jar?" And I, and I said, "Well, I remember that Joe had some kind of a collection of stuff, and he had it in this mayonnaise jar." And mayonnaise jar, it wasn't, it wasn't a screw-, it had, the top was different from what it is today. But that you had taken the jar full of whatever, in this mayonnaise jar.

TY: Marbles?

MY: Could be.

JY: Might have been marbles. 'Cause that was my big thing when I was in Seattle, was --

TY: 'Cause I had a real marble, big marble collection, I think I gave it to you.

JY: Yeah.

TY: So you might have --

MY: So you took some of that, yeah.

JY: I'm sure I had marbles, then, yeah. Because in those days, when I was a kid, agates were the big thing, you know.

MY: Yeah.

TY: Yeah.

JY: So I'm sure I wouldn't have thrown all those out.

MY: And they survived after many years, because when we went back to make Mitsuye and Nellie, the film, there was a woman who lived in the next, in the next farm who came over, and she said, "I found these things in the, when we were digging in the ground." This was like, 1980, forty years later she found these little relics in the --

JY: Oh, is that right?

MY: Yeah.

JY: Maybe one of my marbles was in there.

MY: [Laughs] She -- feel like an archeological relic? [Laughs] Somebody dug you up, but she found these little shard, pieces of a teacup, and --

JY: Uh-huh.

TY: Oh yeah, I remember that, yeah.

MY: Yeah, barrettes, and things like that. I was looking at it and I thought, gosh, feel like an archeological relic of some --

TY: I was really surprised that the lady found those and kept them. She had them in a little box, didn't she?

MY: That was kind of interesting, I think -- yeah, she had it in that little wooden -- you were there.

TY: Yeah, yeah.

MY: Little cigar box. And she had it wrapped up in some kind of a man's, like a white handkerchief.

<End Segment 51> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.