Densho Digital Archive - Mitsuye May Yamada - Joe Yasutake - Tosh Yasutake Interview (denshovh-ymitsuye

<Begin Segment 53>

MY: But, Joe was, you remember, what did you do during the -- you had friends, you played with Ted.

JY: Well, I can remember my first impressions. Did we, did we go on a bus or a truck?

MY: Yeah, we went --

TY: Yeah, or a bus, yeah.

MY: We went on a train.

TY: No, no, no we went --

JY: No, but not to the camp site. It was --

TY: No, no.

MY: Oh, no. To Puyallup.

TY: We just got on the bus to get on the train, from Puyallup --

JY: We're talking about Minidoka now, right?

MY: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

JY: I remember getting off and it just, it was sand, and it was just barren.

TY: Because we came from evergreen, everything --

JY: Yeah, yeah.

TY: -- everything was green, but there, everything was just nothing.

JY: So I have a vivid remembrance of --

TY: Such a contrast.

JY: Yeah, that everything was just so --

TY: Barren.

JY: Barren. And I felt like I was out in the Sahara Desert, or something, because everything was just kind of -- I don't remember much more than that.

MY: You remember playing on, in the --

JY: Oh, yeah. During the, I can certainly remember playing at, at Minidoka.

MY: With your friends.

JY: It was all kinds of stuff.

TY: Do you remember the train ride? To Minidoka?

JY: No.

TY: We had to, I think we had to, the blinds were all drawn.

MY: They had this little, kind of pot-bellied stove in the middle of the train.

TY: Stove, yeah. And we couldn't look outside --

JY: Yeah, no, I don't have any recollection of how we got there or what we ate...

TY: They made us pull the blind down.

MY: What we ate.

JY: Except, except, yeah, I remember the mess halls.

MY: Oh, at the camp.

JY: Yeah, at camp, but I don't remember on the way up, I don't remember anything about --

MY: Of the train ride itself.

JY: Yeah, yeah.