<Begin Segment 56>

AI: What about right before you left to go to the Puyallup, the assembly center, it was called? What do you recall of that time, if anything, just getting ready to go --

MY: Go on the bus?

AI: -- and then and actually that day, yes.

MY: I remember boarding the bus, but, and I remember driving, the bus driving away as people were saying goodbye to us, but I think Mr. Bonham and a couple people were --

TY: Was he there?

MY: -- yeah, I think he was there.

TY: Mr. Bonham was our Dad's boss, so...

MY: And I just remember him. There might have been other of his co-workers there.

TY: No, just prior to that, though, prior to that, getting ready to evacuate, and our -- I remember, remember we had the movie camera that we gave to your employer?

MY: Oh, yeah. Okay, when we were in the process of storing our belongings, we had, Dad had all this photographic equipment. The projector and the camera, it was just, the films that we were talking about, sort of his big toy. So we thought we'd better put that in a safe place, so I took it to, so the family decided that we should ask the photographer that I was working for since he knows about cameras and so forth, to have, ask him if he would store it in his house. And he said he would do it and so we took the, there was a considerable amount of stuff there.

TY: A big box.

MY: And we never got that back.

TY: What?

MY: We never got it back.

TY: No. And then another thing I remember storing was some items like, remember that wooden horse statue that we, carved statue that we had on top of the piano?

MY: Yeah, yeah. Don't you still have it?

TY: No. That was stored, that was put in the box, one item that was put in the box to take to the Merlinos' across the street.

MY: Oh, yeah.

TY: There was an Italian family living across the street from us, so we took that item, and several other things which I don't remember. I just remember that beautiful carved, wooden carving of a horse. We took that over there, and I'm not sure whether they ever got that back.

MY: I don't know. Well, I know that the camp, we went to pick -- well, years later I was in New York, I think by that time, and you said that you went to pick up the -- oh maybe when I was in Chicago -- you said you went to pick up the, to the -- I forgot their names, even -- the photographer's house? And they denied they had it.

TY: Yeah.

MY: They had forgotten, or, I don't know. So many years passed and they --

TY: I don't remember going to the Merlinos after the war to pick up that, and then we took over there, either, but...

Jeni Y: What happened to the rest of the belongings in the house? You just named a few things that people stored for you, what happened to --

MY: Yeah, Grandma got them back, I think.

TY: What?

MY: The other stuff that was stored with the, Dad's co-workers. They returned that.

TY: I think most of the stuff, I think one of the items --

MY: And a lot of things, and like I had stacks of those dishes that -- Grandma bought a lot of things when we went to Japan. And all of the hana, ikebana equipment that Grandma collected. And that little well? That antique well, and all the dishes, and things like that, we got those back.

TY: I think we got most of the items back, except for the camera, that we had stored.

MY: Uh-huh.

Jeni Y: Were there a lot of things you had to get rid of? Like extra, clothes that you didn't take, toys that you didn't take?

MY: Yeah, there were a lot of things that were lost, and I don't know exactly if they were thrown out, or... there were some books that I treasured.

JY: Was the house empty when we left?

TY: No. We left all the furniture there.

JY: How, what about the loose items, like dishes and clothes?

MY: Yeah, those are the things that we packed up and then -- the portable things, I think, we --

TY: Well, I think we stored a lot of stuff downstairs in the basement.

MY: Oh, that's quite possible. I don't remember that, but yeah. And some of the furniture was still there when they dismantled the house to take it to Japan.

TY: Yeah, but the reason those house, those furniture was still there was because --

MY: They were so big.

TY: Well, when Mrs. Motoda bought the house and converted it into a church, she removed most of the furniture, and she stored it downstairs.

MY: In the basement.

TY: So, yeah. So when they came to dismantle the house, they found all the furniture there, yet. That's why it was still there.

MY: Uh-huh.

TY: They weren't many using many of the stuff.

JY: So whoever rented the house during the war, then, just used the furniture that was left.

TY: Yeah, yeah.

MY: They used the furniture as, they used the house as is.

JY: They just left it.

MY: Yeah.

<End Segment 56> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.