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

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AI: And then soon you were --

MY: And then we were moved --

AI: -- moved.

MY: -- moved, we were moved to Minidoka.

AI: What, what do you recall of that time? You were just saying that you had this feeling of foreboding as you realized you were being moved to another place.

MY: Yeah. And, and then as I said, we arrived in -- I mean, we were on the train, and you said they had to -- I don't think that they pulled the shades down on the train. They might have on the bus when we were going to Puyallup, but not on the train, because I remember seeing, seeing the des-, there were just miles and miles of desert on the train. And it just really felt like we were, where are we going?

TY: But no, I really recall -- at one point during that trip, when we went -- of course, we went before you.

MY: Oh yeah, you went before us, yeah, okay.

AI: Oh, could you explain that? Why did you go before -- you and Mike went before?

TY: No, just me.

MY: No, he went by himself.

TY: I went with the advance party because I had worked in the hospital, and they needed someone to get the hospital ready for, for the patients when they, when they came later. So I went with the advance party, and we went in and prepared the wards and the bed and all the, get the whole place prepared for the patients.

JY: Who was in charge of all that?

TY: Huh?

JY: Who was in charge of all that? Was it a WRA person?

TY: I'm sorry, I don't remember. No, there was a hospital administrator, what was his name? I remember his face, but I can't remember his name now. But he was in charge, and --

MY: Was he, was he from WRA?

TY: -- I think not all, I think couple doctors went, and oh, handful --

JY: Nisei doctors, or doctors from the outside?

TY: The head doctor was, administrator was a, was a Caucasian.

MY: From the WRA?

TY: Yeah, I think. Anyway, he was, he was a hakujin. But the doctors' staff was Nihonjin.

JY: Hmm.

TY: Doctor --

MY: Suzuki...

TY: Suzuki, Dr. Shigaya --

MY: Hasegawa.

TY: Dr. Koike.

MY: Dr. Hasegawa.

TY: Dr. Hasegawa. But they're all, they're all Nisei. Nisei doctors -- no, no, some of them were Issei. Like Dr. Shigaya was Issei. In fact, most of the doctors were Isseis.

JY: Yeah, they probably were.

AI: So when you first got there, to Minidoka, Tosh, were you put into a barrack room by yourself? Or how --

TY: In Minidoka?

AI: In Minidoka when you first arrived there.

MY: It wasn't finished yet.

TY: That, I don't remember. But I, well, very honest with you, I can't remember where we stayed.

MY: Well, we were told that the barracks were not ready yet.

TY: Oh.

MY: After -- I don't know. After you got --

TY: We might have stayed in the hospital living quarters. They had living quarters for nurses and doctors, and we might have temporarily been, might have stayed there. But I, I, frankly I don't, I just don't remember where we stayed.

AI: So that might have been around June of '42, that you went with the advance group?

MY: Yeah.

AI: Possibly May or June?

TY: Let's see. We went to Minidoka in April, so it was... my guess is it's much closer to July or August, but I really... do you have any, do you recall when they first started taking...

MY: And data about the, the people in Seattle, yeah.

TY: Huh?

MY: Is there any data about the people in, from Puyallup, to...

TY: Yeah, do you remember when they --

AI: I'm sorry, I don't have a date on that, but...

JY: Actually, again, you could find that out in the National Museum.

MY: Yeah.

TY: My guess is it was in July or August, but it was pretty warm, pretty hot.

MY: Uh-huh. It starts getting hot in the desert around April.

TY: Yeah, but it was hot when we got there.

MY: It was June, too, because it must have been later on in June, because I remember the graduation, in June, right?

TY: Yeah.

MY: From the, from high school. And that was in Puyallup, it wasn't in Minidoka. That graduation. And then it must have been after you --

TY: Must have been after June, then.

MY: Yeah.

TY: Maybe July.

MY: But I was just trying to figure out, as you were talking, that I remember after you left, we had some communication. And I don't know how. Letters, or what, that, that either you or some of the people in advance party had written back to the families, that the camp isn't ready yet. The barracks aren't, are not finished, and there was no water, the water had to be carted into the camp in barrels, drinking water and so forth. So that they couldn't figure out how the families were to live there, because the conditions.

TY: Isn't that funny? I just don't remember that part.

MY: But we still lived, very primitive condition, when you were --

TY: Well, that's not surprising.

MY: Yeah.

TY: That's not surprising. I'm sure that, the first section that they started was --

MY: A?

TY: -- from Block 1, Block 2, 3, 4, numerically. And those are the barracks that were first prepared, I think, because those were, they were the barracks that the doctors and nurses and people who work in the hospital lived in. So, and we were in Block 4, and Dr. Nakamura, the dentist, was living, our next-door neighbor, right?

MY: Yeah, yeah.

TY: So we might have stayed in the barrack. Maybe the barracks were ready by the time we got there. I really can't tell you. I'm sorry, I don't remember.

MY: But our barrack was ready, already. But we did hear that the people in Block 10 or somewhere down the road, that their barracks were not finished, and they didn't have --

TY: Help.

MY: -- they didn't have --

JY: Partitions?

MY: -- partitions, yet. And then the families had to put blankets up, in order to, to keep, for some privacy, and so forth. But I remember hearing about that, but our barrack was ready already, when we moved in.