<Begin Segment 82>

AI: And that was in about September, or so, that you went to Cincinnati?

MY: Right, right. Because it was just about, in time for Mike to enroll in school. And, and there was a lot of troop activity during that time. We left -- there were quite a few of us, and -- what's her name? Ruth Sasaki, Sakai. Ruth Sakai was --

TY: Ruth Sakai? Yeah.

MY: Yeah, remember Ruth?

TY: Yeah.

MY: She died quite a few years ago. But she was with our group. So I don't remember anybody else.

TY: When you went to Cincinnati?

MY: Sam Shoji, yeah. Yeah, Sam Shoji and Ruth, and there were quite a, rather large group of us.

TY: Oh, yeah?

MY: And we got, we got to the train station and the, the guy there... who was it? The conduc-, not the conductor. Conductors are, the train master, the ticket-taker, or whatever. He told us that, "The train already left," or something. "It left hours ago." And we were going, "What?" We were standing around with our bags.

TY: This in Twin Falls?

MY: It must have, I thought it was in Boise.

TY: Boise? Well, how did you get there? On the bus?

MY: Did... yeah.

TY: Boise's a bigger town, bigger city. Twin Falls is kind of --

MY: Small town.

TY: -- very small town.

MY: Okay. Somehow, Boise sticks in my head.

TY: Boise could very well be.

MY: So we, we were waiting there, and, and then they told us that a troop train was coming through. 'Cause they were moving a lot of American troops back and forth, and that, that they told us, if you want to go to Cincinnati, or go East that we should caught -- so we hopped that troop train. And we, so we didn't have to pay anything on that train. And I think that was the train that we were meant to take. And I remember very distinctly that it stopped in Lincoln, Nebraska. Does that, does that make sense?

JY: Yeah.

MY: Lincoln, Nebraska?

JY: On the way to Cincinnati?

MY: Yeah, we almost missed the train because we got off to buy some food.

JY: Uh-huh.

MY: Okay, they changed tracks or something, and Mike and I thought -- they said, "Well, you can get off." And so we got off, and we came back to the track, and the train wasn't there. And all our bags and everything was on the train, and we just -- then it turned out that they had changed tracks. And then all the guys who were on the train were sticking up, "Hey, better hurry up and get on." So we hopped across the tracks, and we got on the train. But that was a period when they were, troops were being moved here and there, I guess, during the war. And then we got on that, stayed on that train, and went to Cincinnati.

AI: Did, excuse me, did you get any harassment at all, or anything along the way there?

MY: No, you know, the soldiers were really fascinated with us. They didn't have any idea -- "Where are you from?" And we told -- and, and then we told them we were Japanese and they, and there were a couple, many of them very young, very naive, too. They, I don't know where -- and they said, "God, I didn't know they, I'd never met a Japanese woman before. I didn't know that they were so pretty," and things like that. They were very funny. But -- and they, of course, hadn't heard about the camp, about the camps. And so we had a very interesting conversation on the train.

Jeni Y: Didn't you say they also said that you didn't look like the --

MY: Like a cartoon?

Jeni Y: -- images in the propaganda movies.

MY: Yeah, yeah. They thought, they didn't, we didn't look like those buck teeth, you know, people in... and we were, I remember thinking, gosh, these guys were -- and they had never seen a Japanese woman before.

TY: After all, they were eighteen, probably eighteen, nineteen? They were probably that age, so --

MY: Uh-huh, very young --

TY: -- young kids.

MY: -- very young kids.

TY: Yeah.

MY: And they probably didn't know where they were going, either. You know, they were probably very scared people, young men going to, overseas or whatever it was that they were being shipped to from here to there. And so they were not seasoned -- they didn't, maybe their parents would have been, kind of have hostile feelings towards the Japanese, and things like that. But these kids were, they were kids, like us. They were the same as... and we, so then we got off -- and most of them, I think, got off at Lincoln, Nebraska, probably, and either changed trains or went somewhere else. Because from there, I think that most of them got off. Is Lincoln, Nebraska and Cincinnati fairly close?

JY: Well, yeah, relatively close.

MY: Relatively close, and, because I think after that -- I was trying to think if they were still on the train from there. I don't really have anybody to ask, 'cause I don't, Sam Shoji is still in Seattle, though, right?

TY: Yeah.

MY: Sam is still there. Then we got to Cincinnati. And somehow or another, from Cincinnati, we got to the university campus. Oh, we stayed, yeah, we stayed at the hostel, hostelry. The American Friends Service Committee had set up a hostel in Cincinnati -- you stayed there, too, when you came out -- for people leaving camp. And they were incredibly, incredible people.

TY: Yeah.

MY: They set up these places for people to, for Japanese Americans to stay for --

JY: They did a lot. They did a lot.

MY: They were wonderful. Yeah, they were wonderful, wonderful people.

<End Segment 82> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.