<Begin Segment 15>

AI: Well, you had just told us a little bit about getting on the train to go to Pinedale, and that it was four nights. Can you tell us a little bit about what that ride was like?

SH: Oh, it was uneventful... slow, take that long. We got fed. But when we reached Pinedale, it was kinda desolate. Flat land, we're not used to real flat land. Hot, it was hot. We were luckier than a lot of the evacuees, in that Camp Pinedale was built from the ground up, new... they didn't take over a racetrack like some in Southern California. Santa Anita was used as a collection point until, temporary housing. I heard of cases where evacuees were put in horse stalls and they hadn't even whitewashed them, or washed them down or anything -- smelly, dirty. But we had a brand new camp. The whole camp was new. But, it was hot, it was nothing to be a hundred plus for that two months that I spent there.

AI: How were you feeling at that time?

SH: Pardon?

AI: How were you feeling at that time? Getting out there, this hot...

SH: Oh, it was hot. We stayed wherever we could find some shade. Stayed inside most of the time, but no, no air conditioning, no fans. But we got fed three square meals a day. I, for that short time that Camp Pinedale was in operation, I applied for a job, in the athletic department. They held organized baseball, softball, for the boys and girls. I was married... let's see, yeah, so I took on a job coaching girls softball team for month that we were there. Didn't know anything about it, but they wanted a coach, so I tried... my wife played, so I tried. The stay in there was short, it was just a temporary...

SN: When you were going, first of all, where is Pinedale?

SH: Pinedale is a few miles, I don't know the distances, probably 20 miles north of Fresno, directly north. In the evenings we could see the city lights, the shadow. So I'd say it couldn't be much over 10, maybe, 10 miles. You could see the lights, because it was the only place in the desert there, and it was perfectly flat. In the evening you could see the light shadows up there.

SN: And, is this, where did everyone else from Bellevue go? Was this the assembly center they went to?

SH: After Pinedale, most of us went to Tule Lake. I think the whole group from Pinedale went to Tule Lake. From Tule Lake, they put some into Minidoka and some went to Heart Mountain from Bellevue.

SN: We'll want to go into those things in more detail. So we'll ask you some questions about that later. But most of the people from Bellevue did go to Pinedale, is that right?

SH: Yes.

SN: Now, I'd like to go into a little bit about that train ride a little bit more. You talked about how this was a four day ride and all the shades were down. Do you know why they were drawn?

SH: No. I don't know why they were drawn. We could see out if it wasn't. But nobody, I don't remember seeing any people on the side, except when they went through a town, maybe. We were stopped during the day on the side, sidetrack. I don't know why. But then, there were army guards armed with the rifle. There was at least one to every train.

SN: How did that make you feel, being in a train for four days and you couldn't really look outside, with guards? What was running through your mind at that time?

SH: Well, we just kept wondering where we were gonna go. We didn't know where we was gonna end up. They never told us. Everybody was... there were rumors flying right and left, where we gonna go, what they're gonna do to us. Lot of people, especially Isseis, couldn't understand. And their children couldn't tell them. They got some wild ideas, what's gonna happen to us.

SN: What were some of these wild ideas? Did they ever convey those to you?

SH: Well, they said they were gonna put us in a prison. Put us away and separate the families -- in cases some families were gonna get separated. There was that rumor, which they proved to be rumors because the families were not separated. Those of us from Bellevue, from hearing, talking to people later on, we were more fortunate because we were sent to a -- like I told you earlier -- a nice new camp. Facilities were all new. It was so hot there though, the lumber, the green lumber they used, and it's sun, it got up to a hundred plus, and they were together, but there were cracks like that. And in Pinedale, they poured a concrete -- no, no, concrete would've been all right, but, I mean, too expensive -- tar. And, it was so hot that the army cot legs would sink into that tar that deep. You couldn't move the bed the next day, if you slept on 'em... that hot. But we did get, we had to line up for all meals, there would be a long line. They'd feed one group, so then, they'd take care that line, than there'd be another line. You'd be in line while the other was... you had to wait in line for the people to eat, then you got the chance to go in there and you eat, and people were waiting. The mess hall crew was busy just about all the time. Start in at morning early and mid-morning they're finished, and pretty soon they'd have to start treating lunch group, the first ones fed.

I took a job after we moved to Pinedale, not from Pinedale... from Pinedale to Tule Lake, I got a job in a mess hall. Here, ex-farmer getting a job in a mess hall, and why? I knew I was gonna be sure to get fed. [Laughs] We worked, my wife and I both worked in there. In fact, I worked as a waiter and she worked as a cook's helper. And we always ate first, then we let the block people eat, and they came in about a couple of three shifts. There was two hundred and fifty to a block in the time, block that I was in. And it took about thirty cooks, the chief cook, cooks' helpers, dishwashers, and waiters. We probably had twenty-five to thirty per block. Imagine a farmer like me having to carry, waiter. So you had a plate here, and two plates in this hand, and two in here. I was able to carry about four plates. We set it down for them... they didn't come in line with a plate in their hand like some places did, in this block that we had, we served them already filled plates. The, I recall that the chief cook for our block was a, he was from Tacoma and he had, he was a chef at the Hotel Tacoma, the best hotel in Tacoma at that time. So he was a good cook. But like good cooks, there were... he was really, how would you say... very touchy, very hot tempered. You didn't dare complain about the food.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.