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AI: Well, tell, tell me about, tell me about leaving Walerga and the trip, and going to Tule Lake.

EH: Well, I don't know how my mother got that assignment, but we were, I'm sure she had to go somewhere, and was told that we were leaving at such and such a time. That meant that we had to pack everything, and have it ready for a truck to pick up. And Sacramento is so blastingly hot, even in September, August, it was hot. So we would carry what we could carry... distant, it always seems that the gate, front gate is way up there. You know, I, they must have taken us on the bus to a train facility, station somewhere. I don't, I know that we didn't go all the way into Sacramento to get back on this train, train. Walerga is north, northwest, slightly north -- Del Paso, there are a lot of towns that I remember, and it's in that suburb area. But once they put us on the train again, I think it took us two nights and maybe two days. I don't, you know, it was ridiculous, because Klamath Falls wasn't that far. We had been on, we had been on trips at least to Shasta, and Shasta wasn't that far from Klamath Falls. But that train just chugged along, and I think every time another train came, they probably had to get on a side track. But it was miserable in that it was so hot and it was so dark. And they kept giving us sandwiches for every damn meal. And the kids must have gotten milk but I don't, I don't remember that we got any liquid. It was crowded, 'cause these were old fashioned trains. The seats were very close together, and they didn't want us to raise the shades up. And traveling in stuffy trains without the shades up, whether it's night or day is, is inhuman, almost.

But it just seemed forever and so slow, and when we finally got there, Tule Lake was probably fairly filled. Tule Lake's case, there's a Fujii family, Frank Fujii's family, they -- Frank must have been five or six or seven -- but the whole family came up because they were able to, people were able, the early arrivers could get jobs helping to rush to finish the camps. And so a lot of Northwesterners were there way before Californians were. And, but then, then for the first time, you were aware that Marysville, Colusa, Yuba County -- that's, they're all about fifty miles north of Sacramento. That they had one section of camp, and Ishikawas got put way in the corner, what I visioned to be... must have been in the northwest corner. The northwest-most block in that whole camp. So we would get, there'd be names like "Hinterland" or, "Alaska" or something like that. But, and it was a long distance from the gate again. But, and they, it's interesting, each of these camps, when they brought the luggage, you'd hear a truck and, and they'd honk the horn and they'd say, "3406," and they just dump all your stuff right there, and you managed to drag it all in. And again, in Tule Lake, the floors were so dusty, you know. But you felt, you felt a more permanency in Tule Lake. You knew that was going to be a long, longer term. That, there was at least plumbing. Not in our barracks, but I think typically, in each camp, there was a big mess hall that takes the place of maybe two barracks, and in the middle there's a, a laundry room. There's a women's bath and toilet facility, then a laundry room and then the men's facility. And then, the first, the first barrack is half the block manager's office. And I guess they managed to bring the mail, they managed bring the, deliver the mail at each block manager's office, and he had cubbyholes for everybody, so we just picked up our mail that way.

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.