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AI: Oh, excuse me. I should have asked you, after you left Tule Lake in June of '43, what did happen to your mother and your younger sisters?

EH: (Yes), well that, you know, it was after that that they probably gave detailed announcements, and kept everybody abreast about what was going to happen to Tule Lake. Everybody got an assignment to, to go to another camp, or you chose where to go. For my mother, she was all ready to go to Amache, which was in Colorado, because I think in those days, the theory for tuberculosis was that the higher elevation, the better. And my father, I think, was in about a 5000 elevation, or 3000. Anyway, that's why they sent her to Amache. And my mother figured that no, she wasn't going through all that again. And then she didn't really like camp. I had, I had this sister with an amputated leg, and for her, in times of -- you know, when, if a riot occurred, that was (going to) be very scary for her, because you can't move fast if you have a crippled, handicapped youngster. And even in times of fire, you can't escape fast. But she knew that the education was kind of abnormal, and you, as I remember, I think there weren't a lot of typewriters. And a lot of handicapping situations. So she made arrangements -- she went, she went to the employment office to look at the kinds of jobs she could get. She had a few friends who were outside and working in garment factories and things like that. And so she saw this, she saw this job potential in a Winnebago Indian Boarding School in northern Wisconsin. And for some reason, she took it. I wasn't there, so I, there certainly weren't, there was no discussion about it. And I, when I heard about it, I think I was in school, and she probably wrote me early in the school year what she was doing. But she didn't have time, probably. You know, it was a rush to -- you had to leave there probably by the end of August, and, because there was a lot of traffic, you could imagine people going out and coming in, I think more than, I think two-thirds of Tule Lake had to go to other camps, which meant that they had to facilitate, then, all that moving and, and then getting incoming people relocated.

AI: So, so how did your mother then leave Tule Lake?

EH: Well, she, she took this job, and she had to do a lot of packing because the two older of us weren't there. And she decided to take -- and she had, she asked the missionary to bring her car up to her, he drove it up from Sacramento to Tule Lake.

AI: The Oldsmobile?

EH: (Yes), the Oldsmobile. And she got the car. My, one of my sisters, one of the middle sister keeps talking about having a bicycle in camp, and I don't remember that. My recollection was when I was in school in Milwaukee, my mother wrote and said, "It's too cold here." Meaning Nielsville, Wisconsin. "Go to Penny's and buy each of the girls a snowsuit." And I think she told me to buy, to buy a bicycle for Jean, because, because she had to commute -- the, the Indian school only went up to eighth grade, probably, and she was, she was probably going to be in her sophomore year in high school. So one way or another, Jean had to bike ten miles into the town of Nielsville. But my mother got the Oldsmobile, and there was a Johnny Yoshimura who we knew as a basketball coach for our Girl Reserve group, and he wanted to go to University of Minnesota. And my mother knew Johnny. Johnny had had a rough time kind of supporting himself and going from job to job, picking fruit and that kind of thing. And once in a while, he also turned out he was also a, a boyfriend of one of my mother's best friend's daughters. And so I think maybe on that score -- Johnny probably was at our house some, too, because, being a basketball coach. But, so that was just right for my mother, that Johnny could help drive to Minnesota. And it was interesting because she, one of the things she kept telling me that she was always suspicious of Johnny because he was always having to stop to urinate, and was always thirsty. And to my mother, those were sure signs of diabetes, because my father was diabetic.

And, but they went -- and it wasn't until probably ten years ago that my sister in New York came for the first time. One of my sisters in New York. She'd kind of been a recluse, and wasn't communicating with any of us. And when (a) Tule Lake reunion was occurring, she wanted to go. Because she was a big -- not exactly a socialite, but she certainly was a wild one, I'd have to say, in camp. So she had a lot of social catching up to do. And she finally came to visit us in Seattle, and we were reminiscing, I was asking her, "What do you remember about leaving camp?" And it was a little different from what my youngest sister, for instance, would -- Sara was seven or eight, I think. And Jean was fourteen, probably. And, and she just broke out in hilarious laughter and she said, "Do you know we spent a week in Yellowstone Park?" And I said, "What? How could you? What did you do?" She says, "Oh, we camped. We had a great time. Mom always wanted to see Yellowstone." And I remember that my mother loved to travel, and, and she wanted to see Grand Canyon and all this. So here they were traveling in this Oldsmobile, you know, the three daughters and Johnny, and they camped for a whole week in Yellowstone. I said, "It's a wonder nobody fined you. Because here you were, Japanese, and what were you doing in, in these hinterlands?" But they did have a couple of problems. That people wouldn't rent rooms to them. And at one time, they got turned away, and so their only recourse was to, to get to the next town. And John stepped on the gas, and was speeding, and sure enough, a policeman caught up with them. And, and Johnny, I guess, claimed that that was his reason, to attract a policeman. And when the police stopped them, stopped them and he told them what the situation was. "You know, we've got kids in this car, and we can't find a place to stay." And so the police said, "All right, follow me." And he put the siren on, and went to the next motel and ordered the people to, "rent these folks a room." Two rooms, and that's how they got by.

But when my mother dropped John off at U Minnesota, she had another hundred and fifty miles to drive to Nielsville, Wisconsin. And I was in school in Milwaukee, so two or three times that year, maybe four times, I had to take a five o'clock bus out of Milwaukee, and it took us nine hours to get across that little state to get to the other side. And even in the dark winter, the bus would stop at every little town, and kids would get on. Tennis shoes and cotton bobby socks, and cotton skirts. And I, I finally said, "Where are you kids going at this time of the morning?" And, "You have to travel this far to go to school?" And they said, "Oh, no, we're teachers." They're ninth grade kids that the, everybody in rural areas got factory jobs or were drafted. And there was nobody left to teach school, so here they were, recruiting ninth graders to go teach in the next village, whether it was first grade or kindergarten. But that's what they were doing. And anyway, that was a lesson. I had, coming out of this women's college, I, there were the upper echelon in, in every town had daughters in that college. And it was funny because those girls, every one of 'em had laundry bags or, got their boxes, laundry boxes or something. They would send all their laundry home in these boxes, and it would come back all pressed and, and here we were, I said, "My God, even in Sacramento, I did the laundry." I mean, nobody was (going to) do that for me, or I had to iron my younger sister's clothes.

<End Segment 47> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.