<Begin Segment 18>

TI: What was Topaz like for you? What were your first impressions?

TA: Topaz, first impression, desolate, dry, dusty. You know, it's an isolated area, got to Delta, and then the sergeant up there told us, okay, what's going to happen to the baggage, the bus picked us up, hot, dusty, and that was my first impression of the area. [Laughs] Nothing, cactus, sagebrush. Little green in Delta, but other than that, there was nothing. And then we got into Topaz, the guards standing in the, at the gate, with the guns, and then, interesting thing was that they had a makeshift band, and they're saying the California, the California song, but they were singing, "California, California, bakatare, bakatare, bakatare-yo." You know? In... and we, we said, "Yay, yeah!"

TI: So this was a band of the Japanese.

TA: Boy Scouts. Boy Scouts, yeah, the people that came, went there ahead of us, and they welcomed us. And there were buses going by, and they're just...

TI: And so they made up, they changed the words to say, essentially, "California, stupid California, stupid California."

TA: Yeah, "stupid California." "Bakatare, bakatare," you know? So we all stuck our hands and says, "Yay." [Laughs] But that was the first impression of camp.

TI: Yeah. Well, that seemed like a healthy attitude. Just really realizing it was California's fault.

TA: I guess, because we had a pretty positive attitude that we're not gonna be here long.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.