Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Tom Akashi Interview
Narrator: Tom Akashi
Interviewers: Tom Ikeda (primary); Chizu Omori (secondary)
Location: Klamath Falls, Oregon
Date: July 3, 2004
Densho ID: denshovh-atom-01-0054

<Begin Segment 54>

TI: And, and so after Fort Stanton, so the war had ended, they're at Fort Stanton, then what happened?

TA: Well, in the meantime, what happened is they took a crew of people to Santa Fe to go there and demolish all of Santa Fe.

TI: All of Fort Stanton.

TA: Fort Stanton -- I mean, all of Fort Stanton, and the segregation, and the German sub-camp. They waited until they were moved, and then they demolished it, so that there's no trace. And then what they did is they took, took them by train to San Pedro. And then the San Pedro detention center became Japanese segregation, number one. All correspondence, everything else, had to go through Santa Fe as if it, as if it was still located in Santa Fe.

TI: But they were in Los Angeles?

TA: They were in Los Angeles at that time. And another interesting thing about this is that how, what it is is that by then, the people were able to go back to the Pacific Coast, so my uncles returned, my cousin, Tokutaro's son, went back in the, in Los Angeles. And again, I was trying to find out through Mary -- see, by then, by the time I got interested, Dave already died. And so I was wondering, how did my father find out that Dave was there, and how did they get the message.

TI: Right, you mentioned that earlier, and then he brought the rice ball.

TA: The rice ball, yeah.

TI: Right, okay.

TA: He says, "We really enjoyed the rice ball during Christ-, you know, Christmas and things like that. Meaning that it would, it alluded to the fact that Tokutaro left from Santa -- Terminal Island, so therefore, he spoke it in Terminal Island, and he enjoyed it. And, and gave an indication that they were going to Portland, because the nurse, while they were they were doing the physical, giving the shots and whatnot, erroneously said, "Well, it looks like you people are going to Portland." And at that time, my father, they had access to newspapers, so he looked at the, looked and found that the General Gordon was berthed at Portland, so he figured that that's where, that's where...

TI: And that kind of completes the loop, because in Portland is when he met the family on the, on the ship.

TA: Yeah. And therefore, from Terminal Island, he was under guard again, back to Terminal, to Portland. In fact, they were there for two weeks. So they were, they were ahead of the ship, really, because the ship was not even moored in the, in Portland, in the army terminal there. But they were detained there, and then when the ship came in, everybody was loaded, then at the last moment, they, police escorted him to the, to the ship.

TI: Right. And you mentioned that earlier. So that, that closes that loop.

<End Segment 54> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.