Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Peggie Nishimura Bain Interview
Narrator: Peggie Nishimura Bain
Interviewer: Alice Ito
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: September 15-17, 2004
Densho ID: denshovh-bpeggie-01-0030

<Begin Segment 30>

AI: Well, tell me about that, the day and the time when you actually had to leave and go to the, the assembly center.

PB: Well, we had, we could take... I believe it was sixty pounds. We couldn't take very much, just few clothing and whatever we could carry. And everybody was buying up the duffle bags, and we had to make our own because they were all sold out. And I remember when we had to go down to Kent and board the train... or was it Renton? I'm not sure, maybe it was Renton. But anyhow, my sister was still behind, staying behind. She and I remember the Seiki boy, Tol Seiki, they went down, came down to see us off. Everybody was piling their things up, and it was just a terrible sight. Like a bunch of refugees, they looked totally lost, nobody knew what was happening, and there were soldiers all around. And we were assigned places on the train, and you just followed what they told you to do, and it was sort of like a dream. Can't hardly believe that was happening. And the kids kept saying, "Why do we have to do this?" and, "Why do we have to do that?" And the soldiers would just direct us to the train, and they'd say, "Well, this is your seat, now, you stay here day and night."

AI: And that would have been about May of 1942?

PB: I can't say right offhand without looking at my notes, the exact date, but it was a horrible time.

AI: And you had quite a long train trip.

PB: Yes, because the train would have to pull off the side track when other trains came by, and every time we went through any town, we had to pull the shades down. You could pull 'em up when we went through the mountains or through the wooded areas and things. My mother was kind of surprised that she could take that trip, and she was kind of enjoying seeing the country, because she'd never been out anyplace. But every time the train would start or stop, why, it was terrible banging, and we'd fall out of our chairs. Middle of the night, if we stopped, why, we'd just fall; just slip right out of our seats. It was a horrible thing, trying to sleep in the trains, and stopping and going. It was just this banging away all the time.

AI: And at that point, did you know where you were going, what assembly center you were being taken to?

PB: Well, we heard we were going to Pinedale, but we didn't know where Pinedale was -- [laughs] -- or what kind of place it was. And I had never been on a train before; it was the first time I ever was on a train, and I thought, "My goodness, this is a horrible thing to ride." And our neighbor was an engineer that operated the train between Portland and Seattle, and he had often said, "I'm going to take you for a train ride someday," and we had always looked forward to it, but we never got around to going. But when I was on that train, I thought, "I don't care if I ever go on a train," because I thought it was terrible. We'd just bang and fall out of our seat. It was so hard trying to sleep on the hard seats, and you couldn't see anything, because if there was anything to see, then we had to pull the shades down, and the soldiers were watching us all the time. And it just seemed like here we were prisoners, and why were we prisoners? We didn't do anything wrong. And we were just standing up for our country, and here we were being treated as enemies. It was really hard on us. But when, as we neared Pinedale, we begin to hear, "Oh, we're going to go to Pinedale," but then, where was Pinedale? And we could feel the heat, it was different. The weather was different. And when we got to Pinedale, we thought, "Well, this is pretty nice." And they were, the Japanese were outside of the fence; there were people outside running around free as can be. And here, they put us inside the fence, and here the other Japanese were on the outside of the fence. But later on, I guess, I don't know whether they came in with us or went to another center, but the whole area was different. We could see fig trees outside of the fence, and the weather was different. Oh, it was hot, hot, hot. Terribly hot.

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