<Begin Segment 39>

TI: So before we go there, let's, let's now go to New Denver, and when you arrived, what were your first impressions of New Denver?

HS: Well, we arrived, how we go is we arrived in Slocan City, 'cause the railroads stopped in Slocan City. And then from Slocan to New Denver, you had to go by, by truck. And all the, we had, we're taking all our suitcases and possessions --

TI: How long a trek was this?

HS: It's about, it's about, it was twenty miles at that time, so if you can work that out, twenty miles by truck, and you go along the edge of the lake. And kind of at that time was a pretty hairy road, because you're right on the edge of the lake, and you drove quite high, at some spaces, it would be, the highway was (gravel), it was a skyline highway, it was a, it was kind of a dangerous highway, but still, we got up there with no problems. And then when you got to New Denver, they had converted a great big ice rink, or it was a curling and hockey rink that they had converted into a mess hall. (...) They said, "Okay, leave your baggage here, bring your bag," and we jumped off these trucks, a bunch of us at one time, there would be a trainload coming up. Some of them would stop at Slocan, others would, like us, we're going off to New Denver, and we took off our luggage there and put it, say they'll put the luggage in that corner. And most of this was done by people from the camp itself, Japanese people from the camp who were overseeing some of the administration. Because they didn't have, there was no, the reason why the army themselves didn't like this idea of evacuation was they realized that they would have to use soldiers to do all this sort of thing. So they said no, they didn't want to have anything to do with it. So, 'cause the whole thing was that Canada had been at war for two or three years by this time. They had to get them... so anybody who was able-bodied, who was in the army, was being shipped over to Europe, or to eastern Canada to train for going to Europe. And then, of course, then came the west, the Pacific war, and all of a sudden now they had to have personnel for that. The RCMP was stretched because any of the, any of their real able-bodied people were also leaving the RCMP to go as, as members of the armed forces. So it ended up that they had to use whatever help they could get, and they had to use veterans. So there were a whole bunch of veterans who signed up to work as commissionaires with the B.C. Security Commission.

TI: But in addition to that, internally, the Japanese Canadians are...

HS: Yeah, internal security (was done by "commissionaires.")

TI: ...would do their own security, and do a lot of the infrastructure.

HS: That's right, and then they used a lot of Japanese people themselves. People, veterans that, there were a lot of Japanese veterans from World War I, they made them commissionaires as well, and they would sort of be a second level of what you'd call security people to help try and keep order in the whole situation. When we got there, the first thing you had was you, by that time, it would be, I think it was... by the time we arrived in New Denver, it was late afternoon. So we had to go, nobody had, of course, we didn't have the wherewithal to have supper or anything because we were, we just had our luggage. So they said, "Stop here, go and have your supper, and come back out," and then they'll assign us a tent. And then we did get a tent, and then we lived in the tent for, oh, two or three months. And by November or so, early December, we got one of the houses. And both the Nishikaze family and our family went into a larger house, because we had six, there were, kids, our kids were, there was myself and my sister, we were over ten years old by that time. We only had two small children, which was my second sister Eva and my younger brother who was, by that time, I think, five or six years old. So the rest of the, rest of the Nishikazes had every, Harry was the youngest, everybody else was older than he, and they had a family of, total number of seven. So our six, seven, there were thirteen people in the house, so they decided that they would give us one of the larger houses, which was, at that time, twenty-eight feet by sixteen.

TI: And so why don't you, when you say "house," did it have like a kitchen?

HS: Oh, kitchen in the center, a common, common kitchen and dining room and what you would call a family room in the center. And on each side would be bunk beds and double beds and bunk beds that they built.

<End Segment 39> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.