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TI: Yeah, I'm going to switch gears here and go to December 1942, because during that month, a tragic event happened in camp, and that involved your father. And I wanted you to sort of tell me what happened.

AA: My father was a, had a job of washing dishes in the mess hall. He and another fellow dishwasher, after their shift, they decided to go outside the camp to search for greasewood, which was highly prized for making ornaments and things like that. And all of a sudden, there was, a storm came up, and it started snowing. And in the late afternoon, my dad didn't show up when he was scheduled to wash the evening dishes. So we were kind of frantic, and then his partner that he had gone out with had come back, couldn't figure out what it was, and he, we asked him and he was surprised. He says, "Oh, I thought he came back. We got separated." And turned out that -- I don't know why my dad didn't come back -- but there was a, kind of a whiteout, and he couldn't, in the evening, you couldn't see the light of the camp. Usually, you could see the lights from about a mile, several number of miles away, but never did come back. And so we sent out, they sent out the crews at night, had a motor pool, they had sent out half a dozen trucks and they were combing the sagebrush. And didn't have any luck 'til the next morning they --

TI: And what were the weather conditions during this time?

AA: Oh, it was cold, it was freezing, but the snow had let up. And the next morning, they let the high school out, and these kids formed a long, mile-long line with, I still remember they had these poles with flags on so they could see each other, and they combed the desert, they were sweeping the desert back and forth. And my, after the third day, they found my dad. The project director Stafford had a, he had a private pilot's license, and he had a plane, and he flew up hour after hour. He had taken up a Caucasian observer with him, and they'd fly until they ran out of gas, and he'd come back, and he'd pick up another different observer, and he flew I don't know how many sorties back and forth. My understanding was that he was the guy that spotted my dad. But according to one of the newspaper articles, somebody else claimed that he was the one that found him.

TI: And how large an area was the search, were they searching?

AA: Oh, it was several miles.

TI: So several square miles in terms of area?

AA: Yeah. But they found him a couple of miles away from camp.

TI: And sort of describe those three days in terms of your family and what was happening?

AA: Well, I was riding a truck most of the time. There was a bunch scouring the desert. Daytimes were nice and clear, cold, crisp. But by the third, third day I was thoroughly exhausted. I could hardly stay awake, 'cause I had been going all night and day out there.

TI: And it sounds like others were doing the same thing. I mean, not only had your project director, but others who were searching the desert.

AA: Yeah.

TI: So tell me a little bit more about just the support or the camp in terms of, you mentioned the high school going out there and looking. I mean, how many people were looking for your father at this time?

AA: Oh, I don't know how many, but when I saw the number of flags, that stretched for, for a mile. They were separated by 20, 30 feet apart.

TI: And so when they did that, did they just miss your father in that first sweep, or were they looking in a, I'm sorry, a different place?

AA: Well, they were probably looking for a different place. One of the interesting things about Stafford, he was a pretty dedicated help. And I remember the first, the early, when we first got there, my uncle Tom, he was one of the first draftees in 1940, and he came, on his furlough, he came to camp because nobody's left in Seattle, so he came to see his mother. And they had a ruling that no military personnel was supposed to be inside the camp. You could understand why, some, some disgruntled Japanese would jump him, there could be quite a problem, and so they had the ruling that no military personnel would be in, permitted in the camp. So he came and the guards saw that he was, he was a sergeant in the army, and they wouldn't let him in. And it was, we visited for a couple hours, and then our, a friend of ours, a girl by the name of Yasuko Koyama used to be Stafford's secretary. She was the only Japanese civilian that was working inside the camp, she was a civil service employee, and she was Stafford's secretary. So Stafford said okay, he told Yasuko, "Take my Cadillac and take the family outside. I can give permits for, for the residents to go outside." So that's what we did, and we had a nice picnic lunch the following day when we got the permit. And we went out to Hazelton and visited with my uncle, the whole family went out, and we did that for a couple of days. Finally, he decided to go back, go down to (Caldwell) to see his brother George. But I thought that was pretty nice of Stafford.

TI: And then eventually they changed that rule.

AA: Yes, they changed because of that.

TI: That family members in the service could come in.

AA: Yeah.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.