<Begin Segment 9>

DM: Do you remember hearing the first time, for the first time that you had to leave home and go to camp?

AM: I remember that they posted signs on the telephone pole near the house that lived in, we lived in. That was on Sixth... at that point, I cannot remember what it, house looks like, but I remember that we'd only been it maybe six or seven months because we had just come back from living in Kingston, Washington, we were there for about a year. And that's at the other end of Bainbridge Island, Bainbridge Island is not just a real island itself, I don't think. But anyway, at the other end is a place called Kingston, it's all part of Kitsap county. And I actually went to school there for one semester, and that was not very successful. My father moved me back, and we commuted to Seattle from Bainbridge, from Kingston, it was, on the ferry. And that's when I started the Roman Catholic high school, Immaculate Conception High School, which was near Providence Hospital. I think the school no longer exists, but it was a school for girls. And again, because she felt that, we had to pay tuition, of course, so it was not exactly easy for the family, but they thought it was better for our education. And I think that we got a good, I think that I had a good education.

DM: What kind of things did you do to prepare for going to the assembly center?

AM: Well, I had to help my mother most of all, meaning I was responsible for helping her clean up the house, store things the best we can. And I remember going down to Bon Marche, I think it was, and bought four suitcases, one for each of us. And if you think about this -- and I've since, subsequent to this, of course, when I talked to the students when I was teaching, I would tell them, "If you're going on a vacation, you know where you're going, you know how long you're gonna be gone, you know what the weather's gonna be like when you get there. But to pack without knowing where you're gonna be going and what you could pack, what was needed." So people who are in Seattle, going to Minidoka was an incredible, not just cultural shock, but physical shock. Because Seattle is a pretty temperate climate; it rains a lot, but it's temperate, never really gets really cold. But in Idaho, of course, we had freezing -- well, it's north of Yellowstone National Park, so you could imagine. Yellowstone National Park is closed in the wintertime, so if you were living in a place that was north of Yellowstone Park, you can imagine what it was like. I remember the first year we were there, they issued great big World War I army overcoats, men's overcoats, and you could see all these kids walking around with these long dragging overcoats because, until they got cut off. But I remember wearing one of those because it was the only warm coat that I had.

DM: Now, this is in Minidoka, Idaho.

AM: Yeah, we left Puyallup Assembly Center.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright ©2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.