<Begin Segment 7>

MA: So, can you talk about that time, in preparing to leave for camp and what happened to the store and your possessions?

YA: Oh, we had two weeks. These, you know, those posters went up, and in our case it was May 9th. And we had two weeks to liquidate everything. The hordes of... we called them... vulcans? No, what's the other word. Anyway, they just descended on all our --

MA: Vultures.

YA: Vultures, on the Japanese businesses. And they offered ridiculous prices, but we had to take it. You know, our meat case, the scales, our meat slicer, our cash register, twenty-five dollars, my mother got. And our grocery stock, I think she got several pennies on the dollar. So we didn't get much out of the market, the store, at all. And we had to leave all our furniture, my mother didn't know anything about storage. And we had to sell our panel truck, it was practically new. [Clears throat] Excuse me. I don't remember how much we got for it, but it wasn't much. In those days, you could buy a new car for six hundred dollars, I think. So we didn't get much for the panel truck. We left all our clothes, only what we could take. And we bought big duffle bags in which to put our bedding. I forgot how we got to where we were to depart from. I can't remember where we departed from. But a friend took us, yeah. 'Cause he --

MA: A Caucasian person?

YA: No, a Japanese friend. He didn't have to go until another day -- they lived in a different area of the city.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.