Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Roy Ebihara Interview
Narrator: Roy Ebihara
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Denver, Colorado
Date: July 5, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-eroy-01-0017

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TI: So we, in the first hour, we talked about the Old Raton Ranch, you were there, and then your family had just decided to go to Topaz.

RE: Yeah. In December or I guess late November, after Thanksgiving, we were informed that we have to make a decision soon, which camps -- we had the options of going to these camps. And so we were told we had to make that decision, I think, before the first of December, which we did. So it was a tearful farewell with especially the Kimura family, so we bade goodbye, they left a little bit later. We left early, we were on an army truck, I remember an olive drab truck that took us about twenty-five miles to Carrizozo, New Mexico, where there was a train station and we boarded the train there, headed for Delta, Utah. On that train were, I recall, there were people in military uniforms, and they would say, "What are you, a Chink? You couldn't be a Jap." And you know we were told by my older brothers and sister -- my older brother and sisters that, "Don't ever say anything. If they force you to tell you tell, tell 'em you're Chinese." And so it went, we were harassed almost all the way going to Delta. Some of those personnel were drunk.

TI: Oh, the army personnel that was transporting you?

RE: And women, too, in military uniform were on their way to wherever destination. But it was scary, it was always scary. We always feared people in uniform when we were kids.

TI: Before we, we get into the Topaz, so again, from a, almost like a legal standpoint, you were never in the military exclusion zone, which was the West Coast, Washington, Oregon, California. And so I'm, I'm still a little confused why your family had to go to one of the camps. Because --

RE: Well, they were no longer going to provide for us in that setting. It was costing the government too much money.

TI: Again, why didn't they just release you? Because there were other Japanese and Japanese American families that would --

RE: We wouldn't know where to go. None of us, they asked us, I'm almost certain, "You're free to go," well, I don't think that really was, I don't think that was a question. Because everybody feared we were one and the same enemy as far as people in New Mexico were concerned. I think partly from our safety, concern for our safety, as well as we had no destination. We couldn't go back to Clovis, so I don't think the options were really there anymore.

TI: Okay, yeah, I just wanted to establish that.

RE: Yeah, that's right.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.