Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Grace Sugita Hawley Interview
Narrator: Grace Sugita Hawley
Interviewer: Megan Asaka
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Date: June 3, 2009
Densho ID: denshovh-hgrace-01-0009

<Begin Segment 9>

MA: But then when you arrived on the mainland, that's when...

GH: Uh-huh, from the ship to, yeah, that's when they had armed guards. Maybe those guys were the ones, I don't know. Maybe they were the ones. I don't think so. I think they were troops, just transferring them.

MA: And so from Oakland, you then got on the train...

GH: Got on the train.

MA: ...to, eventually to Jerome.

GH: Uh-huh. And we didn't know where we were going. So that's why we went days and days and days. I think it was four or five days, 'cause everything was slower then. And I think it was around then.

MA: And what were you, I mean, I'm assuming you were on the mainland for the first time.

GH: Uh-huh.

MA: What was going through your head at that point when you were on the train?

GH: Well, it was cold, January. When we landed in San Francisco, it was cold. For us it was cold because we didn't know anything like that before. And so, and we didn't have enough warm clothing. What my mother could put together, you know, it wasn't warm enough. But then snow, we saw snow in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and they stopped and let us get off and get some air and touch the snow. [Laughs] So that was nice. And I remember on the train, 'cause I wrote down the states as we went through all the states. And then I remember as we got closer to camp, we were in Arkansas, then the shantytowns, you know, the black, colored people, they used to call them "colored people," oh, you see all the shabby homes, you know, and they look like they're falling apart and the kids are just sitting there. I can remember that scene, just sitting there, just ragged looking, you know. It's the first time we saw that kind of poor people. Because in Hawaii we never saw that. We never had the extreme, like we never had slums like they have on the mainland. And we learned all that later. And we didn't have segregation. In fact, we never saw colored people at that time in Hawaii. I think there were hardly any, we never saw any. So it was a new experience, besides. And so all along the way, the countryside, when you see homes scattered around, just so shabby-looking, poor people. So when we got into camp, it was raining and wet and cold. Cold, cold, cold. 'Cause January was... because Jerome is, Arkansas is humid. So it's either wet, cold, or hot and humid in the summer, two extremes. So it was cold, though, for us. We were issued blankets, army blankets, and beds. They called those beds army beds.

MA: Cots?

GH: The ones with the metal posts, that kind. And what else?

MA: Were there other Hawaiians there at that point in Jerome, or were you the first group to arrive?

GH: We were the second group.

MA: You were the second group, okay.

GH: Uh-huh. The first group, that's where our doctor who was, he was our family doctor here, he was there before us, and he saw our name on the list. And so he was there to greet us at the train station. And my dad was so surprised, and then he also saw another old friend who used to work at the bakery years ago, before the war, and we always say "before the war" and "after the war." And so he didn't see him for years and years, and there he was. They always look up the roster, I guess, to see who's on it, and that's how they found him. So it was very interesting, nice reunion.

MA: And was the Hawaiian group sort of put in one area of Jerome?

GH: They put us in, when we got there, we had enough people to fill up one block, the block we were in was all our group. And then they had two blocks, 39 and 38 were all Hawaiian. And then 40 was a mix, partly Hawaiian group and partly mainland group. So our whole, our block was all Hawaiians, all Hawaiians, so we got to know them quite well.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.