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MA: And then how long did you stay in Gila?

JH: Until the end of the war, when the war ended.

MA: So August of '45.

JH: Did we leave then? No, we stayed longer than that. I think because they needed to find out a place to put us, you know, when we got out of camp.

MA: Because you were from Hawaii?

JH: Yeah. I believe I told you about this woman named Sherry, she said she was born in Gila, and that they, her family was the last one to leave camp. I mean, her family alone, because they did not have a place to go. But she says, "The Hawaiians left before us," right before they left. I remember that we were taken in Greyhound buses, and we were sent to California in that area called Santa Ana at the time. It became Tustin Air Base after that. But we were in barracks there, and there was an airfield right next to these barracks. So we used to watch the planes taking off, landing, and there was a blimp hangar at the other end, across the airfield. And I remember when we arrived, we went under a blimp, and then we went around that airfield, and then stayed in those barracks for three weeks. In the meantime, how did they did it, they arranged for us to go sightseeing in Los Angeles. I remember going to see Santa Monica, and there was a park that overlooks the ocean, it's like a cliff, and you see houses down there. I remember that part. We also went to the L.A. Zoo, and they had a gorilla. But the gorilla wasn't in an area like in San Diego Zoo or some of the other zoos. They had him in a glass cage-like thing. So when I went out to look at him, of course he went and spit at me. [Laughs] But I knew, I thought I would be safe because they have him in that glass thing. It was so weird. I'd never seen them put a gorilla or anything in a glass, like dome like this.

MA: Okay, so you were in Santa Ana for three weeks and then went back to Hilo?

JH: Uh-huh. We went on a troop ship. So they brought us down from what is now Orange County to L.A. port in Wilmington, which is just down there. And then we boarded this troop ship to return to Hawaii. There were a lot of soldiers on there, and there were, I remember as we were leaving the port, it was Long Beach, you saw the breakwater, and then there were two little lighthouse to show where the entrance and the exit is. It's still there. So as we went out, the water was fine. As soon as we got in, and there were no stabilizers in those days. So the boat was going like this and like this [motions rolling and pitching movement] but the soldiers pulled us up and we watched the Grapes of Wrath in there, you know, the movie. After that, I was sick. [Laughs] I was so sick, that ship was going this way, that way.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.