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TI: And so describe how the family left Poston.

FK: Oh, that's another story. In the meanwhile, my father was writing to wherever. And he told Mom that, "It's not good for you to stay in camp with all these strangers and all, though the friends are helpful. You and the girls are to sign a sugar beet contract to leave the camp." In those days, the only way you could leave camp was if you had a job offer from the outside. And the only jobs were as farm laborers. So my mother, my sister Aki, and Sachi was still in high school, these two had to sign up as farm laborers and we, it was with farmers out in Colorado who happened to be former patients. And so Mom and Aki signed the sugar beet contract and we were to leave camp. This was in April of '43. So, actually, we were in camp only ten months. So we... oh, in the meanwhile, Father Lavery from the Maryknoll church used to see my dad all the time, and he had access to my dad's car. And right before the war started, in November of '41, my father had bought a Lincoln Continental from the man across the street, the Ford agency, and it had that tire thing in the back trunk. It was a beautiful car. So Father Lavery drives that to Poston, for us to leave camp.

TI: Oh, it was like being your driver to take you out of camp.

FK: Yeah. In the meanwhile, when we found out, when my mother found out that Father Lavery was bringing us the car, she asked around camp, I guess, and found this young man whose family used to farm in the Gardena area, and asked if he would drive us out of camp, Mother and the whole gang of us. So he said, "Sure," you know, brand new car, why not? So he was a nice young man. So we made arrangements to leave camp, and I don't know how we fit in there with stuff, but we did. And the first night -- oh, before we left camp, Father (Lavery) brought the car to our block, and the whole camp came and surrounded the car. And it's the first time electric windows came in, and all the kids were in there pushing the button and everything. Well, the car wouldn't start. So we had to get it recharged. [Laughs] And so our departure was delayed by a day or two, I don't know. So that's all I remember, we couldn't leave when we wanted to. So we finally did leave, and we headed first to Gila, outside of Phoenix, and stayed there one night.

TI: Gila the... not the camp?

FK: Yeah.

TI: So you went from Poston camp to another camp?

FK: Gila.

TI: And why did you do that? Were there people...

FK: Well, we had no reservations for a motel. Don't ask me, I don't know.

TI: That's what happened, though. That was interesting. So you went there...

FK: So the first night we stayed there, and then the next night we were out on a stretch of Arizona or New Mexico. And there was one motel stuck out there, so we pulled in and they had vacancy. So Mother and us girls and this young man, we made arrangements to stay there. It was the first time that my younger sister and I had taken a bath in umpteen years. So she and I played in the bath like two little seals, you know. It was so much fun. We didn't want to leave the bathtub. I still remember that, freedom. And from there we went to someplace in New Mexico where it was cold, the altitude was, was it Albuquerque? I think. And then from there, Albuquerque to Denver, and then from Denver we found, no, we went to Brighton, Colorado, where we had to stay with... we had made arrangements to stay with this farmer who used to be my dad's patient. And back to pumping the water, and an outhouse. And my dad thought we were going to have a better time there.

TI: Well, so was it? I mean, how was that compared to being in Poston?

FK: Well, at least Poston they had toilets with running water. This we had to go pump outside, aside from the outhouse. We survived. Oh, and this house, they had kerosene lanterns, too. Talk about roughing it. Poston was a piece of cake. [Laughs]

TI: And so your father, so he, again, through his correspondence, arranged all these things.

FK: Right.

TI: I'm curious also, during the war, he helped start this Japanese hospital in Los Angeles. Whatever happened to that during the war?

FK: Oh, before evacuation, somehow or another, I don't know who the connection was, but they contracted with White Memorial Hospital to lease the hospital to them. That turned out to be a good move. So they used it all during the war, and after the war, when we returned from Denver, somehow or another they signed the hospital back to the Japanese, and they were able to refurbish it and get back to work.

TI: Good.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.