<Begin Segment 8>

SF: So, you went to Puyallup. Is that right?

AH: Puyallup Assembly Center, yeah.

SF: How did you get from Seattle to Puyallup?

AH: Bus. We were loaded onto a bus down by Weller Street. And, you know, I had forgotten, "How in the heck did I get to the bus?" And my sister told me, "Oh, your Chinese friends" took me. And they had stored some of our personal things. Fellow workers at this brewery. And we went to the bus, and as we drove down the East Highway, so-called East Highway, there were all these Japanese farmers working out in the field, and they knew that the next group is them. But the government ordered them to stay with the fields and keep growing things. So they were all out in the field workin' away. Really a compliant a group.

SF: When you got to Puyallup or "Camp Harmony," what, when you saw it, this fairgrounds, I mean, and that was going to be your future home for some unspecified period. What was your reaction to that?

AH: The same old reaction as being evacuated. We had to do the best we can as to what is to be our life for a while. The first thing we did, they gave us canvas bags and they told us to go fill it with straw for mattresses. So we all made straw mattresses. And barracks were military-type barracks with, military cots -- some canvas, some steel cots. One room per family with a single pot-bellied stove and a light hanging in the middle. The Puyallup Assembly Center barracks, the walls came out only about 6... 6 or 7 feet and since it was a single sloped roof, there was a triangular open space that you can hear all the way down the barrack -- you can hear 'em. Some of these people used to work in the mess hall and they would bring home things from the mess hall, and you can smell all the extra food that they brought home to eat. And we had to fill all the knotholes and chinks with paper or whatever, because you walk by the barracks, you could see all these cracks and knotholes going by.

LH: I had heard stories that some of roofs leaked.

AH: Oh, most likely. Most likely. But we were there only about three or four months. And then we were packed onto trains and shipped off to Idaho -- Minidoka, Idaho.

LH: Do you recall what you felt when you were in Puyallup and saw those guard towers and the soldiers with guns...

AH: It's a funny thing, I can't remember how I felt. I didn't feel mad at them. The guards were all friendly, and the group had formed a band -- a dance band. And I used to take one of the military trucks and I'd transport the band from... we had four areas -- three parking lots and the central area. And they had dances for the young people. Used to drive the truck around to them and I remember bringing them home to Camp D, which was a central area. And out jumped the bugler to blow "Taps" from the back end of the truck. [Laughs] So... I guess we just took what had to come, and did what had to be done. And the funny thing is that you remember happy times a lot more than you remember sad times, and I still remember some of the fun that we used to have.

SF: What kind of things were fun that stick in your mind?

AH: Well, in the camps, about social, dance socials and parties and things were the only things that we could have. I did a lot of ice skating in Idaho because ponds froze over and you couldn't do that in Seattle, we had to go to the rinks. But over there you just go down to the ice pond and sometimes it was kinda risky with the ice being so thin. But, those kinda funs.

LH: Where could you get the ice skates at that time?

AH: I had 'em. I don't know whether I had brought 'em over there or had 'em shipped back to Seattle. I think I probably had 'em sent back to me. After we got there, we were able to work... I mean, communicate with whoever was keeping our stuff, and have so-called "luxuries" sent to us. And so I had ice skates and I skated around. That's the kinda job I did was in the legal section I was working to write letters for the internees back to Seattle regarding their personal belongings. And so that was part of my, my work. The very first job I had, we were one of the very early transferees from Puyallup, and I was working in an office issuing beds. Beds and other things that the families as they came in needed to be shipped to their apartments. I... like I said, we had canvas cots and steel cots, and it was decided that senior citizens and ill people would get the steel cots. And the canvas cots, you know, the kind that folds up in a little bundle in two little indents in 'em when you open it up, were issued to everybody else. And I still have friends who were really mad at me, and one of 'em reminds me every time I see her, "You never would give us a steel cot." [Laughs]

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.