<Begin Segment 13>

TI: Okay. So let's go to Tule Lake. [Addressing BT] So what are your... actually, do you want to do the... we did the land. Yeah, we did that. So let's go to Tule Lake, and what were your first impressions when you got to Tule Lake?

JT: Well, the first thing you do is when you got off the train, it was early in the morning. We rode the train overnight, and we got in, we got on the train in Gridley, and we got up to Klamath Falls. And probably, it was probably between seven and eight o'clock in the morning when we actually backed into Tule Lake. And all this time, the windows are drawn, the window shades are drawn, we can't see out. You're not supposed to have the window shades up. So we get off the train, it's daylight, early in the morning. Seemed like it was about seven or eight o'clock in the morning, and you get out, and all you see is just barren land. You see buildings, but there was no trees. You see sagebrush, but no trees. It was all, the ground, you look at the ground, and it's sand, real sandy. There was, it's just like being in a desert. I have a friend, he was from Placer, and some of the Placer people went to another assembly center called Arboga. And he was a fisherman, and he says, "You know, I just can't wait to get out of Arboga to go to Tule Lake. I'm going to do some fishing in Tule Lake." Well, he got a big surprise. Tule Lake is a desert. No lake out there. But, well, anyhow...

TI: Yeah, that's funny because I don't think about that, but that's right, it's called Tule Lake.

[Interruption]

TI: Okay, so we're just starting, or talking about Tule Lake, when you first got there, how desolate, and you told that funny story about how the fisherman thought he was going to go up and go fishing at Tule Lake.

JT: Well, anyhow, Tule Lake was a desolate looking place. When you step out the train, you look out there, and all you see is tarpaper buildings and stuff like that. But you're looking at land. So the vastness of the area, you don't see any trees. Of course, I come from a place where we see lots of trees. It's just like going to Nevada. All of a sudden, the California side, the mountain, you got pine trees and everything. On the east side, very little trees there on the other side. So it just reminded me that I'm in a desert. It was just something that you see out there but you can't believe that it's there.

TI: Tell me about, because you got there, as you said earlier, most people were already there. Marysville might have been the last group, you were maybe second to last. Tell me about the people and how people were organized. So you're getting there a little bit late, people have already spent, have been there, they probably have their routines already. How was it for you coming into Tule Lake so late?

JT: Well, once we got off the train, they processed us, and we were assigned to Block 42. And my apartment, there was four brothers. Our address was 4204-A. That was our apartment. And when we got there, all they had was a door, and I think there was three windows. And inside, it was bare walls, just 2x4s. I don't remember if the ceiling had sheet rock, but I know the walls didn't have any sheet rock. And all we had was, this barrack was divided into four or five apartments. So if you get on one side and look down to the other side, you could see clear to the other. 'Cause none of the, none of the apartments had partitions. They had 2x4 partitions, but they didn't have anything like sheet rock or anything else. And so you could see from one end to the other end. So first thing the family did was they hung up sheets for a little privacy, you know, and stuff like that.

TI: So that's a little bit different than what I've heard. So you actually could see from one end of the barrack to the other, so there were no walls --

JT: No walls.

TI: -- between, just the 2x4s.

JT: Yeah.

TI: Now, do you know if that was true for the other barracks?

JT: Well, as far as Block 42 goes, that was pretty much just the way it was. Everybody eventually, they had sheetrocks out there, that we had to nail it on ourselves.

TI: It's almost like your block wasn't finished. It was almost like --

JT: It wasn't finished, yeah. And that's, the one reason why some of the assembly centers, they kept the people there, to put more buildings up and make it so they could move in. But the assembly centers like Arboga, I think it only lasted one month. But they had, I don't know, about a thousand people there at one time.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.