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TI: And so we just finished up talking about Pomona, so why don't you talk about the journey from Pomona to Heart Mountain?

SY: Very interesting journey, it was a four-day trip, and of course, I told you earlier that I grew up in the Cowboy & Indian era, all the movies we loved to see, Gene Autry and all these high profile cowboy movies, and we always thought the Indians were real bad because they were always attacking, and all the way up to Wyoming I looked out the window, looking for cowboy and Indian, never saw one, but that's okay. But one of the things that we stopped for every freight train, and one evening, I think somewhere near Salt Lake, they said, "You're entitled to eat at the dining room." Wow, high tone. We're hungry and I was the very first one in line. My mother was right behind me, pushing me along. The first train we entered was full of military people, navy, marines, they didn't have air corps at that time, army personnel and whatnot, with their girlfriends or wives or whatever, and my assumption is that they were going to Seattle to depart towards the Pacific. Some of them were laying down, some of them were embracing, kissing, whatnot, and they looked at the Japanese Americans walking by, of course some of them are old, elderly, so, naturally, they look like people from Japan. They were very kind, they didn't say anything, and we were, they were startled, we didn't know what to say, we just looked and just kind of smiled, walked on, to the dining room, and then after we ate we had to walk back. But that was an eye-opener, you know, to see all the military people and four or five trainloads of people going through this area, but then we got to eat in this place. Then we went through a bunch of tunnels, and people couldn't stand the smell, seemed like we got a lot of black soot all over us, but that's okay. It seemed like it was forever, but when you're a kid you want to see the scenery, not just the inside of a tunnel.

And then we went to Billings, Montana, there was a group of kids, looking at us, staring at us, and we said, "Hey, come on over and talk to us." And they hesitated, they kind of walked backwards a little bit, kind of afraid, they probably never seen this many Asians in their life. But somebody was brilliant, we had some leftover cookies and fruits from the bento lunchbox. "Hey, want some cookies?" Well, they came over, then we got talking. And then we departed, landed up in Heart Mountain, late at night, and everybody was tired, they gave us our ID card, they told us what block we're gonna go. All I remember was an open-end truck, and I was at the very front, looking, because I want to observe where we're going, what the camp looked like, I was just curious. And whereas the adults, you know, they sat down, huddled up, cold, miserable, didn't know what was going on or anything about the barracks, very confused, because we didn't know what "block" meant, like in our case Block 14-1-C, what does that mean? Mess hall, what does that mean, you know, other than you eat in a different compartment? You have to go to a benjo, you have to go to a latrine, or bathroom, and so forth.

So we had to learn all these things, but as soon as we got to the camp they told us what barrack we were in, we walked in, and there was one dim light, and we had the light on, we sat down on our bed, no furniture whatsoever, no running water, and, with army blankets on the end, and we sat there, exhausted, and didn't really know what to think other than, well, they're gonna wake us up in the morning with a bell. Each block had a different sounding bell, they had different metals that rang, and he says if you miss your breakfast you won't have any 'til lunch, so we made sure we went to lunch. And, of course, a lot of the adults were intimidated with the open commodes and so forth, and kids didn't care, but one of the things the kids did was we copied the teenagers, lined (the toilets seats) with toilet paper. Now they have special paper that you put on the seats, but at that time it was a novelty, so, every once in a while, we used so much toilet paper that it would plug up the toilet paper, commode, where it restricted, instead of having ten or whatever commodes, made it nine, and eventually eight, and so forth, until somebody was able to open it up, but we adjusted. And, so... the food, again, long line, lot of noise, especially the dishwasher, and we noticed the young guys all sat in the first three or four tables, without their parents.

TI: So these are, like, teenagers?

SY: Correct.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.