<Begin Segment 17>

TI: So, Hank, in the first part you got us all the way up to Tule Lake. So your parents, your brother answered "no-no" on the "loyalty questionnaire," so they along with you and your younger brother are sent to Tule Lake. So describe the first --

HN: Also, with the "no-no" and also the fact that my father applied for repatriation at the same time.

TI: Okay so he applied for repatriation.

HN: My family, my father did that.

TI: And did your father discuss that with you and your brother before applying for repatriation?

HN: Repatriation, I don't think so. I don't remember. Maybe he talked to my brother, but I was still in my minor, you know, fifteen, sixteen years old.

TI: So he applied for repatriation, also "no-no" on the "loyalty questionnaire," so family is sent to Tule Lake. Tell me what Tule Lake is like. What are your, what happens first when you get there, how is it different than Heart Mountain? Just talk about that.

HN: The barracks were much more depleted than Heart Mountain. I don't know why. The laundry room there is a community laundry, community bathroom. They were much more depleted than one in Heart Mountain. That's the impression I had.

TI: Kind of rundown, not as nice as...

HN: Rundown, yeah. Older, put it that way. And the weather was... it seemed like it was colder than Heart Mountain, but I don't know why. Oh, yeah, that's 'cause we departed, we were living in Heart Mountain most of the time during the summer time, from spring to summer, and by the time we got to Tule Lake it was winter, so it felt colder in Tule Lake.

TI: So towards the winter of '40, 1943.

HN: Yeah, '43 I think. '42 we...

TI: You were probably Santa Anita.

HN: Yeah, Santa Anita, then moved to Heart Mountain in late summer '42 and stayed there until next summer.

TI: So you had one winter in Wyoming, which must have been pretty cold.

HN: Yeah. [Laughs]

TI: So you, summer, Wyoming, then you go to Heart Mountain, and you talked about it seemed you said depleted or rundown. How about security? How would you compare the security at Heart Mountain with Tule Lake?

HN: Oh, Tule Lake we hardly had any contact with the army people or the civilian guards and so forth. I don't know why, because we were distant, away from that. But at Tule Lake --

TI: Okay, so at Heart, at Heart Mountain you had very little contact.

HN: Yeah.

TI: Now, but Tule Lake...

HN: At Tule Lake we, their army guards and so forth seemed to be much closer. Like, I volunteered, whether, I don't know whether I got paid or not, but I was helping the baggage coming in for all the people who were shipped into Tule Lake, and sort the baggage, deliver those to the, their barracks and so forth. And in that area, too, we saw the army guards standing by. We never saw that in Heart Mountain. Maybe it was because of the segregation.

TI: And how about the demeanor of the guards, Tule Lake versus Heart Mountain. Do you have a sense of any differences?

HN: I didn't, I wasn't that close enough to, you know... but some of them were, they... like, observing some of the people that intermingle with the guards, they seemed to be very friendly at the time, yeah.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.