<Begin Segment 18>

TI: So any memories from the journey from Honolulu to the mainland?

MK: No. The only thing I remember -- well, I was, I get seasick on ships. It was six, seven days going to, six days going to San Francisco. I remember somebody telling me, "Hey, we're going under the Golden Gate." I got up, got out of bed and go watch the Golden Gate. I said, "Wow, that's not gold. It's red." [Laughs] And then we went to Oakland someplace and we docked in, but I remember as we docked in, some people were on the docks, when we were coming down the gangplank, some people were calling us "Japs," stuff like that, making remarks, and some of the guys said the fruits were being thrown at 'em, but I don't remember seeing, getting hit or anything like that.

TI: Now was this your first time having kind of these racist, or, you know, name calling at you?

MK: No, not really, because, going back to Kauai, after my, after the war had been established, within about a half year, the military soldiers meeting quarters came to our church and occupied the social hall, and they used that as their barrack quarters, and they lived there all that time. So it got to the point where we got close to some of the GIs, and yet, of course, some GIs, they called us "Jap kid," "gooks," and stuff like this. I had been exposed to some of that racism before that during the war, in Hawaii. So it wasn't strange to me.

TI: So it wasn't, like, totally unexpected when you came down.

MK: No. I expected that, but I know, it kinda surprised me that as we're getting off the ship and we're all women, mostly women and children, and here we're being treated the same way coming off the ship. And I guess what I remember the most is that coming off the ship it was so cold because we didn't have any clothes. We had no warm clothes.

TI: 'Cause this is winter. This is --

MK: January 1st, in San Francisco. In San Francisco Bay. And I thought, oh, we got a -- the ship was warm, nice and warm. So not thinking after you get off the ship, once we got off the ship, then we're sent to the rail yard and put into the railcars. And they had MPs posted on the railcars, all the railcars, and we're told we couldn't use the bathrooms, lavatories, because they were in the siding and you couldn't use the bathroom in the siding. But now, because of the fact that we had no clothes, we had no warm clothes, no nothing, everybody started getting sick. All the young kids started getting diarrhea. Now they want to use the bathroom, you can't use the bathroom. So the ladies got together and says, let some of the kids, 'cause really the kids are not our age. I was one of the older ones, and then the younger ones just couldn't hold on, so they used a corner of the car and used the bathroom there. And that was from, I don't know what time we got off the ship. I know the ship came in right after dawn. January in, dawn in January, it must be seven o'clock, eight o'clock, and right after that we got into the... and it was dusk, was dark before we got steam into the cars. The locomotive had to hook up, to give steam to the cars, and that was the only warmth we had all day. And all the kids are sick. Everybody was sick in there, mothers and all. And couldn't use the bathroom I think that was the worst part that I remember of that trip.

TI: And so were these cars just, like, bare cars? Just --

MK: No, they were passenger, with car, passenger seats and all this, that could swivel back and forth. So, though they were sick, the mothers used to lay down and, just flop the seat over and lay down together and hold the kids.

TI: But people generally didn't have any clothes, or warm clothes?

MK: They have no clothes. No, because we all come from Hawaii. We're like this, and we're in San Francisco like this. We did not know... we didn't, we didn't have money to buy clothes or anything, so we had to go the way we were.

TI: How, how about food? Did they feed you?

MK: No, not that day.

TI: So women and children --

MK: Were just abandoned, and MPIs were right, MPs were stationed at each car.

TI: So the MPs, at least they could see that you were uncomfortable, you had no food, you were cold.

MK: Well, what do they care? They don't care.

TI: They could've reported this. You know, they could've told someone. Nothing.

MK: "They're just bunch of Japs."

TI: So this was all day, from early dusk to, dawn to dusk.

MK: Early dawn to dusk.

TI: And then finally...

MK: When the steam came on everyone was so relieved that the steam came on, and as soon as the car started moving, then you knew you could use the bathroom, so used the bathroom, but it was just... by this time the cab, the cabins were warm, so then the ladies started cleaning the room up, the cab up with what they could. I remember them getting containers and washing the, from the, getting water from the drinking fountain and washing the cabin out. This became our home for five days or seven days or whatever long, however length of time it took us to get to our... Jerome.

TI: And how often did they let you leave the car, to go outside to stretch your legs or anything like that?

MK: No. This is, this is wartime, so the train would travel so long, get to a siding, and they would shift, move over the side, let the main line go through, go through the next, travel to the next siding, and we stopped at one place which was in the desert. Someplace in the desert. Just about third or the fourth day they told us, finally, "You can get off. You can go out and stretch your leg. You can, if you want you can walk around. You have two hours," or something like that, 'cause train was gonna move in two hours. And everybody looked outside and they said, "What are we gonna do out in the sun, in the desert?" So everybody decided to stay in the railcars. Some guys went out there. Some people walked outside a little bit and that was it. They were, before long they were all inside the car again. Couldn't stay in the sun anyway.

TI: Well, I guess it might be cold, too. It's wintertime.

MK: Yeah.

TI: And so the air and thin and probably cold, too.

MK: That was the only one time that we could stop, we could get out of the cars.

TI: Now, you mentioned the MPs, were they, were they armed? Did they have guns?

MK: Yes. There were guns. They had guns. Some of 'em were nice, but, some were nice, some were... and we being young kids, we could get away with things that adults couldn't, and we used to go over there, and we knew certain ones that would give us candy and we'd go over there. I remember that. I'd send my sister, "Go get candy." [Laughs] Give us chewing gum, yeah, get chewing gum.

TI: This is from the guards? Now, the adults, you said, were mostly women. Were there any men?

MK: Not in our cars, no. In the immigration, at the immigration station we had no men. All women. Women and children. And on the ship were no men.

TI: And did the same MPs go all the way across the country?

MK: No, they changed. They would change after so many days.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.