<Begin Segment 29>

TI: Okay, I'm coming to the end of my questions and I guess what I'm thinking is more recently, the story of men who renounced their citizenship, that story's coming out more, and I'm wondering, in terms of, of how you want the story to be known, is there something in particular that you think is important for people to know about men like you who decided to renounce their citizenship? Whether it's maybe how you were treated or, or what, but what do you think are some of the important things for people to know?

FS: Well, my point is the way I was treated and thrown in the stockade. That's what my point is, because I wasn't... you know, I was thrown in there without any reason, and they didn't give me no, what do you call, hearing or nothing. So I said, "What am I, what am I doing, anyway?" So that's, that's more or less, like I guess they don't, they don't want me here. That's the only way I could think about. My, my side, anyway.

TI: So something we can learn from this is how you treat people really makes a difference, in terms of, of changing what they think or how, based on how you treat. Okay.

FS: Yeah.

TI: Good. And so I'm done with my questions. Go ahead.

MN: Just so we have this on record, when Tule Lake became a segregation center, you were working in the motor pool.

FS: Yeah.

MN: You're driving trucks, so when you, when all these new people were coming in, what was your responsibility?

FS: My, I was, I was responsible to take whoever was assigned to the barracks or whatever, I was assigned to take all the luggage and everything and deliver. But I had, in fact, I had two escorts with me. I had two ladies, girls who escort. I'm just, I'm just driving and they got two escorts, and they were, these girls from Marysville and I was more or less kind of born in Marysville anyway, so I got to know them pretty good. So I just, all I did was drive and whatever they tell me, take -- they had the, they get the papers said you take 'em over there, so we more or less did that.

MN: Where did you take these people mostly to, to the Alaska area?

FS: Let's see, depends on... it could've been, could've been Ward 8, yeah. That's Alaska, Ward 8. More the Ward 6, part of Ward 6, part of Ward 8, and part of Ward 7 is on the west side.

MN: What we refer as Mexico?

FS: Huh?

MN: What, what the camp people kind of talked, referred to as Mexico, the Ward 7?

FS: No, we, so happened anyway, I'm not sure... because our block was hardly anybody moving out or anything, so I don't think nobody, nobody talked bad about them or anything.

TI: So I guess I have a couple follow-up questions because I'm not as familiar, so first, I want to ask about the two woman escorts. Why, why did they have two escorts with you? What was the reason?

FS: Maybe they didn't trust me with the truck. [Laughs] I don't know. All I know, they, I think, I think they took, they got the papers to tell 'em to take over here, so it's, I don't know which girl had it, but anyway, so they tell me, "We got to go over here." So that's the main reason. I think I was just more or less the driver, more or less. I know where to go, but they had to tell me where to go, where to take 'em.

TI: Okay, so they, they did more the processing of the paperwork. So the other follow up question is, the terms "Alaska" and "Mexico" in Tule Lake, how did those terms come about?

FS: I don't... because "Alaska" was the furthest one out. I'll show, I'll show you the picture later.

TI: Okay, so it was more kind of, almost like the geography of the camp and how things were, so there's up, up in this --

FS: Well, there was a canal there, a canal with the water in it, and that was other side of it, see, on the other... I think it was Ward 6, Ward 6, and the, Alaska was other side of it. So that's why they, it's so far away, the furthest one, so that's why they call it Alaska.

TI: Okay, that makes sense. Were there other kind of areas that they called the camp? So Alaska, they also mentioned Mexico, was there other kind of...

FS: Well, I knew where most of the people, when they first came in, came and gone over everybody, which, where they came from. But from our block, or from our, more or less, from our ward, we came from west of Sacramento.

TI: So was there a nickname for your area? You mentioned, like Ward 4, there wasn't anything?

FS: It was just Ward 4.

TI: Okay.

FS: Then, I think, the original group, original block, not the original block, but the first people that came in, I think was Ward 1, and then that's why I can't say why, why... we were in Ward 4. We were about the third people. I don't think, I don't think it was, maybe we're about the fourth group to go in. Ward 1 and Ward 2 was more or less Sacramento bunch, and Ward 3, I think, was mixed, and then we were here, Ward 4. And Ward 5 was on the other side of the firebreak and they're more or less from Marysville and Placer County.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.