<Begin Segment 13>

MN: Now, going back to Pearl Harbor, now, when you heard the Japanese Americans would have to go into camp, how did you feel?

TI: Well, I was so young, it really didn't hit me, but it certainly concerned my parents. And I remember going, walking down to the corner to see that 90... what is it? 9066 order, and my father reading it and saying, "My goodness, we have to take all these bedding," and so on and so forth. And then he said to my mother, "You take Toshiko down and buy yourself a pair of boots and one for Toshiko, too." So we went down and bought ourselves boots because my father surmised that we would be sent to someplace that would be very cold and snowy, and it certainly turned to be true.

MN: Now why did your father register the family using the Little Tokyo address?

TI: Well, our good friend, the Kinoshitas, he was also a Sun Life Insurance agent. And so they were very good friends, and especially my mother and his wife. And so we wanted to stay together and be in the same camp. So that's the way we got to stay with them, stay together.

MN: Now, you owned your home. What did you do with the home?

TI: Well, my father rented it to one of the Sun Life Insurance company men and his family. They moved in.

MN: Were they basically staying free during the duration of the war? Did they pay rent to your family?

TI: Yes, they did.

MN: Do you remember what month you left for the Santa Anita Assembly Center?

TI: I think it was April.

MN: And from where did you leave to go to Santa Anita?

TI: Santa Anita has race, I mean, railroad tracks right in the complex. And so a World War I vintage train came to pick us up.

MN: But from, did you leave from Santa Anita, from Little Tokyo?

TI: No, from Santa Anita.

MN: No, to get to Santa Anita.

TI: Oh, I left on a bus.

MN: From where?

TI: I think it was Weller Street in Little Tokyo. Yeah, I'm not quite sure.

MN: So it was not the Nishi Hongwanji building.

TI: It was in back of the Nishi Hongwanji building, I think.

MN: Was it First and Central or First and Weller?

TI: Gosh, I don't know. Anyway, from Little Tokyo.

MN: How did you get to Little Tokyo?

TI: On a bus.

MN: From your house in Los Feliz?

TI: Harry Matsunaga, who lives in Stanton, he had a grocery store and he emptied out his grocery store to go into camp. And so he offered my father the space in his abandoned grocery store to store his car. So he drove us down to Little Tokyo to get on the bus to go to Santa Anita, and he took our car and took it back to Stanton and had it professionally prepared for storing in his emptied-out grocery store.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.