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CO: You know, I may be all off base. These are just facts that sort of float around way in the back of my mind, that they had attempted to move as a group to Minnesota. And why Minnesota? I don't know. I don't think I was aware of where Minnesota was or anything. I kind of remember my dad maybe mentioning it or something. But we were not welcome anywhere. That's too bad, I suppose, but anyway, some people did manage to move as a group or individual families to move quickly enough. But we did not. So when was that? May 5th, May 6th, that's when we got on the trains, took us directly to Poston, Arizona.

MN: Before we get there, I wanted to ask you, what did your family do with all the pictures or books from Japan?

CO: Oh, yeah. Well, buried everything, you know, or burned, buried or burned.

MN: How did your parents and how did you feel about having to do something like that?

CO: Man, I don't know what kind of kid I was, but why is it that I didn't really wonder about these things? I don't know. I didn't, I wasn't scared, I know that. I can't really say. You know, but we didn't burn everything because we have pictures, I know. There was a very friendly groceryman who let us store some of our things with him. And I know that there was one trunk of family photos and things that we recovered after the war, and so some of these pictures and things were in the trunk, yeah. So we didn't destroy everything... yeah, now that I think about that. But most of our goods, of course, were sold or given away or left.

MN: So a lot of the neighbors came to buy your items?

CO: Yeah. That's a pretty common story that people tell, having to get rid of things for a few dollars. I mean, I know a lot of these stories because I've done a lot of talking to people and things. I don't remember that we had that much of real value, but the car and the farm equipment, that kind of thing.

MN: What happened to your home?

CO: I don't know. It was just left there. So I imagine they bulldozed, they probably just leveled all of that to make into this army base, or marine base, actually, marine base. So we just don't know. I mean, doesn't matter, it's all gone.

MN: But this is a home that your father built with his own hands.

CO: Yeah.

MN: Now, while you were preparing to go to this place called camp, the soldiers who were stationed at the Japanese school house, did they tell you folks where you were being taken to?

CO: If they did, I don't remember. I really don't think they even knew, you know. Maybe they had a name or a word for it or something like that, but I don't... I don't think we knew what to expect. I don't remember anybody ever talking about what it was like or where or anything like that.

MN: So if you didn't know what to expect, how do you remember to know what to pack?

CO: We didn't. I mean, well, they restricted us to what we could carry. But like I don't remember what we packed. I guess some clothing, and some people said they took utensils and dishes and things like that. I don't remember that we took any of that kind of stuff, I don't know. One thing is we were going as a group again, this group. So in that sense, we thought we would be together. So that probably was one of the factors in that there was no real panic or... man, I don't know what we thought except that there wasn't, we weren't scared.

MN: Which I find really interesting about you, that you weren't really scared or anxious. And what contributed for you not to be in that kind of state? A lot of people were anxious.

CO: I don't know. My parents were very calm throughout all this. And I think that as a little kid, I did not really differentiate us from the other white folk, so I guess I must have assumed that they would be benign, you know, that I didn't expect to be... to be punished or whatever. I guess I didn't, 'cause I didn't think of white people as being, that they were going to treat us badly.

MN: Now during this time, did you have any contact with your maternal grandparents in Oxnard?

CO: I guess there must have been letters exchanged because we knew that they were going to a different place than we were. So they ended up in Gila River also in Arizona. I have never gone to Gila River, I don't even know where it is exactly, but anyway, that's where they went. And actually, my father's brother, my uncle and his family were also with our group. So this side of the family were all going to the same place, my father's side of the family.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.