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MN: And when your family first arrived at Topaz your older sister was asked by the administration, "What would you like to do as a productive member of the camp?" Share with us what her response was.

JD: Her response to that question was, her response to the question, "What would you like to do while you're in camp?" her response was, "Well, I want to get out of here." So a few weeks later she did, and what happened was she was hired on by this family in a nearby town called Hinckley, and she was, her main purpose was to serve as a nanny for these two young kids, two girls, and to also serve as a housekeeper for the family, and... for the family. So she did that, and the family name was Hinckley and the name of the town was Hinckley, so she worked for them for about, I don't know, maybe a year or so. And that's when she decided that she wanted to continue her college education, and so she went to BYU, but while she was there, she already had a friend who lived in Chicago and her friend says, "You know, Mag, there's a lot of jobs to be had over here. Why don't you come out here?" And Mag felt that was a good idea, and I don't think we had the money to send her through college anyway, you know. So Mag did. She went to Chicago, and so that must've been in '43, '44, probably '44, early '44, and she was there for, from then on until she passed away couple of years ago.

MN: So she never wanted to return to the West Coast?

JD: I don't think so. Her two kids were born there and so she raised her kids there. And no, I guess she, I guess she and her husband decided not to come back, even though her husband's family was from Sacramento. I think they just opted to stay there.

MN: Now, you were a city girl from San Francisco.

JD: Right.

MN: San Francisco doesn't have extreme weathers.

JD: Right.

MN: And you experienced a lot of firsts at Topaz. Can you share with us some of the firsts that, things that you experienced at Topaz?

JD: Yes. Of course, one was this heat that we had to walk through to get to our barrack. That was number one. And it was very sandy, never saw that kind of fine sand. That was in the summer, and as the fall and winter came on we experienced winter snow, which we had never seen in our entire life, and the cold associated with that, so you had to wear, get snow boots of some sort and get warmer clothes because we certainly weren't really prepared for that kind of cold. I remember we had sandstorms, and I remember the, one of the first sandstorms we had, I remember the sand getting into my eyes, my nose, my ears, and my mouth, and I thought, God, what is this, you know? When I got home my mother had to kind of help clean me up because I had so much of this sand stuff on me, but I remember the sandstorm. And then the windows in our barracks were not really all that great, so there was a bit of an opening between where the two windows would slide when they did slide, so all the sand came in through this opening and it filled the track area where the windows would slide, so I remember all the sand coming in there and we had to kind of clean that out.

MN: Now, what month did you start attending grammar school there?

JD: Well, we got there in August, so we started in September. And so we did go to school, and here again, too, I just don't think we had the best quality of teachers. I won't say it's their fault necessarily, but it was, this camp thing was done in a hurry, so they probably couldn't get the best teachers. I did have one hakujin teacher later on, I think was the last teacher I had before we left camp, I guess she was okay. But yeah, but I just don't think we had the best quality teachers, and I always felt like I lagged behind from a knowledge standpoint.

MN: Topaz had two grammar schools. Which one did you go to?

JD: The two schools were Desert View and Mountain View, and I went to the one that was Desert View because it faced the desert, and the Mountain View was because it faced the mountain. And yeah, so that's the school I went to.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.