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MN: Now you said you left Poston in about eleven months. Why did you leave?

LW: By that time I decided that since I had never had the opportunity to go on to college and we didn't know how long we were going to be in the camps, I thought, well, this is a kind of an opening. This is an opportunity to go and start college, so I checked in with my mother and father, and they were reluctant, but I decided, well, this is my chance. I want to take advantage of it. The other thing that drew me was that my friend who was my peer and a pastor was still in college preparing for the ministry. He knew that he was going to prepare for the ministry. That was his, his vocation, his calling, so he preceded me to camp, I mean, to college, by a semester. I think he left camp around January of 1943, and while he was in college he kept writing to me, "Lloyd, come on out. This is a good place. I think you will really appreciate going to college here in Kentucky." So that was another drawing, so after I made preparations, filled out the necessary papers to leave camp, I left camp to go to college.

MN: And where did you go to college?

LW: In a little town of Wilmore, Kentucky, near Lexington, Kentucky.

MN: Now Kentucky is in the deep South and your train ride, you're going into the deep South, was this the first time you had the "whites only," "colored only" sections you had to deal with?

LW: Yes. Yeah, when we boarded the train -- course I had to ride in several trains -- I think we changed trains in Kansas City, and that was the train that took me into, from Kansas into Arkansas and into the, into the South, what I'd call the, south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

MN: Now what was your first exposure to dealing with "whites only" and "colored only"?

LW: Well, this must've been about the fourth day of train rides and I was pretty tired, and the coach that I was riding in was very crowded, so I decided I'm going to try to find a coach, coach that, where I can lie down. So I walked a couple of cars and finally found this car that was half empty, and there were empty seats, so I decided to just lie down and rest, and it wasn't long before the conductor came along and tapped me in my stomach. "Hey," and said, "Hey, you're in the wrong place. Get out of here. Get back to where you belong." And I wondered what that was. With a puzzled look on my face, and he said, "Get back. You don't belong here," so I went back to the car that I was riding. Then I realized that, what this was all about, and so that was my first experience with a Jim Crow law.

MN: What did you make of the separation?

LW: That was, it was really, my first exposure was just, it just doesn't make sense that when, if people wanted to lie down and sleep they had the privilege of sleeping anywhere on that train, but then realized that, yes, they're, so this is the, the deep South, so this is segregation.

MN: Now, when you arrived at your college, how did the students and the staff people treat you?

LW: Well, of course I had a couple friends there already from the camp. John Miyabe was my friend from the camp who preceded me, had already broken the ice in terms of a Japanese American, and also being a school where some of the Christian ideas, Christian principles were being carried out both in the faculty and the, and the students, there was that atmosphere of openness and accepting all. Even though we were probably the first Japanese Americans there, there was that cordial acceptance, and so we were treated as interesting students, but we were treated as students who were different.

MN: So other than yourself and John Miyabe, were there other Niseis enrolled?

LW: Yes, that, after a semester or two, others from the camp began to, were also acquainted, knew about Asbury College. There were a couple of people from the camps there, so they were friends that came out to Asbury College, and there were about five or six women, women students who came to join us, so eventually we had, after about three, two or three semesters there, we had a Japanese American student community.

MN: Now where, which camp were these people mostly coming from?

LW: Most of the, yes, I think all of them came from Camp III. They were the first to be settled, and the people from Los Angeles moved in there and there was quite a strong Christian segment of the Los Angeles community that moved into Camp III, so they all seemed to know each other. And these were the students that were able to make, fill out the application form, make the decision, and were accepted. They were the students that left camp, Camp I, to come to Asbury.

MN: So it sounds like basically it was the Poston people coming from Camp One, Camp III?

LW: Yes, they were Poston people.

MN: Did you ever get a chance to meet with these other students who came after you?

LW: Oh yes. We got together. Every one of us was a work study student. We had to provide the hours of work to get a little stipend from the school, so they, at least we worked together in various, in various positions at the college. And so during our free time, during, occasionally we got together, maybe once every two or three weeks we got together to have fellowship but also cook some rice and enjoy some, whatever okazu we could put together.

MN: So was rice readily available in that area?

LW: Oh yeah, we went out to purchase our own rice. The rice that they served in the cafeteria was a different kind of a rice. It was like, almost like instant rice, which didn't go well with us.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.