<Begin Segment 19>

TI: Okay, well, let's talk about the journey now from Tule Lake to Japan. So from Tule Lake where did you go?

RY: We went to Portland, Oregon, and they had a troop ship waiting for us. And they just jammed everybody into the compartments. It was horrible.

TI: And at this point had your father rejoined the family?

RY: Yeah, all the people from the other camps came in they joined the family. And I wasn't too happy but I didn't have a choice.

TI: And see, this is after the war, 1945, so you're sixteen years old?

RY: Yeah.

TI: So you're now reaching almost adulthood, you're almost a young man.

RY: Yeah. I remember one of the sad parts of my life was as we were pulling out of Portland I kind of worked my way up to the top side and was looking out the doorway and I could see the city lights going by and the thought in my mind was, "God, I hate leaving my country. What am I going to do over in a foreign country?" And I was wondering, "When am I going to be able to come back?" And that was a horrible feeling for me, but I didn't have a choice.

TI: Okay, so now you're on the ship and now you're going across the Pacific. What was that like?

RY: It was the roughest trip I ever had in a boat. We had a storm or something and the ship would go out of the water and then bounce down, oh, it was horrible.

TI: So lots of seasickness.

RY: Oh, yeah, everybody was seasick. But then being... I was thinking, there's got to be someplace on this ship where it isn't that bad, and I found out that the galley down below the center of the fulcrum was the best place to be when the ship is rocking because it's right in the middle. So I got a job working in the mess hall down there.

TI: So once you figured that out it was a lot better for you?

RY: Yeah, plus you got food, get food. That was a rough trip.

TI: And what was the mood on the ship going across? I mean, were people, some people excited about going to Japan?

RY: Oh, yeah, they were excited, but like people my age, they weren't, I don't think I was excited. I was more apprehensive.

TI: Now I've heard stories that some people on the ship still believed that Japan had won the war.

RY: Oh, yeah, that was the propaganda that they had circulated at Tule Lake.

TI: And so how did you deal with that? When some people said Japan won the war.

RY: I knew in my heart that we won the war. I say "we" because I figure I was an American and I didn't believe that.

TI: And so when people would say those things you would just sort of just ignore it kind of? Or how would you deal with that?

RY: I just ignored it.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.