<Begin Segment 7>

BF: So when you, when your family heard about the orders to evacuate, do you remember what you packed or how you prepared?

CK: Yeah, that's interesting because we simply had no idea, no idea whatsoever where we were going, what the conditions would be. And we knew we should take clothing for cold winters. And it was very difficult to decide just what you should take and knowing that it was just the one suitcase that you could carry. I know my mother had a lot of problems deciding where to pack things that were to be left. And we tried to sell the business, the cleaning business and of course that wasn't successful because everybody knew we'd have to leave anyway, so why would they pay for it? We sold, apparently, the equipment, the pressing machine and whatever for a very small amount. I think it was somewhere in the range of $50. Something like that. We had a car and that was very... something really small. I don't have the figures, but I know it wasn't fair market value in any sense. And let's see, your question was how...

BF: Packing.

CK: Packing?

BF: What did you take?

CK: Oh, primarily clothing because we were told different things. That we had to bring bedding and boy, when you have bedding, that really takes up just about every space. Then, so, anyway, we concentrated on clothing as what we would need. The strange thing, strange, sort of ironic thing was that we were told to report, I think at the station, Union Station down where the I.D. is now. But we were given no means of transportation to get there. We had sold the car and we were way out there about, it was city limits just about then. And so a friend, an Issei friend who lived down here on Yesler said that he would come and pick us up because he was going to go maybe a few days later. So anyway, he gave us a ride so that we got down to the gathering place there. But that seemed a little strange, that here you're told to go a certain place, but figure out how you get there. That's like Gordon Hirabayashi, told to go to jail and he had to hitchhike his way to jail. So some very ironic things happened.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.