<Begin Segment 22>

TI: So your mother had to shoulder a lot of responsibility with your father leaving. How about you, because I'm looking at the family, you're now --

MT: Thirteen.

TI: Well, you're young, you're thirteen, you're now the oldest --

MT: Male.

TI: -- male in the family. Did your mother, father ever say anything to you about being the oldest?

MT: They didn't, but they would, she would include me in a lot of discussions. Before and after the war, she would include me in a lot of discussions, and so I did find out a lot of things and I was involved with some things that she didn't know anything about, things like when the evacuation came and the notice came and it was just up to the street next to us, near us, Arlington Street. Anything west of that didn't get the notice 'cause it was for everybody east of Arlington and we were west of Arlington, and so my, most of the Japanese family were now signing up to go to other camps. They would, on this side where they weren't given notice, they want to be with their friends, so they would change their address and things like that, but I said, why go in? More freedom is better, wait as long as we can, so we waited and suddenly we got the notice. We're supposed to go, the people east of Arlington went to Santa Anita Assembly Center. Our, we were supposed to go to Tulare.

Well, let me step back a little bit. Even before that, when they started evacuation the Terminal Island people had been, on December 24th given forty-eight hours notice to get off, not where they were gonna go, just get off the island. People were, some people, the fishermen, the Issei fishermen were all imprisoned, so they were women and children. Most of the Niseis were under twenty-one. They were in dire straits. The churches came, the Quakers helped them, the Japanese community through some people, some of the Japanese community came, had trucks, we had trucks and we helped and so, and things like that to get 'em off in the forty-eight hours. And my cousin came to live with us at that time. When the assembly centers started and they knew everybody's gonna be put into camps, the Terminal Islanders said, "Hey, we want to get together again," so they volunteered for Manzanar. They called my cousin and us to say, "Let's go to Manzanar and be together." I said, "Hey, last summer I was at Manzanar. I passed there. I went fishing up in the High Sierras with my father and the, Mr. Miyo and his son George Miyo. That's a terrible place." 'Cause I like geography, I had kinda mapped my way up there and back. I said what the place, so I knew where Manzanar was. I said, "Terrible. Sage brush, dry, it's hot in the summer, cold in the winter. It's a terrible place. Rattlesnakes. Who wants to go to a place like that?" So I told 'em, I said that's not a place we want to go, and so we opted not to go. Well, meanwhile, then the Shintani's, or the Mr. Shintani who was in prison was told that, his wife was told that if they moved to Zone Two -- there was Zone One and Zone Two, Zone One was the coast and the other's inland -- if the family moved to Zone Two, then Mr. Shintani could come out. And so they gave us, let us, let us live in their house and she moved to Arosa in central California. This is south, around Tulare, so that's where they moved and then Mr. Shintani was able to come out. Meanwhile, then now we're sitting over here and we're gonna go to Tulare. I said, "Well, I don't want to go to Tulare. I know what Tulare is, assembly center. That's a terrible place. It's dry, it's, it's a terrible place." And so I said, "Let's rather go to Santa Anita, 'cause we know people there, too." So my mother somehow were able to find a boarding house located on Central Avenue in the south where, a Japanese boarding house, where they were going to Santa Anita, so got permission to change our address to that boarding house and so we then evacuated from there prior to going away to Tulare, and so we went from there to Santa Anita, but of course we ended up in the horse stables, stinky, smelly.

TI: Yeah, and before we go there, just, as you talked about this, it's interesting how you sometimes hear about how you get the orders and you have to just follow, but there were kinda areas where you can kind of work the system. I mean, different addresses or...

MT: Yeah, that's what I found. All, all the way through, all the way through camp there were ways to break the system a little bit or, or bend the system a little bit, if you tried to find out and tried to take and tried to take steps. Most people were very dutifully, would obey any of the rules and that's, that's the Japanese way. The government says do this and they all do that, but in some instances, like myself and some of the other people, we would look for avenues to get out and do other things or not, or not follow through what other people are doing for, for one or another means to stay out of camp. And, and so what happened is, is that so we end up at Santa Anita and in the stables, smelly. The people that would've been, we would've, if we had changed the address originally to east of Arlington Street, Arlington Avenue, we would've been in the regular tarpaper barracks, which was a choice place to be.

TI: So in some cases working the system can, can work against you, too, if you... [laughs]

MT: Yeah. In that sense, yes.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.