<Begin Segment 13>

MN: Bob, I just want to skip back just a little bit to the day you are leaving for camp from your departure point in Riverside. Did any of your friends come and see you off?

RW: No. Well, the only one would be, if I remember, it was the professor and his wife that took us to the train station, but other than that nobody knew. I never told anybody we were leaving on such and such a day. In fact, this one family, the girl that lived in Redlands who was a little younger than me was Terry Hirota. She was married to Edwin Hirota. I ran into some people at a high school reunion that knew they had a little store, a little Mama Papa store, and so all the Mexicans went there because Terry's family gave 'em credit. They could go and get a sack of beans and they could get food, and they would just sign one of those little receipt books. And so a lot of kids knew who she was, and then most of 'em just say, "Oh yeah, I remember Terry and we used to play this and that, then next day she was gone." And somebody told me once about me, he said, "Yeah, Bob, we used to, we used to do a lot together, but all of a sudden one day in school you were gone. You didn't come to school and you were gone. No one knew where you were and what happened." So that's the way it was, so I don't think there were hardly anybody there saying goodbye to people other than probably the curious people in the area, maybe the neighbor or whoever near the train station, just happened to be there watching and wondering, "What's going on? What's going on?" But most people just didn't know when we were leaving.

MN: But how about your best friend, Bob Madrid? Did you tell him?

RW: No. We just left without saying anything. In fact, I remember he told me, "I didn't even know you left." I didn't have his address, he didn't have mine, so for three years we didn't correspond.

MN: Did you correspond with anybody from Redlands?

RW: No, except for Ms. Nichols.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.