<Begin Segment 10>

SY: Now in the meantime what was happening with your family back at home?

MK: Well, Sachi was working like I said with the Department of Employment and then I think the WRA or the... anyhow, some group that they had formed to inform all evacuees as far as the timeline was for the evacuation of the West Coast. So she said that she had to give out permits if people wanted to go out of the area that type of thing. And then her friend, Maki Ichiyasu who was head of the YWCA was in charge of getting a group together to go first to some of the camps to set it up. And so she asked Sachi if she would go with her to Poston and so there were a group of them, I think about ten or fifteen people who went on the bus to Poston to set that one up.

SY: All young people.

MK: All young people, right. And so Sachi (went) with the condition that (...) they promised her that the family would all get together -- but they were sent to Pomona Assembly Center.

SY: The rest of your family.

MK: Yeah, the rest of the family. And that's when Dorothy had to join them there and my two younger brothers were there. And then the day before, like I said, when they were going to be sent to Heart Mountain that's when Dorothy arrived just to catch the train to Heart Mountain.

SY: So she never stayed at Pomona? They got her just in time to go to Heart Mountain.

MK: Right.

SY: And then in the meantime Sachi was at Poston.

MK: Poston, right. So we were split three, four different ways, the family was at that time.

SY: Right, and so then how did you keep in touch with them? What did you do?

MK: Sachi used to write but I couldn't write back, I didn't know address so just waited 'cause I didn't know when (or where) they were going... when she left California to go to Poston I didn't know where she was in between. And then I knew that she was at Poston for a while but then every day she's saying, "I'm going to go to Heart Mountain any day now," so it was a real rough time.

SY: And you lost track of your parents?

MK: Right.

SY: Because they couldn't write, they didn't correspond with you?

MK: My mother wrote to my uncle so we got the information.

SY: In Japanese.

MK: In Japanese, yeah.

SY: I see, so you knew that she was at Heart Mountain and that's about it. And then what happened with Sachi?

MK: Eventually I think it took her nine months to... or maybe even longer, for them to okay her going to Heart Mountain. So she did go there and stayed there for a little while and then she was able to by then they were releasing people from camp to go to different areas. So she did come to New York at that time.

SY: I see, and so she joined the two of you and then it was three of you living in this little one bedroom apartment.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.