Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Tak Yamashita Interview
Narrator: Tak Yamashita
Interviewer: Martha Nakagawa
Location: Oxnard, California
Date: September 14, 2011
Densho ID: denshovh-ytak-01-0025

<Begin Segment 25>

MN: What time did you start in the morning on the day you left?

TY: I don't quite recall. It was in the morning.

MN: What did you pack for this trip?

TY: What did we pack? We packed our clothing, mattress, bedding, like I say, fifty gallons of gasoline on the truck, five gallons of oil, tools, all necessities for about a couple of weeks, canned fruits, few vegetables. We bought a chunk of meat, put it in, bought dry ice, stuck it in the box. That's how much we took, for a couple days, three days. Just in case, you know, we had to camp in the desert or the mountain or wherever. And then on the highway they wouldn't sell us gasoline. We had enough gasoline to go to Las Vegas and further on. And let's see, filled gasoline in Barstow or someplace, just to be safe. Went through Las Vegas and it was about four, five o'clock in Las Vegas, I believe, and as we were going we came, next big town was St. George. We stopped over there and asked to fill our tank up, and they decided that they don't sell gasoline to Japs. "Get out of here. We don't sell no gas to Japs." So we told 'em so what, there'd be somebody'd sell us gas. Then we said the heck with you and then we just went on. And then we went to about three gas stations, I think, and then they said they don't sell gas to Japs, this and that, then third gas station says, "Well, you guys want gasoline? How much do you want?" "Can you fill the tank up?" "Sure." They fill the tank up. There's some good people on the road. And then that was about six, seven, maybe six, seven, eight o'clock, something like that. I don't quite recall.

And then so nighttime came and it got dark and we had to sleep someplace, and so we stopped at a motel, said, "No, we don't rent no rooms to Japs," so okay, if you don't rent no rooms to Japs, well, we'll find somebody that wants our money. We just went along, we stopped another place. "No, we're all full up. All full." "How come you got a vacancy sign here?" "We're filled up. We forgot to take it down." Okay, forgot to take it down. Okay. So then about two o'clock in the morning -- I think it was about two o'clock in the morning -- we were so tired and then we saw a little bitty old motel on the side of the street. We rang the bell 'cause it said ring the bell, so we rang the bell. Some old lady comes out, "What do you want, boys?" "We'd like a room if you got a room." "Yeah, we got some rooms. You guys want to stay for a night?" "Yeah, we'd like to stay for a night. Thank you. Other guys won't let us, won't rent us a room, so I appreciate you guys renting a room to us." So she says okay, say, "Okay, what's the price?" Five or ten dollars, I don't quite remember. We paid 'em for one night and then we slept there 'til twelve o'clock. [Laughs] And then we went on.

And then we were determined to make Greeley, Colorado, so then hail, sleet or snow we just kept going. There's snow up in the Rocky Mountains, about fifty miles to Cheyenne, up in the high mountain, snowing and ice on the mountain, cold as a freezer, just cold, cold, and our truck broke down and had to jack it up trying to fix it, then the snowy, icy mountain. So we fixed it and we took it apart and got the, found the, where it had broke or burned out, and we were able to take that out, took us a while. It was so cold I couldn't, I couldn't believe how cold it was in the mountain. Our fingers froze, this and that. So it was about fifty, sixty miles to Cheyenne and so my brother says, well, how are we gonna get there? I said, well, one way to get there is hitchhike, I guess, so then we were hitchhiking. We hitchhiked about a mile. Everybody just zoom, zoom, passed by. One old nice car stopped by, "Hey, fellows, where you going?" "Well, our truck broke down so we got to go buy some parts to fix our truck." So it was a sheriff's car and the sheriff said, "Hop in. I'll help you. I'll take you wherever you want to go." He took us to Cheyenne. It was about, he was kind of interested in talking to us about the evacuation and who we are, this and that, and then he took us to the parts house. It was about eight o'clock by the time we got there and --

MN: Eight o'clock in the morning?

TY: I think, yeah, it was about eight o'clock when the store opened.

MN: So you folks had not slept all night.

TY: All night, yeah. We didn't sleep all night that night. Then the sheriff said, "I'll wait for you guys. You guys pick up your parts and I'll take you back." So he was a nice man, really, really nice man. He took us back over there and then he waited for us until we got the truck fixed. He was such a nice man. And then we got our truck fixed and we started rolling, and he said, "You guys okay? Gonna be okay?" He said, "I'll be in Cheyenne if it's not." So then we just went on. We made it Greeley, finally made it to Greeley. Oh man, we were so darn tired we slept all day. [Laughs] Snow on the ground, ice on the ground. That was the first time I saw so much snow and so much ice on the ground. Really, yeah. It was really, really quite a trip. So after we got there these Japs, Colorado Japs, they said, "Hey, you guys better straighten up." The Japanese boys telling us that, you gotta get straightened up. Why you say that? You're a Jap too. "Well, we're Coloradans over here." You don't look like no white man. You're a Japanese boy. You're same, if you was in California you'd be treated the same way. They say, you guys better straighten up, be good over here. Hey, don't worry. So that's how prejudiced those Japanese were in Colorado.

MN: You know, I kind of looked into that and I think I know where that came from, because in March in 1942 the Utah chapter of the JACL wrote a letter discouraging Japanese Americans from the West Coast from moving out there.

TY: Yeah.

MN: And the letter said because the local Japanese Americans had a good reputation and they didn't want it disrupted by undesirables.

TY: Yeah, yeah. That's how they looked at us, undesirable. They really did. And I was so disappointed. I said, "You guys are Japs too," you know. One Jap is the same as another Jap. And they finally, the girls weren't that bad. The girls were nice. The guys, the people, the guys were really bad. Then these one prominent Japanese JACL president, what's their name, Etamoto or somebody, Etamoto, I forgot what his first name was, he came out and says, "Hey, you guys be nice boys over here." I said, well, we're always nice. It wasn't us that caused the problem to evacuate. And they understood that too, but some guys, some of these Japanese guys, they were, they think they were white men and it ticked us off. But that's the way it was.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.