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SY: And then after you boarded the trains and ended up at what --

HK: Well, let me just mention one other thing at Tanforan. You know the Fred Korematsu, the Korematsu versus U.S. was a very well-known Supreme Court case? Fred Korematsu and his Japanese name is Toyosaburo, we used to call him Toy. Fred Toyosaburo, "Toy" we used to call him, was a very good friend of my... probably the best friend of my brother. So Fred Korematsu and my brother were close buddies, so when Fred went through all that experience of being picked up by the police in San Leandro... he's from (Oakland), and then that whole process of the courts and et cetera et cetera, the legal case, he was sent from San Francisco then to... he was told to report to Tanforan. So he came to Tanforan and looked up my brother so we know the Fred Korematsu family for a long long time. In fact, his family had a nursery business, and our family went to the same church so we got to know Toy, Fred and his whole family pretty well 'cause we were pretty close.

SY: Amazing. And your oldest brother, did he have any... did he ever talk about what Fred decided to do?

HK: Not to any great length of time that I can recall, but I remember Fred coming to see my brother 'cause they were good buddies, and telling him that his family was... Fred's family was giving him a hard time for doing what he did and not reporting to the assembly center and running off. 'Cause he had a Caucasian girlfriend is the background, why he stayed, and I guess he had some pretty primitive plastic surgery and he was finally picked up. [Laughs] But coming to the, he was told to come to Tanforan and so he looked up my brother. But he complained to my brother that his family, Toy's family, Fred's family, were very critical of him and he was unhappy about that matter. I remember my brother telling me this, Fred said, "My parents are calling me bakatare, you fool, why are you doing this? You're giving us a bad name," et cetera, et cetera. So my brother was the recipient of some of that therapeutic unleashing of some of his feelings.

SY: As far as you knew, or as far as your brother knew, he really did it because he wanted to be with his girlfriend?

HK: Girlfriend, yes.

SY: That was his --

HK: I think that was his primary motivation at the time, but as he got into the... I guess there was this attorney, something Besig, and they took his case to become a test case and as he got into the test case, and interviewing and background, Fred became more and more aware of this civil rights issue. And eventually he discovered that, "Yes, I wanted to stay because of my girlfriend but it grew into something much larger and much more meaningful to challenge the evacuation orders, incarceration orders."

SY: Interesting. And was this knowledge you got in terms of Fred... did that come way after the war?

HK: It came after from my brother and then I read a lot of material on this and there's a lot of stuff going out now about Fred Korematsu.

SY: And your brother stayed close with him?

HK: Yes, I think after a while they were said to go in separate ways. My brother went to the service and Fred did other things, but they remained good friends.

SY: That's really interesting. So then your family ended up... so did you make any friends while you were at Tanforan? Do you remember any people?

HK: Oh, yeah, sure, sure. There were a few friends I had from San Leandro with whom I had... that I knew from before, so they were friends, and obviously you make some new friends because of the school and et cetera and so on. One thing I do remember is that when I was in Tanforan I got a package in the mail which was unusual for a little ten eleven year old to receive a package. And I opened it up and it was just a bunch of letters from my classmates from my school. I guess the teacher wanted to have the class write a letter to me knowing that I was in a camp, an internment camp. So she had everyone write a letter to me and she wrapped up the letters and mailed them to me, and so that was kind of a nice thing, very touching and comforting, so that was nice, a very nice gesture.

SY: And basically they just said --

HK: "Hey, Harry we miss you. Wish you were here," just kid stuff.

SY: Did you save them?

HK: I wish I had. I just don't know whatever happened to them, but that would have been a treasure.

SY: So do you remember the train ride to Utah?

HK: Yes, I do remember the train ride. As I recall, I had never been on a train before, much less traveled outside of California so that was a whole new experience. But we travelled overnight, and it was very dark obviously so we sort of slept, so it took about, I don't know, a couple of days. And then we arrived in central Utah and before they bused us to the camp itself, Topaz, Central Utah, we landed in this Delta which is sixteen miles outside of Topaz, the camp. And as we disembarked from the train in Delta, what struck me was all these local citizens in Delta, Delta, Utah, they were out there with their umbrellas and sun chairs and patio chairs and they were looking at us with great interest. I'm sure they had never seen Japanese people before in their lives, and then here were these Asian looking people and they're foreigners and the enemy and it was kind of curious how that played out.

SY: They were just spectators.

HK: They were spectators and I'm sure this is one of the most unusual things that had ever happened in that town. But to their credit, eventually they did create a kind of small little museum commemorating Topaz that it was constructed sixteen miles just down the road. So they do have a small museum there in recognition that there was a camp very near there.

SY: And as a young boy, when you got off the train was that... first of all was that the only time you were allowed off the train?

HK: As far as I know that was the only time. There might have been some others but it's the only time I actually remembered it.

SY: And do you remember wondering where you were going?

HK: Yes, 'cause I was very young again but I just tagged along with my family, my parents, so we were told where to go.

SY: Curtains were drawn during the trip?

HK: As far as I know they were, and we were told just to kind not make any noise, just look straight ahead. It was a very controlled environment.

SY: Amazing. And then so all these people never interacted? They just sat there and watched when you got off the train?

HK: Oh, yeah, we were a curiosity piece to them 'cause I'm sure they had never seen Japanese or Asians before in their lives. And of course there was no television in those days so it was... we were a curiosity to them.

SY: So now how did you then get... you boarded another bus?

HK: Buses, yeah, they bused us to Topaz.

SY: To Topaz.

HK: Correct.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.