<Begin Segment 17>
TI: Okay, so we just had been talking about you delivered a baby, you're back at Portland, and you talked about baby food and how that was hard. But the next step is I want to get you to the camp after Portland, so after the Portland Assembly Center where did, where did you and your family go?
ES: We moved to Tule Lake, California. Our move was all done by train, all the drapes, curtains all down, couldn't even see outside all the way over to --
TI: So I'm curious, because in Seattle people went to Puyallup and pretty much everyone from Puyallup went to Minidoka as a group.
ES: Right.
TI: So Portland, I know a lot of people from Portland went to Minidoka, so it sounds like at the Portland Assembly Center they went to different camps?
ES: Yes.
TI: And you went to Tule Lake. Some people went to Minidoka.
ES: Some went to Heart Mountain.
TI: And some went to Heart Mountain.
ES: Yes.
TI: So was it based on when people left, or how did they decide who went where?
ES: I don't know, but we left, we left Portland Assembly Center on the 2nd of September. We entered assembly center in May, May 2nd.
TI: And so September 2nd, did, a lot of people had already left for Minidoka by that time?
ES: I think so. From different places, but not from, not from Portland. I think most of the people from Portland who went to assembly center, there were about thirty-six hundred people.
TI: That went to, that went to Minidoka.
ES: Assembly center.
TI: Yeah.
ES: We were at the livestock exhibition building, about a little over thirty-six thousand.
TI: Thirty-six hundred?
ES: Thirty-six hundred, yes. And I don't know why.
TI: Now, when you left Portland, the livestock, the assembly center area, were you one of the first ones to leave or the last ones to leave?
ES: We were the last when we left assembly center, because they were looking for a place to put me. They wanted a nurse. That's the, that's the last I, first and last time I heard about that because here we were behind. Everybody'd gone. I said, everybody's gone, how... so I finally went to the director there and, "We're still looking for a place for you, but we're gonna get you out of here soon." That was the end of August, and they did get us out of there. The order came right away. And I think we were the last train, and it was only because they needed a nurse over...
TI: At Tule Lake.
ES: At Tule Lake.
TI: Okay.
ES: That was the biggest camp.
<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.