Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Mo Nishida Interview I
Narrator: Mo Nishida
Interviewer: Martha Nakagawa
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: November 29, 2011
Densho ID: denshovh-nmo-01-0007

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MN: Now from Santa Anita you're put on a train to go to camp.

Mo N: Right.

MN: What memories do you have of that train ride?

Mo N: Well, I don't remember this clearly because, maybe because I was a kid having such a good time running around exploring things. I was always kind of a curious kid I guess. Some people call it mischievous, but I was always kind of curious getting into stuff. So I don't remember a lot about who or what I went with. All I know is that when I talk to the family later, my mom and my baby sister are traveling with my grandparents. So me and my dad are traveling by ourselves in a different part. My mother was, I think, kind of like a hospital, so she was separate from us. So it was just me and my dad, I don't remember my dad being on the train with me, 'cause I guess we were just out running around all over the place, just checking things out. The one part that I remember is you couldn't look out the windows, they had all the windows blacked out. So we were just tearing the shit up, running through the train.

And then we stopped and they opened the door and told us we could get out. And I remember people saying, "Hey, don't go out there, you don't know what they're gonna do." [Laughs] But they were saying, "You could come out and stretch your legs." And it turned out that we stopped at a real desolate section of the Great Salt Lake. So soon as I got a chance, me and some other kids, we got out. Was out there running around, and we ran over to the lake. Run to the water and watch that thing get, dry up and cake up. And so that was kind of an exciting thing. But I remember that people were very distinctly distrustful and scared, and no telling what they were gonna do. And then once we got off and were running around, they were yelling at us, "Come back, don't go too far, 'cause they'll leave you," and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, we were being cautioned by the community folks. And there's always, right in the community, tight community, there's always these nosy people that want to boss these kids around, so they're always yelling at you and stuff like that. Nobody ever paid too much mind to that. Here I'm running around having a good time. Then we come, end up in camp, end up at Granada, and we're loaded onto trucks and brought out to our blocks that we were in.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.