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SY: So then you, going back to, so your memory of the packing up and everything is very, very dim. I mean, you don't remember too much.

HS: Yeah, 'cause I don't remember having to do any of the packing myself because we didn't have that much, but my mother did all the packing. And then, of course, it was just one suitcase apiece. There wasn't that much to pack. But she did pack, we used to have, for weddings they used to have about a forty foot, thirty by forty foot long, anyway, she made a duffel bag out of that, and I know some blankets and clothes went in there. And some of the other stuff she packed in, I don't know what they call, I forget what they call those bamboo cases about this big, something bako. But anyway, she packed some stuff in there.

SY: It wasn't a suitcase?

HS: No.

SY: It was more like a...

HS: It was just a, like an oversized bamboo basket about this way and about this high, and it had a cover, just fit right over it. So she packed some stuff in there and bound it. And then we packed the stuff and sent it to, I think she packed that away and brought that to camp. When you unpack it, then you throw everything away.

SY: And then what happened to things that you did not pack? Do you remember the things that you had to leave behind?

HS: Well, what happened was, we were in between Japanese, Seinan and the Uptown area, so close family friends lived on Olympic and Serrano, right on the corner there, and so the night before we were supposed to report -- 'cause St. Mary's Church is where all of us had to go -- so we, this Yamaguchi family, real close family friends, why, we, all twelve of us, slept on the floor, no blankets or anything, and then got up early in the morning and walked over to St. Mary's Church with our one suitcase.

SY: Now, when you said twelve of you, that was...

HS: Six Yamaguchi family, there was four kids, their pa and mother. They were close family friends, so my dad, in order to go with the St. Mary's group, well then, we slept over there and then went to St. Mary's and signed up.

SY: And is that the Yamaguchi family that was in charge of St. Mary's? Wasn't --

HS: No, no.

SY: Different family.

HS: That's Yamazaki.

SY: Yamasaki, that's right.

HS: Father John, everybody knew Father John, him and his father. But Father John, I mean, he was such a wonderful person. He and his wife, they really made St. Mary's.

SY: But you didn't, when you were young, you didn't go to church there?

HS: No. I'd never been to a church before. Only in camp, Santa Anita, I started going to Federated Christian Church, and my father, after my sister died in '32, my father, he thought that he, sort of a guilty conscience, so he started going to Nishi Hongwanji and then he started collecting for them and raising money. But he became a strong member of Nishi Hongwanji until evacuation. And after the war, why, of course he passed away in '46, Minneapolis, but...

SY: He was still a practicing Buddhist.

HS: Yeah. My mother's still a strong Buddhist. They tried to get me to become Buddhist in camp, but I said, "Okay, I'll go one month and if I don't like it," I said, "then I won't go to church then." 'Cause Dad wanted me to be Buddhist, but then, at that time the ones that were Buddhists spoke only Nihongo, and so when I went, I says, "Well, I don't understand what they're saying," so I says, "Okay, I won't go to church." And then my mother prevailed and she says, "It's better to have some belief than none at all." And so said, "Besides, Hy is too hardheaded." [Laughs] So she let me go and my dad agreed, so I started going with one of my buddies to the, worked within the, started working in the trash crew and then he and I went to work in Orange Mess Hall. And that's how I started getting interested in the kitchen.

SY: But that, but the church was a, was not affiliated with St. Mary's?

HS: No, it was just a Federated Christian Church service in the grandstands, and so there was quite a few people there. And so this one buddy that I worked with, Jimmy Kawasaki, he and I went and, services there...

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.