<Begin Segment 11>

SY: So backing up to when you went, got, by the time you got to St. Mary's and everybody gathered there, what happened after that?

HS: They put us on buses and then it was, what, fifty people to a bus, and I don't know how many, it was five thousand Japanese people living around that area, so I don't know how many buses, but then we were all trucked into Santa Anita. There was the buses, and then they had little jeeps with soldiers with armed rifles.

SY: And everybody, there were, you remember how many people, was it, it wasn't five thousand that gathered at St. Mary's. It was, they did it in --

HS: No, but you couldn't tell how many buses. All we know is when we got on a bus and took off.

SY: And do you remember how you, what your first impression of Santa Anita was?

HS: No, they, we had, the early ones had to live in the stables. It was eight thousand there, but our group was right in the middle of the parking lot. We were, they had...Green Mess, there's, all along perimeter, the Green Mess was on this side, then White Mess and Orange Mess, Yellow Mess was in the very corner. So I don't know how many there were, but that's the mess hall, so we lived right behind the White Mess, so that's where we ate all our meals.

SY: And the people in the stables, they had their own mess hall?

HS: Yeah, there was a, the stable area, they'd go in the grandstand where they had the big, like, cafeteria there, mess line. But the stable area, those people had to endure the smell of the manure and urine. And then all they did was just hosed it down a little bit, but the smell of it still remained, so those people suffered for six months. And then the worst part of it was, see like, this was the horse, the section of the horse stall was about this big from there to here [points], and not quite as, about from there to here, but then that side was the tack room, but the people that, five or six people that would be in this side, had to come from that side, through where the five people were living there. So there was no privacy for any of the people on this side. That was a terrible feature, that.

SY: And the barracks that you were in was built, were built specifically for you?

HS: There were, what, twenty by a hundred and twenty foot long, I think, and then they were divided into four, then they made it smaller. But I remember when you had a ten by twenty room, then they chopped it in half and so they could get more people in. So all you could do was line up five cots, and that's what we had, just that and go out the door and then eat. So you never stayed indoors very long. All you had was one little light in the corner, one little drop light. That was it. But it was a real small, when they cut the unit in half to get more people in there, you were really crowded. So being young, all of us our age would hang around 'til close to eight o'clock or so, nine o'clock. Lights out at nine o'clock.

SY: And what kind of things did you do in, at Santa Anita?

HS: We had basketball teams. Then around the racetrack, they had a softball field there. I remember playing out there. Basketball, they formed teams, so all of us that, ones I played with back in L.A., why, we were all together, the seven of us. We'd been together five years, then half the team went to Amache and half of us went to Santa Anita, so we didn't have any good team after that. We weren't very good to begin with. [Laughs] We were just friends, and we weren't that organized and never had coaching or anything. We just played as a bunch of friends.

SY: So people were leaving slowly while you were there. There were...

HS: Yeah. Not in Santa Anita.

SY: Not...

HS: You couldn't leave camp until you got to the concentration camps.

SY: But didn't they, you said that they were leaving for Amache, your friends that were playing. Were they, some going to camp while you were still at Santa Anita?

HS: Yeah. They started taking 'em by groups, and it was, what, five hundred in a train, so you didn't know where, which area they were going to. All you could, go there... that was one of the saddest moments of life, is watching the friends on there, and every day for a month you'd see hundreds of people on the train. And the, they'd always play "Auld Lang Syne." Boy, when that train pulled out, them playing "Auld Lang Syne," I never forgot that. Boy.

SY: So you, did you know where you, who was leaving? Did you have an idea beforehand?

HS: Yeah, yeah. You'd go to the train, you just go up there and then you would, there's a platform there that we stood on, and so you go down, you could see down the cars where the people were loading. But a lot of times you didn't know, but you could see some of your friends by the windows, and they'd open 'em up and be waving as the trains pulled out.

SY: And you had no idea where they were going?

HS: Nobody did. You never knew until you got there.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.