<Begin Segment 15>

TI: Okay, so Molly, in the last section you were talking about sort of loading up the train with all these extra bags of food and everything, so let's talk about the train ride. And so what was that like?

MK: The train? We got the Pullman car, and we're first train from the engine. Well, you could imagine how dirty and dusty that is, but we had the Pullman car. And my mother, before we left my mother must've roasted fifty chickens. She got one of those, couple of those big banana boxes and we loaded in all the, all the roasted chicken, and we made these, out of rice sacks, we made these bags with cookies and candy and stuff like that, and then we started up on the way. There was a RCMP, what they call a cadet like, in front of the car, front of the Pullman and the back of the Pullman, but there was a, I guess a sergeant or higher in command that looked over all of the cars. So there must've been about four or five carloads, cars, and we started up the, up into the Rocky Mountains, and we went on the northern route, the CNN route, and so we were going, going through Jasper and up in the, and so seemed like we were about two days running around that same mountain, but it was a... so we, it took us four days to get to it. But as we were going through the Rocky Mountains, we would see Japanese men, but the train would just slow (down) because they were working on the track or something, and so we could see. And we didn't know them, but my mother threw out chicken and all that. And we, and then we got to one place and the train stopped, and there was all our people from our, our village.

TI: These were the men, you mean?

MK: The men from our village, and they were all asking about their wives, and we just saw them the day before we left, so we told them about that, their wives and stuff. And they were so grateful, and we dropped all the food and everything there. And then that was the last we saw of them, and then we went, came into Winnipeg. It was a four day train trip. Just before we get to Winnipeg, the train hits about four or five horses, and two horses, had to (be shot) and kill. Well, you could imagine, we're aggie kids, they're shooting the horses right there in front of us. All the kids are screaming and hollering, but of course, that's what they have to do. They can't have (lived).

TI: 'Cause they're hurt. They're... yeah.

MK: So we were late getting into, getting into... and first place where they took us was called Immigration Hall.

TI: Before we go there, I just wanted to ask about Constable Clifford Dan. So he was on the train?

MK: He was on the train. He was --

TI: And you guys sort of, kind of got a friendship.

MK: Yes, we became -- and he was only nineteen.

TI: So he was one of the cadets?

MK: Yes, he was one of the, they call constables. And so when, as we were going up, he kept saying, "I don't see you any different than me." He can't understand why we were being evacuated, and first time. So as we were going up, he said, "Oh," he said, "At the station in Jasper they have the best strawberry, I mean apple pie." And he said, "We're gonna, I'm gonna take you off and we're gonna have apple pie." And I said, "Oh, well that's nice." So then when the train stopped at Jasper he got off and, you know they put the little thing, and he put his hand out for me to get out, and the sergeant yelled at him clear across. And so he said, "Well, I want to go and get apple pie and get her --" and he said, "Get back in there," yelling at me. So then, so he gets off and he goes in and he goes and gets this apple pie. Well, it's about that high, and one piece is about that big. [Laughs] And so he comes in and, but he was so mad, he pouted all the way because he was so angry that they treated me like that. But you know, I'm, so I was saying, but he went back and forth picking up loads of, and every time -- we were the last family to leave the Immigration Hall, all the other families were taken out to their farms because their housing was ready or something, but ours was not, ours was not ready.

TI: So it sounds like you were one of the first ones to Immigration Hall, but the last to leave?

MK: We were probably, from, they were from all different districts, so Mission, I think, was first, and so they were the cooks and stuff like that. They set up the thing. So when we got there, there were already Japanese there, but we were the first from Surrey, and then so we greeted all the, all the trains that came in. And so, and so...

TI: But then gradually they all left and you were the last.

MK: Yeah, we were the last family.

TI: Now, was it because you're so big of a family?

MK: No, no, they didn't have the house ready. It was a brand new, the cabin, brand new little dinky thing, the skeleton of a house. And they'd bring it there and, just like a mobile home, and so we were there.

TI: Now, at any point did they give you a choice? I mean, I know a lot of Japanese Canadians went to what were called, like the ghost towns.

MK: Yes.

TI: And so it was more --

MK: They gave us a choice, but my mother, she already heard something, and then she wanted the family to be together. Well, after we, after all of that, she even said, "We should've went to the ghost towns. Then you could've went back to school and all that. But can't redo." But my father would not go with us, so he said, "I'm not going where the dogs are." So he went to the ghost town, and he said, he was telling me, he said, "You know," he said that, "Should've came with me." He said if you'd let the government feed you and all that, and he knew what he was saying. But can't, my mother said that's the way it was, so that's the way it is.

TI: Because the ghost towns had, yeah, so they had like mess halls or places like, for people to eat.

MK: That's right. And they even had kind of like a little hospital. Yeah, and it was like, they had a whole bunch of those little, it was like a, it's in the Rocky Mountains and it's just a little settlement, and they had a whole bunch of these little, same, lookin' like a beet house, but there's two, three families in every one of those little dinky things. I went there and I saw it, and I thought, "Oh my goodness sakes." But it was like a little community, and so my father went there.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.