<Begin Segment 11>

TI: So let's go back to you and your family. So April 1942 you have to leave Auburn, so where does the family go?

KT: We went to a train station and then they took us to Pinedale.

TI: And when you say took you, so who was in the family that went with you? So it was you, your parents, and who else?

KT: Frank and the girls.

TI: So Mae and Lola.

KT: Lola, and Ben, Yukimi, Mae, Lola, and Ben, me, and Hitoshi, or Frank.

TI: So it's pretty big, so there're, looks like eight of you, six kids and two parents. So you, Yukimi, Mae, Lola, Ben, and Frank, so six kids and then your parents.

KT: Yeah.

[Interruption]

TI: Okay, so we were just talking about the family going to Pinedale, and it included you, Frank, Yukimi, Mae, Lola, and Ben?

KT: Yeah.

TI: And then your parents.

KT: Yeah.

TI: And we're, I guess, commenting that Frank was probably about twenty-six years old.

KT: Twenty-six or twenty-seven.

TI: And what was Frank doing before the war started? What kind of work was he doing?

KT: He went to, he went to L.A. for a while, working for some other Japanese. I don't know what he was doing there. Then he came back, then he was farming with us.

TI: Okay. And then your other two brothers, Takeshi and Satoshi, were --

KT: They were both in the army.

TI: -- in the army at that point. Now, why didn't Frank go into the army?

KT: Well, he must've been too old or the draft number didn't call him.

TI: Okay. So yeah, he, he kind of missed that. So tell me about Pinedale. What were your first impressions of Pinedale when you got there?

KT: It was hot and dusty. [Laughs]

TI: And tell me about your living quarters for the family.

KT: They had, well, tarpaper shacks, and they had their cots, steel cots with mattresses, and blankets I guess, army blankets. But that's what it was, it was hot and dusty. In fact, we saw some Japanese guys drive by, across the fence. And they said, "Don't worry, we'll be joining you guys maybe," or something.

TI: So they were the locals.

KT: Yeah, they were locals that weren't evacuated yet.

TI: Okay.

KT: It's just like when the Seattle people here were sent to...

TI: Puyallup, right.

KT: Puyallup, yeah, we were still out.

TI: So you could go by there.

KT: We could go to Puyallup and visit them.

TI: So did you ever do that? Did you ever kind of --

KT: I didn't, but my mother did.

TI: Okay. Any other memories of Pinedale? It looks like you were there for about four months or so.

KT: I don't remember too much of Pinedale, other than they were digging, they had jackhammers and they were digging these huge pits. I don't know what for. But later on they said Pinedale was gonna become a Signal Corps center or something, so they were probably getting ready for, I don't know what.

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