Densho Digital Archive - Akiko Kurose Interview II (denshovh-kakiko-02-0007)

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AI: But I would like to ask you to see if you can think back to that actual day that you left Seattle, and what you did that day, and what you were thinking of at that time.

AK: Well, you saw my little suitcase. [Laughs] That little suitcase. Well, I knew that... it certainly didn't hold very much. And how am I going to survive, with all my... without all my possessions? But I guess it didn't really matter that much. And I think we just kind of... we boarded that bus.

AI: And do you remember having conversations on the bus? That's quite a long bus ride down to Puyallup; do you remember having any conversations...

AK: Well, we were told we had to keep the shades down.

AI: On the bus?

AK: Uh-huh. So people couldn't see us. And so we're not -- we weren't supposed to look out and see people, or wave to people or anything like that. And it just felt different. You just knew that it wasn't the same. All of a sudden you're being carted away, but it's not with a kind of a free-spirited, happy kind of thing. And then, that we were sad because we had to be away from our friends. We were taken to the camp in groups of your... and we were placed in the camp in different areas by... from, from where we were evacuated from. We were from Eighteenth Avenue, and so we were sent to Area B. And people that I went to school with that lived down more near Japanese Baptist Church, went to area D. You know, things like that, so we were kind of saying, "Hey, what area are you going to be in?" And this and that, and...

AI: Right, and so, at Puyallup, the camp there, or assembly center, was divided up into these different areas. And what was your first impression when you first got there?

AK: It was awful. Because we unloaded and here these were, there were these barracks with big knotholes in it and everything. And then they said we have to get our mattresses, and fill your own mattresses with hay. [Laughs] And it's just the whole concept of going to live out of, live in the barracks, the whole family there, no privacy, just one big room for the whole family. These were cots and no running water, no nothing.

AI: So do you recall, during your time at Puyallup, any kinds of conversations with some of your friends that you then ran into, or people your own age? At this time, you would have been in your senior year and a time when you had a certain amount of civics and learning about U.S. history and so forth -- did you recall having any kind of conversation with friends or family members?

AK: No, I really don't, I really don't.

AI: It was more of a day-to-day...

AK: Uh-huh. I do remember feeling, "Wow, this is awful, it's unfair," that kind of thing, but not beyond that. I didn't sit down and say, "Okay, here we're all citizens, we're supposed to be having the same kind of rights," and whatever. And I don't think I went to that depth of thinking.

AI: Right, not at that point.

AK: Not at that point. And it's easier now to say, oh yeah, this and that. Because we've learned a lot more, and then it makes sense to feel... you know what I mean. [Laughs] But at that time...