<Begin Segment 15>

TI: So let's go to Tule Lake. So the family is now transferred to Tule Lake, do you remember kind of that first day at Tule Lake and what that was like?

MT: Well, there's nothing that really stands out in my mind, but we were probably among the last group to go to Tule Lake, so we were put into the barrack that was at the very corner, and there was a row of barracks on one end of the camp, but there was like a ditch separating our row of barracks, and so they named us "Alaska." [Laughs]

TI: So you were Alaska.

MT: Yeah, everybody that lived on the other side of the ditch, they called us Alaska. So we were in the very corner of that camp, the last barrack, honestly.

TI: And do you know why they called it Alaska? Was it just because it was so far away?

MT: Yeah.

TI: Now, were there any, I was wondering if there were any... I think people from Alaska actually went to Minidoka, but do you know if anyone from Alaska was in your area?

MT: No. [Laughs]

TI: Okay, it was just being really, really on the end.

MT: Yeah.

TI: So what's it like being on the very, very end? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

MT: Well, I don't think it really bothered me that much. I don't know if it was any different than being across, in the barracks across from... well, I don't know if it was a canal, but anyway, it was just that name kind of reverberated. [Laughs]

TI: And how many, when you say Alaska, that area, how many, I guess, blocks were in that area?

MT: Four. I think there were four blocks, there were four.

TI: So as you, if you're in a different part of the camp, Tule Lake, and you just told people you're from Alaska, they would know where you were from, way up on the end there. So describe your, the living quarters. Did they improve going from Pinedale to Tule Lake?

MT: Not much. Of course, the walls were unfinished, whatever you call those, two-by-fours were all exposed. The only thing is that in Pinedale, they had walls up to a certain point and then the rest of it was all open, so like I said, you could hear from one end of the barrack to the other what was being said in the room. But then this was...

TI: So here they built the walls all the way up to the top?

MT: Yeah, they did. They were finished up to the top. I don't know that I felt that it was much of an improvement.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2016 Densho. All Rights Reserved.