Densho Digital Repository - David Sakura Interview I (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-498-16)

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DS: There is a story that I like talking about, and that is, she took the boys off the train and had a brief stop in Cheyenne, Wyoming, to buy sandwiches to feed the boys. Suddenly the train started moving out of the station, and she desperately grabbed the boys, the three boys, raced down the platform and barely made it back onto the train. And I think about what might have happened to her if she was abandoned by the train, left on the platform in Cheyenne, Wyoming, no luggage, and totally abandoned now here in the United States. But fortunately, she made it. And I do recall taking the train, getting off, getting on a bus to this rural area near Madison. Getting off the bus with our suitcases after this long journey, and trudging up the long farm road to the farmhouse. There was nobody to greet us, and my mother settled the boys in what I think was the migrant workers quarters, and then she was faced with cleaning the farmhouse because the widower had not done any housework for an indeterminate period of time. And she spent the rest of that long day, into the night, washing dishes, cleaning the kitchen, before she was able to go finally to bed.

VY: This was on the day she, I'm sorry, that was on the day she arrived, she had to do all that?

DS: On the day she arrived, I can still remember seeing the lights in the kitchen wishing that she would come and be with us. And in a couple of days, I think, no more than a week, my mother sent an urgent message to my father, who was now stationed in Minneapolis, St. Paul, at Fort Snelling. He was working with the Military Intelligence Service, the MIS, working on translating Japanese radio messages. And one of the reasons we moved to Wisconsin was his close proximity to the family. She sent an urgent message to come and take us out of this situation. And I often wondered what was the cause of her urgent call to come and rescue us. And my imagination can run wild, but it must have been something horrific that she experienced, maybe with the farmer, that caused her to send this urgent request to come and take us. And before we knew it, we were then in, settled into a one-room studio apartment in a converted office building right in the downtown intersection of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where my aunt Rae (Nakamura) was living. And my memory is, suddenly we're in Milwaukee. It would be (like living) down on Jackson Street in Seattle in a one-room studio apartment with my grandmother, three boys, my mother working, and my father in the army. And there was a polio epidemic going on, and so we were quarantined in the apartment building and could not leave the building for the summer of 1944. My mother was working, my grandmother, Baachan, was living with us, and once again, we were living in a one-room apartment after two years in Minidoka, we were now in a one-room apartment, studio apartment, in Milwaukee. It was so untenable that my grandmother Baachan left in a huff, leaving myself and the two boys unattended while my mother was working during the day.

VY: You mean she'd moved out?

DS: I don't know when she left, but she left in a huff. She had a huge fight with one of my brothers and couldn't take it anymore and left. So there we were, three boys unattended, living in a studio apartment, quarantined in a polio, during a polio epidemic, my mother working. So that's what constitutes an indefinite leave. There weren't any other Asians around, my aunt was nearby, and within a few months we moved to a two-bedroom apartment just a few blocks up the street and still in downtown Milwaukee. I went to third grade and I remember being enrolled in third grade, and after a week, I was promoted from grade 3-A half a grade to grade 3-B because of the quality of the education I received in the camps. That I was so well prepared that I didn't, I was overqualified for third grade, so they pushed me up a half a grade.