<Begin Segment 29>

FN: Well I remember we all had to go to Jefferson Park. The golf course, the south of the, I mean the north part of it there. And we all got on buses there. I always remember.

DG: So how did you get to Jefferson?

FN: Huh? [Laughs] Somebody must have taken us there.

DG: And you got on buses.

FN: But as you say, we only had one duffel bag, bag each. So it couldn't, couldn't have been.

DG: So what did you think when you got to Puyallup.

FN: Okay yeah, that was terrible. Yeah, all of us piled into those one little room houses, one stall should I call it? [Laughs] That wasn't the, the very best. Fortunately we didn't have to stay there very long.

DG: It must have been difficult leaving a new house and going to a stall like that.

FN: Well, it, it was in a way, and in another way we, we thought, we were not the only ones, everyone else had to do the same thing, were in the same -- some of the people were in really bad straits too, so we just took things in a manner of course that we just had to do it, so...

DG: You were telling about, when you got to camp, how the kids had trouble with the food and so what --

FN: What, when we got. One thing in camp it was odd, because our family being large, we had almost one barrack! My sister lived in room, I lived in another and the boys lived in another, so we had all 3/4 of a barrack and, and my sister Helen, she had her family in another barrack right next to us. So we --

DG: Now are, are, are we talking about Tule Lake now?

FN: Yeah, that's Tule Lake, yeah.

DG: Okay, right. Okay, so you went from Puyallup to Tule Lake.

FN: Yeah, that's right. We went from, uh-huh.

DG: Now a lot, lot of people went to Minidoka and why did you go to Tule Lake?

FN: Well the reason we went to Tule Lake because the folks up north were, had to go to Tule. Bellingham and that area, those people that lived in the Skagit County and them. So they, they, that's why we went to...

DG: And you joined them. You said you had a choice. You could go...

FN: Yes, uh-huh. They did.

DG: And since your husband was still in Missoula.

FN: Yeah, yeah, he was still in Missoula so we decided that we might as well go where the family is.

DG: And that's your family.

FN: Yeah.

DG: The Maekawas.

FN: Yeah. Noji part was the only one that had brothers.

DG: So you, so you took your mother-in-law with you to -- ?

FN: Yeah, my mother-in-law was with, with us all, all of the time.

DG: And your brother-in-law.

FN: Brother-in-law, yeah. So that's why we had the barrack whole. [Laughs] That was really funny because when you have almost three fourths of the barrack, you know!

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.