<Begin Segment 9>

EG: How did it go for you, getting organized and moving out of Puyallup to permanent camp?

PT: We didn't have too many possessions actually to pack. I really don't remember the details of being moved over to Hunt, Idaho. But I just remember that when we got to Hunt, Idaho, all of the barracks for the internees were not constructed. And so many families had to live in the recreation halls, that were a part of each block or each unit. And so we were -- our family, since we had only three in our family -- we were assigned to live in a recreation room, to share that hall with about seven other families. But one of my mother's closest friends was already assigned a small unit, and so she was very kind enough to have us join them in this very small room. And her family consisted of just herself and her husband, and so the three of us moved into her unit.

EG: Now, what would a unit consist of?

PT: It was just one room. It was just one room. I don't remember how big it was, but...and there again, we put rope or something across the middle of the room, and we hung sheets so that there would be some kind of privacy.

EG: This was at Minidoka?

PT: Yes, this was at Minidoka.

EG: What kind of routine life developed for you and your family at that Minidoka school, and work and so on?

PT: I think my mother helped out in the mess hall, and my father -- I don't remember what he was helping with there, but I remember attending school for about, maybe four to six months, because my family had signed up to be repatriated to Japan. Because my mother had never returned to Japan to visit her mother, ever since arriving here when she was around twenty-three years old. And so because she wanted to see her mother again, we signed up for repatriation. And so after about six months or so, we were then transferred to Tule Lake, California.

EG: Why, why Tule Lake?

PT: Tule Lake was a camp for so-called disloyal Japanese Americans, disloyal to the United States, or for people who requested repatriation. They were considered, I imagine, disloyal. So we were all sent to that camp. And internees who were at Tule Lake who did not express an interest in going back to Japan, they were sent to places like Hunt, Idaho, or Jerome, Arkansas, some other camps. Whereas the so-called disloyals, were sent from those camps to Tule Lake.

EG: Did you notice much difference between Minidoka and Tule Lake?

PT: Yes, even on the way going to Tule Lake. We were on this train. We were not allowed to open the windows. There were armed guards on the train. We happened to pass a train that carried the internees from Tule Lake to Hunt, Idaho. Their windows were open. And perhaps they didn't have as many armed guards on the train as we had on ours.

EG: And then life in camp, how was that different?

PT: When we first arrived there, we were just horrified because the room had been left so filthy from the people who had been living there. And there was one pot bellied black stove in the center of the room that was just filled with trash. And I just took one look at that room and I was very, very unhappy. I was very unhappy anyway to leave all my friends in Hunt, Idaho, friends that I had grown up with, and I was not looking forward to going to Japan. Because it would be something totally different for me. And so, I remember arriving at that room in Tule Lake. It was close to noontime, and my parents went to the mess hall for lunch, but I just sat in the corner of the room and cried. I didn't feel like going to lunch.

(Narr. note: I want to mention that my mother would never have been able to see her mother even if we had repatriated to Japan. After returning to Seattle from Tule Lake, she contacted the International Red Cross to locate members of her family. I think it was some time in 1948, when she finally received a letter from her oldest brother. This was the saddest news she ever received. Her mother had immigrated to Korea with her oldest son and his family. At the end of the war when Japanese nationals were repatriated to Japan, her mother, who was bedridden and too ill to be moved, had to be left behind under the care of a Korean housemaid. Rioting broke out in the neighborhood where the Japanese had lived, and my grandmother was killed. Upon reading the sad news, my mother buried her face in her hands and sobbed for the longest time. She never again talked of wanting to return to Japan.)

[Interruption]

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.