<Begin Segment 19>

BK: What were your impressions, your very first impressions, once you got to Puyallup?

JT: Once we got into Puyallup, after we got settled down, it was all very big-time stuff. [Laughs] It was exciting in that respect and I said, gosh, when we first got in there we saw all these Japanese people and we, who had lived in a town of seven families or eight families, couldn't imagine that many Japanese people all in one spot at one time. It was just amazing to me. And we lived up in the very last row, I think it was Eleventh Avenue -- they called it by avenues -- and I think we lived up on Eleventh Avenue which was the very last row of barracks in Puyallup. But at the front, there was a gate there where people could come and visit. And people from outside Seattle, Caucasian or whatever they were, whomever they were, would come in and ask to see certain people. And then they'd send a runner up and say, "There'd be someone at the gate who'd like to see you." But the only ones that came to see us were the people who'd liked to see people, kids and people who came to see... people who came from Alaska or who lived in Alaska, and they wanted to see what these "Eskimos" looked like and what they lived in. And they thought we all lived in igloos so we were, see, we were called down there sometimes and I'd say, "Well, forget it, I'm not going down there." [Laughs]

[Interruption]

LH: So people actually thought that...

JT: They wanted to see an Eskimo, yeah. At that point, I guess we weren't as expanded as we are now and know a little bit more about other people.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.