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DG: Do you remember how it felt to be leaving, saying goodbye to friends?

ES: Well, especially the, because of our, a lot of the classmates were, they're there at the landing, they were watching us get on. You know, that part... yeah, it has it's... you had that kind of a lost feeling that you're leaving a place. I don't remember crying or anything, but I just remember them saying goodbye. So it's just... we figured, well, we'll probably be back. We weren't looking that much to the future, what's going to happen to us? We were wondering what the... where we were going, what are we, what are they gonna do? And, and at that age, I didn't think much more about it. Just accepted what they said, told us to get on the ferry and we got on the ferry, get to Seattle and get on the train. That's the first time a train ride for us, so, in a way, that was kinda exciting. 'Cause we didn't know... it was something very new to, to me. And then the soldiers at... the convoys that took us from the house to the ferry, to the ferry landing... they, they were really great, they're really nice, and they really treated us well. So that made, all the more, made you feel better about it. If they had just hauled us and hauled us out there and just handled us roughly or something, we'd have thought differently, but they were so... they were very, very good about it. So that part, I really appreciated that part.

DG: What do you remember of the train ride?

ES: Yeah, it was a nice train ride. Because it was by Pullman... I think it was by Pullman because they had seat facilities in there and everything. And they had nice meals and... we had to keep the windows all drawn down, I mean, the shades down, because they didn't want any light or anything to go through there. But the train ride itself was very nice, it was a very pleasant ride. And kinda exciting in a way, 'cause it's the first ride we ever had.

DG: And do you remember, then, the bus ride after that?

ES: The bus ride? Yeah, we had to get onto the bus to get to Manzanar. And, oh, that was quite a sight. [Laughs] It was so different from, you know, what you expect, you never seen anything like that, all barren land, only these barracks going up and just desert. We thought, "God, we're gonna live here?" [Laughs] But, I don't know, once they got the barracks up and everything... it was really crudely made. It was all one room and had to make our straw mattresses and had to divide it by using blankets. The whole family was in one big barrack and you just made do what you have to do. If you want to divide it, you divide it with a blanket, that's it. Then to the... when we went out for meals, we had to go out to this one main mess hall. We had these little tin plates that has a handle on it, just like army plates, and you go around, it's kinda like they serve you. You go down the line. They serve you and most of the time we used to eat with our own friends, so we didn't eat with the family very much. 'Course, like my parents, I think, were helping in the kitchen then. I mean, they were helping cook. Everybody had to help, especially the older ones. So most of the time that we went out to meals, we went with our friends. So I hardly ever went with my brothers or sisters to eat together, or with my parents. It was mostly with our own friends that we went out. And I remember attending... well, when I went there I think we, as recreation, we went to fellowship. They had some fellowship, church fellowship, that they were running, and we used to attend that. And they had, used to have concerts outside, out in the, I think they called it firebreak, where you bring your own blankets and lay there and listen. We used to do that. And then, and then when we first got there, we had missed school since we got there April 1st, in '42, we were gonna miss school for two months, so then when we got down there we had to finish up. They sent the material, I think, from, from the school, for us to finish up. And some of the older brothers and sisters and, in the block there, would help us with the schoolwork. So we were able to at least get that credit for that schoolwork. And then I understand that the older ones that were ready to graduate, they also had correspondence for them from the school so they could get their credit that way. So that was April, May, and June, so that was two months for us, 'cause we were there from April 1st, at Manzanar.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.