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HM: What were your impressions when you first got to Manzanar?

KO: I have to chuckle thinking back on that one. That last, that last part of the journey from Seattle to Manzanar was by bus. We got off the train and I think there was three large travel, Travelways or some such name. They weren't Greyhound. Travel something, buses. The one that I was on somewheres down the line, maybe a couple hours from the train, developed a problem with the engine or with the fuel. It stalled and started again and stalled, and they gave up on it finally. And I think they sent another bus. So we transferred and got onto that second bus. And when we finally hit the camp site, which was still under construction, Shig Moritani, who happened to be on the same bus, made a comment about, "Look at. These people can walk up the sides of these buildings." 'Cause there were footprints on the tarpaper. And obviously a worker had walked on it while it was still flat on the ground and it was raised vertically later. But there were these footprints going up the side of this barracks that they had built. And we all got a good laugh out of that. Speaking of Shig, is he still on the island?

HM: No, he moved to Kingston.

KO: Really?

HM: But he's the only one left of his family now. I know that all your brothers and all of you went into the service. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

KO: Okay. At evacuation, Nibs was in the service already, in Fort Lewis. He was one of those early draftees that you serve your one year and you're out. Well, he was anxiously waiting for that one year to end. But unfortunately then we had Pearl Harbor. Then that ruined that idea. Anyway, they were, they were not discharged. And so he was then transferred out and I think he ended up in Camp Hood in Texas? Someplace, someplace like that. Up until that point he was the only one in service from our family. But as time went on and... and there was this "yes-yes" or "no-no" type questions that came up about loyalty. It was just immediately after transferring up to Minidoka that the effort to recruit volunteers for a special service was brought up. Bill and Kiyo Nagatani, I think they were buddies somehow from working out in the, in the farm, they both volunteered for the service. And Bill was accepted and for some reason Kiyo was not. I think it was some physical thing that Kiyo might have had. So Bill went off to do his little thing, basic. And that was the nucleus of the 442. First of all, Ebe in Pullman, he had terrible eyesight, bottle glasses, this type of thing. And so whether he wanted to or not he wouldn't be accepted for service. But Sage, George, and myself were, the rest of us, were still not in service.

Now from camp, the three of us, Sage, George, and myself, went out on a farm workers leave out of camp to an orchard in Mesa, Idaho. We worked the summer in that apple orchard. There was unfortunately a late frost that kind of reduced the crop outlook for that particular season. And so we salvaged what we could in the parts of the orchard that were not affected by the frost and did our little thing that way. We worked through to late in the fall into processing the apples as such, washing and sorting and boxing and loading them onto refrigerated freight cars, that was the part of the job that I had. These bushel baskets is what they had. And to get that freight car exactly with the exact count of baskets of apples that it had to be to call it loaded and full, was almost a puzzle. I'm sure I closed the door on a couple of freight cars that weren't quite exactly full, maybe missing one or two baskets. 'Cause I just could not get that, the line up, exactly how it... after a little while it was no problem at all to get the right count of baskets in these cars. They were refrigerated cars. I don't know where they... they were on the siding, maybe two miles away from the orchard itself. And it was my job to get the finished baskets into the freight cars using a flatbed truck with racks on the side. And it was a real challenge. But one way or another they got loaded and off. Also, in that same orchard, because of the frost and the outlook of very little in the way of fruit, they tilled some open areas of the orchard and planted cabbage. So early on in the war I helped the food supply a little. A little, a real little.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.