<Begin Segment 4>

JN: What was your reaction and your family's reaction to the, the order saying that you had to leave Bainbridge Island?

VT: Well... my parents didn't say much. They were... as I said before, they weren't citizens so they pretty much had to do what the government asked them to do. They were sort of surprised that the citizens had to go, too, but in our case, we were all teenagers and younger, so I could see where they might go with their parents. But some of the older Niseis went with their parents, too, so all of them had to go to camp. Except a few families that went to Moses Lake. There was one group of three or four families that went to Moses Lake and were there -- like we were in camp -- they were in Moses Lake for three years, or three and a half years. And it was... I think that there was a few of our leaders went over to Moses Lake to look over Moses Lake. But, you know, for a family to pick up and move, you have to be pretty wealthy, too, to, or to be able to find a home and probably rent a piece of property to farm on. And that was a problem for most families. They just didn't have the reserve to take on a venture like that.

JN: How did you feel about leaving your friends and school and...

VT: Well, yeah, we were all sad that we had to leave. But we didn't think that we'd be gone very long. As it turned out, we were, we were back there in three years, came back in three years, just a little over three years.

JN: So, did you graduate in Minidoka then?

VT: No, I went to, I graduated in Manzanar. It's California.

JN: Well, preparing to leave, what are your memories of your family packing and preparing to go to Manzanar?

VT: Well, that was pretty simple. For us, my dad had to sell the crop that we were expecting that summer, and he managed to sell it to a neighbor. As far as packing, you can only take a few, few things, you know, clothes. There wasn't anything else you can bring anyway, so we did leave it in the house. When we returned, some were not there anymore, but most things were still in the house. Even our tools were still there. So, after they returned, after three years, they were able to start the farm again.

JN: So, they had somebody take care of their house? They didn't sell it?

VT: No, we didn't sell it. We didn't ask anyone to care for the house, so you know, there's always some burglarizing and that did happen, although we didn't lose that much, really. I think we had an old car, like a Model-T, that didn't run anymore, that was gone when we got back. But, we didn't lose much there.

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