<Begin Segment 17>

HK: But the night before leaving was really an experience. Because everything was packed and so we had to sleep on the floor. And roll out the blanket, and then, then in the morning you had to roll it up, because we took some blankets, I think. Anyway, if we didn't, we left the blankets there. But, so we hardly slept the night before. But I don't know how else other people, how other people got to that loading zone, but somehow they managed. Because we didn't have anyone helping us to get there. We did it all on our own because people didn't want to do that. And there was only one man who came to see us off, and he was a fruit house manager or something. A good friend of the Japanese. He'd go around and have beer or wine with them and I don't know. He just came out to say good-bye to all of us. And years later, when we came back to that town, people who came back to the town, when this man died, and they had the funeral, the whole Japanese community came because they remembered that he was the only one who came to see us off. Mr. Hall, I think was his name. So few people.

I remember going to buy a razor blade, because I had forgotten that. And I wrote a poem about this; I wrote a poem. But we knew this druggist because our store was right across them and I, I would see him all the time. But on that morning when I went to buy a razor blade, my God, he flung it at me practically, and sneered and all that. Terrible. And those are, I mean, experiences that contributed towards my later decision about loyalty. I wrote to my English teacher in high school, asking for materials that, you know, we could use for theater and stuff. I got no answer, you know. I was one of her star students. And you get no answer from people like that. And you, you write to your boss and the woman tells you how busy they were, how hard they're working, and, as though we weren't doing anything, just languishing in camp, while they're working for the first time in their lives, they're doing some work. [Laughs] And no compassion, nothing. I think those contributed toward my feelings about America. Yeah.

EO: Did you have a pet?

HK: No, we didn't have a pet. No.

EO: Did other, did other people?

HK: Some people brought in pets. Yeah, we saw some dogs and cats. But I don't remember pets.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.