<Begin Segment 27>

HU: Next morning we reached to the Moab. Then that was a cold, very cold out there, Utah, you know. And there was an open truck bed we rode, sixteen of us, and took to the CCC camp, that's the camp we went in. And we put in one room there and they post a sentry out there twenty-four hours and if we wanted to go to the bathroom, they called another sentry to escort us to the bathroom. [Laughs] And when breakfast, everything three times a day, we have to line up, sixteen of us line up and a half a dozen MPs escort to their mess hall, MPs' mess hall, we eat there, all we do is wash the dishes, dry 'em, and they do the cooking and give us the food. We've been doing that for, oh, let's see, about a good two months.

Then a bunch of people started come in more, end of, the end of February, there's twelve, well, thirteen people, younger people from Manzanar come in and twelve or thirteen from Poston came in. Then comes to the April, April 3rd, I think, Tule Lake people, fifteen of them, they resist the registration, you know, loyal or disloyal, those questionnaire, you know, two questions. And they said, "Don't sign anything," they spread. And they picked fifteen of them to the Leupp -- not the Leupp, the Moab, yeah. And before that, they want to open the mess hall; already they know, they got notified that more people come in. So they wanted, Best want to open the mess hall. I said, "We didn't come here for our request or anything. You take us over here without our permission or request. And now you put in here, and now you want us to open the mess hall? No. Nothing doing," I told them. "You promised, Myer promised us a hearing. Let's have a hearing first, before you ask us to open the mess hall or anything." So I resisted, I had to fight with Best all the time. Because every time we resist the Best, the mail never, we can't send the mail or receive the mail for the month. So, "That isn't fair," I told them. Then when the mail started come in, every one is opened up. So I told the Best, "Let me see you have the permission from the government to censor our mail? I'm a citizen just like you are. You got no right to open our mail," I told him. So he said, next thing, "Don't close your mail. Just leave open and bring to over here." So we had a lot of arguments.

Then one time, Best took us to the, outside the camp to see those, whatchamacall, dinosaurs, big bone is exposed on a small hill, and lot of those are small bone or some, you know, around Moab they have a lot of those different kind of petrified rock or something there. One time they took us there. And then the second time, I resist open the mess hall so they segregate us. And they bring a MP and the target practice right inside of the building. So that's, you know, they tried... if you resist they showed those things. So I said, the hell with them, and I told, I wrote to my wife, "If they're going to kill me, why, I don't care." I told 'em, the way they treat us is like nothing. So I wrote to Myer, "You lied to us about the hearing and now you treat us like these... I don't want to no longer stay as and American citizen. I'll renounce American citizen, put me in a concentration camp," I told him. And he said, "Right now," he said -- I got the letter back. He said, "Right now we got no law permit to renounce the American citizenship." [Laughs] That was the end of March.

EO: Now, did you have to sign the "loyalty questionnaire" as well?

HU: Yeah, in Leupp.

EO: Oh, so this is later.

HU: Way later.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.