<Begin Segment 9>

SY: So the truck was, was left, and then you guys got on a bus at that corner. And where did the bus take you?

AM: To Manzanar, straight to Manzanar.

SY: So you went directly to Manzanar. And do you remember roughly how many people, were there several buses?

AM: Well, I don't know how many, but in about three days we're guessing that over a thousand of us left from Santa Monica, Venice, and one family from Malibu, from that corner.

SY: That corner. Because most, weren't most Japanese Americans told to report downtown, to the Union Church? Or do you, I know you probably, as a child, didn't know that, but...

AM: Well, yes. Some people left from a train station, and I could relate to that because there's a story about Ralph Lazo, who sneaked into camp, you might say, accompanying his friend, and they left from a train station. And then some people went to a, what's the name of that racetrack?

SY: Santa Anita. Santa Anita, it was in the --

AM: They stayed there in the horse stalls. They were probably, that's, those two are probably the closest assembly centers that they went to prior to being shipped to a camp.

SY: And do you know why you didn't go to an assembly center? Do you know that now, why you, why they took you directly to Manzanar?

AM: No, I don't. But Manzanar was the first camp to be put up, and somehow they had determined where we were going. It's funny because the people from Bainbridge, Washington, were in Manzanar too, and they were, I think they were the early ones there.

SY: So do you remember that, that bus ride at all? Do you have any memory of that bus ride to Manzanar?

AM: No, I don't.

SY: And arriving there, do you...

AM: Yeah, it was, it probably had rained because it was muddy and the tire, wheel tracks were all over. And we kind of had to, I don't know how the, or when the getas came in, but we were walking around early on, on getas in the mud. And stuffing our mattress with straw. But because we were a small family of three, we got put in with the Tanaka family, who also had three. And the reason I say this is they had a two or three year old son named Ted, and I met him about two years about in Sawtelle, and I remembered his name, so when they had a reunion I asked Jack Fujimoto if Ted was there that day, and he pointed him out to me. So I went up to him and I kind of questioned him to verify that it was the same Ted, and he was tickled pink to have somebody fill in his young days. And he took me out to lunch one day to talk to me.

SY: That's nice. So you actually shared one room in a barrack?

AM: Yeah.

SY: So you had, there were two families in one room.

AM: Uh huh. They had a sheet or a blanket or something hanging down to separate two rooms.

SY: So I wonder if that was common. Do you know?

AM: Oh yeah. Well, only if the room, families were small. Families that were large, they got to have the twenty by twenty-five rooms to themselves.

SY: Weren't the rooms on the ends of the barracks smaller, though? There was...

AM: No, I think they were divided equally, probably. But I don't know, I'm only familiar with Manzanar. Some places could've been different. Because I understand the roofing in the hotter climate, they had double layers of roofing, and we didn't.

SY: So you, did you feel uncomfortable sharing this, this room with another family?

AM: Probably, because I never did in my life before. [Laughs]

SY: And how, do you remember your parents' reaction, or how, what they, did they say anything?

AM: Well, they probably did because we moved a couple times to other barracks and, before we finally got a barrack by ourselves, because my father got sick for a while and they wanted him to have a quiet room when he came out.

SY: And how was your, what did, what happened to, what was he sick with?

AM: He had some kind of ear infection, inner ear infection.

SY: I see. Was he working in camp? Did he have a job?

AM: In what sequence, I don't know, but he was a fireman. That's, I know that was the last job he had, but I can't remember what other jobs he had.

SY: And your mother, was she, did she work?

AM: I don't think so.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.