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MN: Now you were only three years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked, but did you notice a change in your family atmosphere after that date?

TY: Well, I can say probably for my older brothers and sisters, since they were going to school, I think they felt a certain... I don't say rejection from some of the schoolmates, because they didn't relate that to me, but they did in fact have that happen to them. And I think that that kind of like made us even closer. Here we were a cluster of, what, five souls, and so we were tighter bound, I guess, in doing things. Now one of the other things was that from that place prior to us going to camp, we were removed from the church 'cause they wanted to... I don't know if they wanted to, whatever they do to them, but we were told that we couldn't stay there any longer. So my father inquired about another friend who had a large ranch, and asked if we could stay there. 'Cause it was only going to be a matter of months before we were all going to be incarcerated. So he said, "Sure, come on." So we went over there, and that was only, like, about maybe three miles from our house, and this was on a large farm. One of the few places where Japanese owned, because their sons were citizens, so they didn't have to worry about their parents, and I thought it was really nice. So I used to go for rides on their sleigh that they would like when they pull asparagus and/or whatever. They had this horse in the front and then they had the sleigh in the back, and then one of the sons would put me in a trash bucket and I'd sit in there while they collected the asparagus. I had a good time. I'd go to sleep, it was fun.

MN: So your family then had to move already out of this church to this ranch, so did your family... what did they do with all the furniture?

TY: Well, most of the stuff was stuff that my father made, so it wasn't a big deal. It was portable and made out of wood, so it was okay, and my mom upholstered it, so it was no big deal.

MN: So when you were preparing to go to camp, then, did you have a lot of things to get rid of or was that already taken care of?

TY: No. There was a place that we had to house them, I don't remember where exactly, but I remember the father had built this big chest, it was probably maybe five feet by seven feet, that would house clothes. So he took it someplace, and we went to camp without that. It was okay.

MN: Did your siblings or your parents explain to you that you had to go into a camp?

TY: I don't think it made much of an impact to me. I think the thing is, more importantly was the fact that we were somewhat segregated by ourselves anyway, just Japanese. And so it wasn't unusual for me to associate Japanese because I didn't have any other Caucasian and/or Hispanic friends. So it was not a big deal.

MN: Now, where did you gather to go into camp?

TY: Okay, we didn't have to gather. What we did was that we were told to get to Union Station, and we got in the train and that was it. We didn't... like people in J-town, they got a semi truck and they dropped them off. No, none of that happened. We were just there. I guess, I don't know if we got there by trolley or what, but we got there.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.