<Begin Segment 11>

[This transcript has been extensively edited by the narrator.]

SY: So you ended up going directly to Manzanar?

GN: So we went directly to Manzanar. And the two policemen that lived on either side of us, they were fighting over who's going to take us to the Union Station. One of them had a bigger car, because my mother had the wisdom to say, "Suitcases don't hold very much. We've got to buy these giant Boy Scout jamboree duffel bags." So we bought these giant Boy Scout jamboree duffel bags and we packed them! We could hardly stagger out of the place and down all the steps. But anyway, Melvin -- that was the one neighbor that was the police investigator, the other one, Ted -- they came and helped us load the car up.

SY: And you drove directly to Manzanar?

GN: No, they took us to Union Station. Then Melvin was the one that took us, and he was unprepared for what he saw. He saw the (soldiers) with these bayonets shoving people, herding them onto the train. And I saw something I will never forget as long as I will live, and that scene has haunted me all the time I was a parent and every time I see little children I think about that. When they had the testimonies for redress, I told about that. I had completely forgot about it. I told about that and I told about the riot scenes in Manzanar.

SY: So the scene that you saw at the Union (Station) was?

GN: Union Station. (There) was a young couple who had four children. The mother had twins that she was cradling in her arms. (The couple) were both dressed in their Sunday best, and she had a coat on, and there were two toddlers hanging onto her coat. All four babies were crying, and the poor young father had all these diapers strapped on his back, because they were probably all in diapers. He had all these baby bottles strapped on his back, and then he had these two (oversized) suitcases for all six of them. That just bothered me. How could they take enough blankets, enough sheets, enough underwear, enough diapers for all of those kids? They said you (could only bring what you could carry. You don't know) how long you're going to be gone or what the destination. We knew we were going to Manzanar, but a lot of people didn't know where they were going. Anyway, they herded us onto the train. My grandmother had packed a bento. They didn't provide anything for us. And when we got on the train, at lunchtime, I thought about them so that I told my grandmother, "Wait a minute. Let me go see if I could find that family so we can share our bento with them." My grandmother said okay, so my brother and I looked all through the train, we could not find them. But we could not go out of our own (car), so they had probably put them on another (car). I looked for them in Manzanar, when we went to Manzanar. Every time I looked to see what block they (might be) in, but I never did find them. That was just so sad. I was folding diapers myself (when I became a mother) and I thought, "Oh, gee." I always think about that family. (When my two) grandchildren (were born and) when I see little children, that image just haunts me. It was a terrible situation.

When we got there to Manzanar, the trains had stopped in Lone Pine. They took us all off the train and we had to haul all those duffel bags and everything and they put us on a bus. I think it was a school bus, it was a rickety old bus, and it pulled up to Manzanar. And when everyone saw that tarpaper city, it was just silence. People were so disillusioned. We got off, and they didn't offer us any food or anything like that. They gave us a little muslin bag and it was such (loosely woven) muslin, you could see through it, and a little string. And they told us, "Go to that washhouse," it's the laundry room, and there was one naked little light bulb burning, and there's a pile of hay outside. "Go fill that. That's your mattress for the duration." So we were stuffing, and people were glum and silent. We're stuffing, and my brother said, "Hey, Grace, I'm going be like the Baby Jesus" -- [sings] "asleep on the hay." And then everybody started laughing. Young and old, it just broke the ice. The first time there was any smiles on anybody's faces, I guess it tickled their funny bone. [Laughs] So we did sleep on that old hay that night. But it was such loose weave, the straw just came out and it was just a big mess underneath the bed in the morning and dust from it. It was terrible. Anyway, it (got smashed) down so much it's like nothing on top of the springs. No mattresses (at all. We threw it out).

SY: Very uncomfortable.

GN: Very, very uncomfortable. But we were so tired that my brother did sleep. But the next morning we got up, and you could see (our) silhouettes. The dust had blown through the night and come up through the cracks, the big cracks in the floor. There was no linoleum on the floor, nothing to cover the big wide cracks. And it was green lumber so it had shrunk, and all these big cracks, all the dust had come up. We had been enveloped in a dust cloud all night while sleeping and there was a silhouette of our bodies. Our next door neighbor, there was an Ogi family, barrack right to the south of us, this was Block 19. They lived in the first part of the barrack, but there were no partitions. Maybe because my uncle was privileged, (and the camp doctor), he had a partitioned area, so we had a (room) to ourselves. And there were all these bachelors. And (the Ogis) had two teenage daughters, a son that was the same age as my brother and little sister that was about five years old. And Mr. and Mrs. Ogi told my mother they didn't sleep a wink because of all those bachelors peering at their daughters. They had to retain a sentinel there to keep an eye on their daughters with all those bachelors in that barrack right next door. Eventually they did get walls, but it was some time, at least three or four months before they got any kind of partition.

SY: And your family managed, they kept you all together in one unit?

GN: In one room there was my grandmother, my uncle, Dr. Tom Watanabe. He had actually gone earlier with Dr. Morris Little from Reno, and they had opened up the camp and got all the shots ready.

SY: So he worked from the very beginning.

GN: So we knew we were going to Manzanar, but we didn't know where it was. We'd been to Yosemite and all that with my grandfather, but we knew it was on the other side of the mountains (from) Yosemite. So while we were in this barbed wire, I always would look up (Highway) 395 longingly, "Gee, I wonder what's up 395. I wonder what's on the other side of the mountains." My brother had the guts and the curiosity to go fishing outside because he could catch fish with his bare hands. He was kind of a marvel. And my brother and I had a little fish business selling goldfish (when we lived in Hermon). We lived in an area that bordered along the Arroyo Seco River. There was no freeway then, there was just the river going down, and we would go down to play in the river. Bush's Garden was up in South Pasadena, and after a heavy rain, some of the really nice fish would come down, after a big rain would come down and go down into the river, down into this little stream. So we knew where that was and my brother knew how (to catch the fish with his hands). I would be the construction guy, he'd tell me, "You build a dam here," and then he would catch the fish and then we sold the goldfish for a nickel. Kids would buy it, but a nickel was a lot of money. It bought a lot of things. It bought an ice cream cone, it would buy a popsicle, it would buy a candy bar, it would buy a gallon of gasoline. [Laughs]

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.