<Begin Segment 12>

[Location: Railyard near Clovis, New Mexico]

AR: Okay, Dr. Ebihara, can you explain to us what we're looking at here? We actually found some things on the landscape from your childhood, so what are we looking at?

RE: Well, this is the turntable in the roundhouse which was a huge, tall building about 30, 40 feet high. That's no longer here, but this, the remains is this turntable in which my dad worked on the locomotive. He was a machinist and so my dad worked in here. It used to be hotter than a firecracker in here. It was always, always where my dad worked every day of his life being a machinist. And of course this... it was contained in a big building. If you look in the distance, there's a tunnel entrance here and that, an entrance or exit, and we negotiated going into town through those tunnels.

AR: They went under the tracks?

RE: Yeah, it went under the tracks for hundreds of yards going into town near the train station or the depot, but...

AR: Was there any lighting in the tunnel or anything?

RE: Yes, there were lights in there, of course, but then vandals would come in and break the lights and it would, like we'd be groping our way through the tunnel to get to the other side so it wasn't always easy.

AR: Got to be scary for a young kid?

RE: Yes, it was, but it was the shortest distance to get into town. Otherwise we'd have to go over the highway, over on both ends, which would be quite a distance for us as kids to negotiate.

AR: Would you say you went through the tunnel almost every day?

RE: Pretty much every day, yeah, we did.

[Interruption]

AR: Would you say almost on a daily basis, the Japanese community?

RE: Uh-huh. All the Japanese families, of course, utilized that to get to town because the distance to the highways on both sides were just too far for us to negotiate. So this was the shortest distance, so obviously we were segregated from the rest of the town, so we lived across the railroad tracks. And so the tunnel ran for a couple hundred yards or over to, near the railroad station or called the depot over there, and of course it was not always safe to be in the tunnel by yourself, we always had others who accompanied each so that, for protection. Because there were occasionally those...

AR: Ruffians?

RE: Ruffians who would be, yes.

AR: Waiting in the tunnel?

RE: In the tunnel to accost us, rob us or whatever.

AR: Were there any actual incidents where people got robbed or beat up or...

RE: Yes. That's why many years before, my mother cautioned us to be careful and be sure you were in groups. When we were in groups, nothing ever really happened, but those, there would be people, kids standing at the top of the stairway spitting at us as we came up the stairway, so you know, those incidents we could tolerate, yeah.

AR: Lot of name calling and...

RE: Yes, indeed.

AR: So... and as you remember the night when your families were removed from Clovis, this is the area where you saw folks gathering?

RE: Yes, you know, again, people had to come through the tunnel, so most likely they came, the vigilante, quote, "vigilante groups" came through the tunnel and came across. And from our vantage point we could see the oil torches obviously from there, yes.

AR: Yeah, your camp is probably about two or three hundred yards behind the camera.

RE: Right. About three hundred yards from this tunnel entrance or exit, yes.

AR: Wow, scary.

RE: It was, uh-huh.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2008 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.