<Begin Segment 5>

DG: So Sachi, what are your memories of Pearl Harbor, that time?

SH: You know, actually, I have no recollection. I don't even know what I was doing at that time.

JS: What year did you graduate?

SH: I graduated in camp.

DG: So you were about sixteen.

SH: Yeah, when the war broke out.

GH: Yeah, there's a lot of 'em graduated in camp, you know.

DG: So as the months went on after Pearl Harbor, how did your family, and as it became clear you were gonna be forced to leave, how did your family deal with all of your farm, your farming equipment? Do you know?

SH: Well, my father's... let's see, the landowner, he took over.

DG: Do you remember his name?

SH: Oh yes, Huntley.

DG: Huntley.

SH: Crutcher Huntley.

DG: And what about all the equipment?

SH: I think my father left it with him, and so I don't know what happened to it after that, when we came back. But we went back to his place again.

DG: Was that common in this area, that people were able to come back to the land they leased?

SH: No, a lot of 'em didn't come back. No, a lot of 'em did not come back.

JS: So you said there were maybe forty farming families, Japanese, and then after the war, about how many came back?

SH: Maybe four or five.

GH: There was only about four or five.

SH: Yeah.

DG: Who are they? So the Tokunagas, the Hiromotos...

SH: Sakais, Nishi --

DG: Sakata?

SH: -- and Imamura. Sakatas, they came after, after war. Yeah, they weren't here. Only Toshiko, she was a Shimada then, so she used to come too.

GH: She married a Sakata.

SH: Yeah, she married into Sakata, and they didn't, they're newcomers after war. So there's actually about five or six former, that came back. And the others are all new.

DG: So did you have the same experience of evacuation as George described, or was yours different? When you had to leave. The bus to Vacaville...

SH: No, no, no. Okay, we got on the train right there on Freeport Bridge, right on Freeport Bridge.

GH: That's a different group.

JS: You went to Tule Lake?

SH: We went to Tule Lake from there.

DG: Directly?

SH: Directly.

GH: Good camp. [Laughs]

SH: Biggest camp.

DG: And that's because you were in Courtland and you were in --

SH: No, I was in Clarksburg.

DG: You were -- oh.

GH: She was on Yolo side, Yolo, and we were in Solano. So Solano people went to the Arizona...

SH: About a mile down here is the boundary line, Yolo and Solano, and they lived on the Solano side. That's why we're still Clarksburg, but he's on the other side.

DG: So do you remember that day?

SH: Yeah, it was June 5th. When was it, '43, '44? '43.

DG: '42.

SH: Two, okay, '42.

DG: And so your parents and your brothers and sisters were all at that bridge.

SH: Yes.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2012 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.