<Begin Segment 18>

TI: Okay. So I want to now move on. After the Fresno Assembly Center, where did you go next?

KM: Jerome, Arkansas.

TI: And tell me about, yeah, tell me about it. That's a long ways from Fresno to Jerome.

KM: Yeah, uh-huh.

TI: So talk about the journey to Jerome.

KM: Oh, Jerome, we got on at the SP Depot, and Fresno Bee photographers around taking pictures. And we got... I was one of the later ones. We were on the cleanup crew, so we were the later ones, last ones to leave. We went through Bakersfield and we went through the Hasebe Pass.

TI: Okay, so Kenji, before that, you said something interesting. You were cleanup crew. What did you have to do to clean up the place?

KM: Cleanup crew? Yeah, we got... what did we do? Oh, we had to help the evacuees, heavy, they had a lot of heavy trunks, you know, the old style trunks that they had? Oh, they were heavy. And we had to load those onto the trucks and take it to the spur, yeah, railroad spur to load onto, to send to Arkansas. And we loaded them on the trucks, and wow, three or four high, tie 'em down, take 'em to the boxcar, unload 'em, load 'em inside the boxcars. Had to be careful because I remember loading boxcars. I used to load boxcars when I was younger, and we had to brace everything because the fruit was being shipped back east. But this boxcar, they threw everything in there, they didn't even hold it down or anchor it down, they just filled it up and let it bang around itself. You stop, and, "Pow." That was our cleanup crew. We just... yeah, mostly helped the evacuees with their baggage, their heavy baggage. You know, they took on the carry-ons that we had to clean up after each block. We had to go out and clean that out.

TI: Okay. And now you're telling me, your trip across the country.

KM: Yeah, going across, right. And we stopped twice to stretch our legs, and of course, the soldiers got out there with their rifles and watched us, so we just walked up and down the railroad tracks, exercised our legs. I think we stopped twice going over.

TI: And about how many days did they...

KM: I think it took three days. And it was just like a troop train going over. We had... it was pretty good, because they had a dining car in the, they served us. The food was brought to the table.

TI: Oh, so you guys took turns in terms of going to the dining car?

KM: Yeah, because we had, I don't know how many cars we had, and each car would be assigned to go, to go eat. There was quite a few of us that left, cleanup.

TI: Now, as you were going, did people know where you were going?

KM: Oh, yeah, uh-huh.

TI: So you knew it was Jerome, Arkansas.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2010 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.