<Begin Segment 2>

RD: Do you remember the day and the days that were leading up to when you were told you were going to be going away?

KS: All of the men in our neighborhood were taken away by the FBI, because they were all fishermen. And all the Japanese involved in fishing were taken away because of the high risk conditions. And that just left the housewives and children. And so we had no relatives here, but a close family friend had a restaurant business in Japanese town, and she managed to get us over there to stay at an empty Buddhist temple so that we could register as residents of Japanese town. There were three families living on that Buddhist temple, right on First Street there. And we waited until we were notified to be sent to Santa Anita Assembly Center, and we were just allowed to take one suitcase per person.

RD: Let's backtrack a little bit. How were you told?

KS: I don't remember. Being twelve years old and the oldest in the family, I had a younger sister and brother... apparently my mother and the other two mothers of the two families living in the Buddhist temple were notified when to be at a certain corner to board the bus to be driven over to Santa Anita. And apparently many families were notified to be there at that given day and time, because there were more than three or four buses there. Nob, do you remember how many buses were there? There was about half a dozen buses there. But there was a lot of people waiting to be boarded, so they were all notified.

RD: Do you remember seeing people you knew?

KS: No, because we were from Wilmington, and because of our family friend in Japanese town who got us to move into the Buddhist temple, I knew nobody in Japanese town.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2010 Raechel Donahue and Garrett Lindemann and Densho. All Rights Reserved.