<Begin Segment 3>

RD: And then after Tanforan, what happened to you?

AF: Oh, then we went to Utah. We went to Utah by train, to Topaz, which is close to Delta.

RD: And do you know what the differences and the reasons people went to different camps?

AF: Well, I think everybody in Tanforan probably went to Topaz.

RD: Just about everybody but Shig, because he ended up going to, he was San Francisco and he ended up going to Santa Anita. He felt like he got on the wrong train.

AF: So when you got, were there guards at Topaz when you got there?

RD: Oh, yes, there were guards there.

AF: Were you afraid?

RD: No, because I didn't know any better, I guess. I wasn't afraid because I remember one of the mothers that was there in our area would talk to the guards, and they seemed to be having a friendly conversation.

AF: So it was a barracks very much like this one?

RD: Wait a minute. When I say... I'm talking about Tanforan. I'm getting things mixed up.

AF: That's okay. Were the barracks in Topaz similar to what was here?

RD: Maybe a little smaller, I don't remember exactly, what the exact size was. But the windows, I don't think it had the wood divisions there.

AF: Almost everybody thinks they were much smaller. Because, well, you had more people in 'em, too. And how different was it? How ugly was this?

RD: It was a barren, cold... well, it was a desert. We weren't used to the climate there, because we were from the Bay Area and it was a big change weather-wise. And of course, the barrack was... oh, we had straw-filled mattresses and we had the potbelly stove.

AF: Everybody remembers the straw-filled mattresses. So was there a community there yet or was it just barracks in Topaz?

RD: It was barren.

AF: It's funny because some of... the camps were very different. The kids at Heart Mountain were, they at least spent some time trying to make it into, it was like a town. They had churches, do you remember if they had... so you went to school?

RD: Yes. Yes, I went to school in Topaz. So when you came out, how old were you, do you remember, when you came out of camp?

AF: I must have been fifteen. I went to high school when I got, came out.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2010 Raechel Donahue and Garrett Lindemann and Densho. All Rights Reserved.