<Begin Segment 8>

Q: What was the train trip like to Minidoka?

MY: I'm sorry, I didn't --

Q: The train trip like going to Minidoka.

MY: Oh. The train trip, as I recall, from the North Portland Assembly Center to the relocation center in Minidoka was about five or six hours. The immediate impression I had was that they certainly must have dug up World War I troop trains, because they were coaches, they had the rattan back seats which in many cases were torn or broken or ripped. The thing that we felt particularly sorry for were the families with small children. Because every time we'd come to a siding, the fast freights, of course, had priority rights to proceed to the West Coast, and we'd be shunted off to a siding. The freight trains would roar through, we'd be sitting there in the hot sun. The other thing that I distinctly remember is the requirement that we draw all blinds. It was a very stupid thing, because many of us had been up and down the Columbia gorge, we knew the valley, and we certainly knew where we were and where we were at the particular time. However, as we got into Idaho and the train trip stretched on and on, we really wondered where indeed they were sending us. Eventually we landed someplace in the middle of a desert on a siding. And as they unloaded the baggage from the cars, many of the people went out, of course, and sat on their own baggage and literally cried.

Q: How were you treated during the train trip by, say, non-military personnel?

MY: Well, the military personnel was not bad. I mean, they were under orders, and we certainly understood it. The thing that I found is that the black porters, and there were a few black servants, porters, whatever, that were assigned to each train, and they were extremely solicitous. I'm trying to remember, they must have fed us on the train because there was that unspoken communication commiserating with our particular situation on the part of the blacks.

Q: What was the camp Minidoka like when you got there?

MY: Well, when we first arrived in the middle of the desert and we'd see these army trucks and buses coming over the hill, we could not see the actual camp. But as anyone would know, you disturb the virgin soil of any desert and you just raise clouds of dust. And I can remember those trucks coming over the hill and just literally roiling up the dust, permeating everything.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1983, 2010 Densho and Steven Okazaki. All Rights Reserved.