<Begin Segment 16>

TI: Okay, so Norm, we're gonna start the second hour. And the first hour, we got up through Tanforan, we were there talking about Tanforan. Are there any other memories of Tanforan before we go to Topaz that you can think of?

NH: Well, we had school, we had eating in the mess hall, that was our day.

TI: How about just in terms of knowledge of what was going to be the next step? Was it clear that, that Tanforan was just a temporary place and you were gonna be sent someplace else?

NH: That came later, yeah. Says, "Well, we can't be living here for all during the war." I mean, that struck me, and I said, "Well, then something must be going on." Then later on, they said, "Yes, we're in the process of building the ten WRA centers, War Relocation Authority centers." Tanforan and all of the other horse stalls, temporary ones were, what were they? Wartime... WCCA, Wartime Civilian Control Administration.

TI: Right.

NH: Ran those, and those were gonna be temporary, and we were all gonna go to WRA centers. But they were gonna try to keep communities together, I guess.

TI: And that's what they, they told you. Okay, so let's go to the next step. So how were you transferred from Tanforan to Topaz?

NH: I don't know what they did, but they said, "Okay, everybody pack up. On so and so day, we're gonna be leaving." And they're just, there's a train track running next to Tanforan, a spur I guess you'd call it, where they used to load and unload horses. And so they brought a train in, and we were already packed and they just put us, put us all on the trains, and then away we went. And I think they did it in two or three loads, you know, two or three train loads, 'cause I don't really remember how many people were in Tanforan. Do you have any record of that?

TI: We do, I don't recall, but we can go back into our, we have a database that has all the information.

NH: But there must have been several thousand people there in Tanforan, but then other racetracks must have had, been pretty full, too. And I understand that there were some places that weren't racetracks. I don't know what they were, maybe temporary shacks they built somewhere.

TI: They had about seventeen of those temporary assembly centers, and a lot of them were racetracks, some fairgrounds...

NH: Uh-huh, fairgrounds.

TI: ...different things, yeah.

NH: Just areas where they could sort of keep us somewhere. Then we got on the train, and all the shades were drawn, and there were soldiers on the train. Sometimes they would walk up and down the aisle, but not that frequently, but that's about all. They were armed, I don't know what for, but they were.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.