<Begin Segment 9>

TI: So eventually you have to leave. And so for the Berkeley students, where did you guys assemble?

YM: Well, downtown Berkeley, Shattuck Boulevard, I think it was. I think they sent a bus to pick us up.

TI: And then describe, where did they take you?

YM: They took us to the Tanforan racetrack, just south of San Francisco. It's a big shopping center now, Tanforan shopping center. But it was a regular racetrack. They had built a... the infield was all the army barrack type construction there. And, of course, the early ones that went there were housed in horse stalls, they were the unlucky ones. And so there were six of us in our family group, six students, and they housed us in one section of the barrack. It was... it was okay for us young kids. For families, it must have been pretty bad.

TI: Well, so describe, so here you are, a bachelor, now you don't have to go to school, you're now in a camp with hundreds if not thousands of other Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals. So what did you do during that time?

YM: Well, actually, we all had jobs. And I guess we collected, like, twelve dollars a month or something. I worked in the mess hall doing odd jobs in the mess hall. But during the day, we would do things... I had a friend who was, did fencing in college. He was able to bring fencing equipment into camp, the sabers and the masks and the guards and so forth, and so he taught us fencing. And then another fellow, he was a physical ed. major, and he brought along badminton equipment. And at Tanforan, the grandstand had large areas below the grandstand with hardwood floor and everything, and so they set up badminton courts there. So we learned to play badminton. They set up tennis courts outside, so we had a lot of activity going there. It wasn't all bad for the young people like us. They had dances every week, they had, they played pop tunes on the record player and we'd take dates to the dances. That's where I was able to get together with my wife, Alice. I asked her out for a date and that was the beginning of our romance.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright ©2009 Densho and the Twin Cities JACL. All Rights Reserved.