<Begin Segment 7>

CN: So when it was announced you were going to Idaho, how did they get you all there?

DM: By train. And that is vague to me too. I remember the train did not come in to Puyallup. I don't know how we got to the train or where the train was, but I remember there were old, old train, they still have the old potbelly stove and I remember everybody, it took a couple of days and we were all dirty and they just passed out sandwiches or whatever and, yeah, that wasn't a very pleasant trip.

CN: You know, one of the other interviews we've had, one person was talking about, he lived in Oakland and when he was sent to Tanforan horse stables they sprayed him with DDT...

DM: Oh, yes.

CN: Did that happen to you?

DM: See, now I told you we were fortunate that we were in these fresh barracks. But the later people were in the actual barracks which were across the street in the fairgrounds there and so they were in, when we had to help them get settled, and they had rather than the mattresses we had, when they ran out of mattresses there I guess they had straw ticks that we helped them fill with straw and so they had it much worse than we did, the later people.

CN: How many days did it take, do you think, to get everybody in there?

DM: Into Idaho?

CN: First into Puyallup.

DM: I think we all probably got there in one day. It wasn't that far. I'm pretty sure. Well, it came in steps, in groups.

CN: So yours, how did you get to be one of the first groups?

DM: I have no idea how they did that.

CN: Okay, so then it took, you all had to board a train, and then went to Minidoka. Now where is Minidoka in Idaho?

DM: It's close to Twin Falls in the southern part of Idaho.

CN: So that's kind of a barren area...

DM: Oh, yes...

CN: Sort of high but not surrounded by...

DM: It was just sage country when we...

CN: And winters are pretty severe.

DM: Very severe.

CN: And summers can be very hot...

DM: Very hot and dusty but that's the thing, I kept telling my kids and grandkids how we're sitting in the middle of all this sage country and dusty and then a couple years ago my daughter and a couple grandkids went to the pilgrimage from Seattle tracing by bus back to Minidoka, and that took a full day. We got on the bus early in the morning and we didn't get there until late evening. And then we went to the camp site and here it's all farmed by Caucasian farmers now and all fields, it was nothing like when we were there. And so it was hard... I was telling them how arid and all and it wasn't nearly -- we had a big, they called it a main canal, irrigation, more like a river than a canal, and it ran right alongside -- that's how the main, you had to go over a bridge to get into camp and so they had the barbed wires so you had to cross the canal to really get away from there.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright ©2009 Densho and the Twin Cities JACL. All Rights Reserved.