<Begin Segment 7>

MA: And you went from Oakland to Tanforan?

IO: Tanforan racetrack, we ended up with two horse stalls, you know, stalls that were whitewashed, the walls didn't even go up to the ceiling. They were partial walls.

MA: And this was two horse stalls for your whole family?

IO: Yeah, two horse stalls for the...

MA: Which was your parents and six children.

IO: Seven kids.

MA: Seven kids.

IO: Yeah. And we had to put up with it. And while there, I kind of worked in the kitchen a little bit, helped them. They had mess halls several places and also public toilets and bathrooms. That was about it. I can't remember too much about it. I've forgotten most of that. But I know that was around in May of '42, 1942. And in September we got notice that we were gonna move out to Topaz, Utah. We were one of the earlier ones. 'Cause Topaz had forty-two blocks, and we were on Block 14. And each row was, seven blocks to each row, so there was six rows. And each block had a mess hall, central mess halls, and toilet and shower facilities. But we were early, so half the things weren't even completed. They didn't even have toilet seats on the toilet. It was a big room with a whole bunch of toilets, no seat, nothing. No walls, nothing. Just bare toilet, that's it. I can't remember about the shower room, but that was bare, too, just bare shower. And then we had to, when we got to the room, it was just a bare room with beds, that's it. And then they had these mattress things you had to fill with straw, so we had to take them and go fill 'em up with straws. And we got two rooms there, the two larger rooms since there were nine of us all together.

MA: What was the weather like in Utah?

IO: Oh, it was kind of colder than what we were used to in California, in Utah there in the wintertime. And the wind used to blow, and they used to have a lot of, I remember a lot of whirlwinds there, the dust would be flying all over. And of course there were army barracks that we were staying in, and they, tarpaper on the outside and lot of cracks so the wind would come in and the sand would blow in. And in time, we kind of fixed it up a little bit, little by little. And what I recall is that I used to spend a lot of time on a different block. Block 12 is where I used to spend a lot of my time.

MA: What did you do on Block 12?

IO: Well, we used to, there used to be a rec. hall, they called it. We used to play cards, and we used to play bridge all the time. In fact, Lucy's brother-in-law I remember real well from camp. I remember, well, I remember her husband, too, but I knew his brother better. Other than that, little while later they started having some jobs to try to organize the camp. And they had a public works department, and I applied and I got a job there, eighteen dollars a month, I think it was, pay. [Laughs] They had three pay scales, I think, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty-one.

MA: What did you do for the public works department?

IO: I think I did drafting. I did some drafting when I was in high school, so that's where that come about. And then, of course, in 1943, the government decided they wanted to try to get rid of some of the people in camp, so they said you could leave if you get job, they posted jobs other than the West Coast. And my sister, May, I think it was around January or December, I'm not sure, January of '42, no, '43. She took a job at St. Paul as housework. Then a few weeks later, my other sister Yuri decided that she was gonna go. So... Yuri's the older sister, and so they both went to St. Paul. So then I got to thinking, well, maybe I'll... so I was looking around at the jobs that were posted. And then I finally, in the first part of May, I took that job in Cleveland. So it was May 30th, I was on a train. I recall that because in Cheyenne, there was snow on the ground.

MA: And this was 1943?

IO: Yeah, 1943.

MA: What did you have to do to leave? Did you have to fill out a form or be cleared by the camp?

IO: I don't remember that. I know that I applied for the job and they wrote that down and I think they told us where to stay, our living accommodations. That's how I ended up in that hotel, Erie Hotel annex, which was on the edge of downtown Cleveland. And there were, they had many Niseis from various camps. I don't recall anybody from Topaz, I think most of 'em were from, and then from Arizona. And let's see, that's where I went to that foundry, and when they saw me, they said I was too small for the job, so I took that, they offered the apprenticeship.

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