<Begin Segment 14>

MA: And you were, you were telling me you were placed in Poston I?

KI: Yeah, at first, uh-huh. Because by the time we went, a lot of people from L.A. way were already in Camp 1, and there happened to be several empty barracks in between lots of different blocks. And so just pot luck, you know, you just happened to get put in a certain block, you had no choice at all, and then we happened to be put in with these fancy Los Angeles people who really -- you know, you could tell by looking at 'em they were different. More, more modern, more fancy, yeah. They weren't naive like us yokels that came from the coast district, farming area.

MA: What was the relationship like between the Watsonville and the L.A. people, or maybe the more rural people and the city people?

KI: Well, we didn't stay long enough to build up any friendship, that's for sure, you know. As soon as they said, "Oh, Camp 2 is opening up, so if you want to move." So I think the Camp 2 people, most of them is the one that moved out from Camp 1. And we were lucky that we got with a bunch of local people, Monterey, San Juan Bautista, Hollister, Watsonville. It was, it was great, it was people we knew. There were some people that did stay in Camp 1, though, and they were happy. Some Santa Cruz family I know that stayed in Camp 1. But we weren't happy at all so we went to Camp 2.

MA: You were telling me that you felt that the people, especially kind of from L.A., looked down on you a little bit.

KI: Yes, yeah, you know, they were different. But then I wasn't the only one that felt like that. We all felt like that, that's why we were so happy when we all saw who were our neighbors in Camp 2.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Watsonville - Santa Cruz JACL. All Rights Reserved.