<Begin Segment 14>

TI: And when you were at Salinas, too, I understand that you got sick.

SK: Yeah. I got... I guess about the third, second or third month, I got appendix. And I guess it was too late, so it burst, so infection set in. So they were giving me that little red pill they called penicillin in those days. But that wasn't, it took me over a month to recover. So by the end of July, by July, everybody was gone. I was the only one left in Natividad Hospital.

TI: And so when you had a burst appendix, were you treated at the Salinas, kind of...

SK: It's a county hospital.

TI: Oh, so it's outside of the camp.

SK: Yeah, it's Natividad, it's a little bit away.

TI: And when you were in the hospital, did they have people watching you to make sure you didn't leave or anything like that?

SK: No. It was a ward, in other words, not a private room. They didn't put me in a private room. There was Chinese and stuff like that.

TI: Were people able to visit you, like your parents?

SK: Just before they left, yeah, to Poston, they were allowed to come.

TI: So you were the last Japanese America left in Salinas, then.

SK: Yeah, because I was stuck in the hospital. So one day, when I got well enough, they sent one FBI guy to escort me all the way to Arizona, private man. [Laughs]

TI: So how did you get there? By train?

SK: Yes.

TI: And so all the way there, you were next to this FBI man?

SK: Yeah.

TI: Did you ever talk to him very much, did you guys do that?

SK: Just kind of little talks. But he was a real nice guy. Sympathetic, but can't do nothing about it.

TI: I mean, did you feel like you were like a criminal? I mean, having to be escorted like that? Or what did it feel like?

SK: I didn't think about it that way. We didn't have any handcuff or anything.

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