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AD: Tell us about the train ride, like start in the beginning there, tell us about it. Just that you said, "We went"...

HT: Yeah, that was my first train trip, on one of those old, old trains. And it was dusty. It was really dusty.

ET: It was... they didn't have any trains.

HT: And then the shades were all pulled down. What little light we had in the train, we still had the shades pulled down. And then there were troops on the sides, and then we traveled like that all the way down to Fresno, California. And it was hot. But that was the worst of it. Once we... I never saw so many Japanese in my life. [Laughs] I couldn't believe there were so many of 'em. You know when you're gathered in a camp like that, you got to gather from all over, yeah. And to see all those people, you know, we were the only Japanese in our whole elementary school, almost, over there on the island. It was sort of a shocking experience.

AD: Tell me more about, you remember you told me the story about what was being strict, because you were, like, sixteen and here you were --

HT: No, I'm not sixteen. I wasn't that young. [Laughs] Yeah, you know? So I was, what, nineteen? Yeah, eighteen, nineteen, nineteen I think it is.

AD: So what was... you talked about getting used to camp and having to go to... the bathrooms were all these people. What was, talk about it.

HT: The bathrooms? There was eight holes back to back. Four of 'em, and then four on the other side. No partitions. That's the first time I ever went bathroom like that. When you have to go, you have to go. Yeah. And then when it got filled up, they moved the house over. That's how it was. Because it was an assembly center. And once we moved into Tule, everything was more set up, bathrooms and everything were all set up. But in the assembly centers was where they all gathered us. And so a lot of things weren't quite ready yet. Even in Minidoka it wasn't.

ET: Yeah. I think those are the things that developed slowly. But we were without that kind of a facility for at least three months.

HT: And to be pushed into things like that, it was a little shocking for us. Especially young girls. You're hiding everything anyway, and then here you are with everybody else, can't do anything about it. [Laughs] But experience. But we never talked about it, though. We never talked about it.

ET: What I think is that's the part we always talk about, shikata ga nai. It's just something that cannot be helped.

HT: Think about it or anything.

ET: Same time, of course, those of us, we worked even in that train ride, I tried to call attention of the guard, tried to see if we'd get some help. Brought in some better water to drink, and the food was... I can't even remember what I ate. It was not good. And the trip shouldn't be much more than, say, about maybe fourteen, fifteen hours, it seems like it's two, three days. And we stopped in Boise, and immediately they closed the windows that no one could see in. I think it's probably their intention was to protect the evacuees from, there were a number of soldiers and I went to see them. I went outside and almost got shot, but I was desperate trying to get some help.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.