<Begin Segment 5>

AD: Tell us about the barracks. You were kind of describing them. What was it like to live in the barracks?

HT: We had, what, six apartments? Two ends for couples and bachelors, or a big family. 'Cause I think it held about five people in the end, and then we had the two middle ones, which was for families. And there were six of us, so they gave us two rooms. This was in Tule Lake. But my dad was in the hospital, but he was still included as six, so we got two apartments. And then the bachelors on each side of us, and married couples on the end. It wasn't bad. Only thing, you only have one room, and we just sleep in there and live in there. We slept on straw mattresses. [Laughs] Yeah. They gave us mattresses. Army cots.

ET: We were issued a bag.

HT: And just think; from the Northwest, we never had temperature in the hundreds. And we went down to Fresno, and you know, it was hot. It was a hundred and something. And you know those army cots would sink into the asphalt floor. They put asphalt on there, and then it gets so hot that the bed would, it would sink in about that much into the asphalt. And the coolest part was under the bed, so every day we'd wash out the floor with hose, and then crawl under the bed and stay there to cool off. Yeah, it was hot. Oh, it was hot over there at Fresno, California. And I think we were next to the fig grove, and I think those groves lost a lot of money because of the dust. They had to clear the area out, and the wind would blow, and I think it would just cover those figs with dust.

AD: Do you remember, were you angry at all that you were in this really harsh place with harsh...

HT: Well, to really tell you the truth, I don't remember too much anymore. Like he said, I can't even remember how many days it took us to get to Fresno from Seattle in these old coaches or whatever you call it. I don't even remember. I can't even remember what they fed us, or even about the bathrooms I couldn't remember whether we had to go or not.

AD: Did you feel like your home had been taken from you?

HT: Well, we were pushed out of our home, but I don't know. Never had too much thought about things like that, you know. Lost everything because we had to empty out our house, and our friends took care of it, but they thought we were never coming back. I don't know if they sold it or they gave it away or what, but when we went after it, there was nothing left. So you know, lost everything, but I don't know. It's the past. It's hard to put a word to it.

ET: Sixty years ago. Sixty-two years ago.

HT: It's hard. But when we came out of Tule Lake, have you ever ridden in a boxcar? That's what we came out of. So whenever they talk about the Holocaust and how they pushed the people into the boxcar, hey, I said, I've gone through that.

ET: Well, you saw that Dr. Zhivago movie?

HT: The U.S. did that to us.

ET: Can you imagine?

HT: Maybe the Germans did it to the Jews, but U.S. did it to citizens. We were stuffed into a boxcar from Tule Lake to Klamath Falls. It wasn't a very long ride, but we were in a boxcar.

ET: I was in a baggage car, an old one. But, I mean, it's not exaggeration to say the Dr. Zhivago trip in Siberia is a luxury compared to that train ride we had from Puyallup to Twin Falls.

HT: Oh, did you go in a boxcar?

ET: No, it was a baggage car.

HT: No, ours was from Tule Lake to Klamath Falls.

ET: And it was dusty, old, old car that never... they had to use every available...

HT: That's why whenever I see that German stuff, it sort of makes me unhappy because U.S. did the same thing to us. Maybe they didn't shoot us after we got out there, but we were all herded into a boxcar. And the door slammed on the side, a few benches to sit on. It was a short trip.

ET: That's when you used that shikata ga nai feeling.

HT: Yeah, see?

ET: Nothing you can do.

HT: Whenever I hear about the Holocaust and how they make a big thing of it here in the U.S., I think, "What have they got to say when they've done the same thing to us?" That's the only thing I say.

ET: You know, we do have a few people we could blame. I don't think you know who they are. You haven't even heard of them. I asked a group of people at the college when I was talking about it, and I don't know, maybe one of you might... maybe, Rose, you might have heard about Earl Warren? Who is he?

Rose: I only know him from later.

ET: Well, he was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. And he was chased out by Rotary Club, International Rotary Club, he's not worthy of that position. And Roosevelt is the other one. I mean, the bad judgment of that is very historical. And Earl Warren, you have never heard after that. He never apologized, but he is the one that...

HT: He was the governor of California, wasn't he?

ET: Yeah, he was the governor.

HT: Governor of California before he became Supreme Court.

ET: So around that time, we did have those bad politicians.

HT: I really didn't know Roosevelt was a bigot.

ET: Well, Roosevelt... you know who saved Franklin Roosevelt is Eleanor was completely the other way around.

HT: I was really disappointed.

ET: You know, if you say that right now in the public, you'd be very much criticized. But now the book come out. Within our own group of people, Japanese Americans, there were some that are against, the group of people called Kibei, and that's like us --

HT: Not me.

ET: -- were in Japan. I was in Japan, got some education in Japan and came back to the United States. And Saburo Kido was very high up in JACL, wrote the book Kibei: The Traitors of Japanese Americans. And that book was sold at the Seattle National Convention, and I stood up and spoke to the convention people and took all that book out, got rid of it. Those days, we were exercising our civil rights.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.