<Begin Segment 5>

FC: What was it like going to camp?

JA: Like going to camp?

FC: What was it... the day of the evacuation, or the first impression of Minidoka.

JA: Well, the first impression when I got off the train, hot, dusty, and it was, "Wow, what a place," you know? And beyond that, I, being a hiker and camper, I could tough most anything.

[Interruption]

JA: Snow will accumulate in certain place. It's so cold it just blows away, and it was, if I'm not mistaken, it was during, when it was very cold.

FC: There was snow on the ground?

JA: That's what I, just what I said. It could blow and it'll drift up on the building or something like that.

FC: How long, how far did you have to walk?

JA: Oh, it was quite a ways. Now, if you look at the album for Minidoka you could see from where I was, Block 5 to wherever he was up in the 20s, across from the high school. Probably a mile or so.

FC: Through the snow?

JA: Well, I would say cold but not through, you know, it wasn't piled up or anything. There it's so cold that everything is powder, it just blows away unless there's something to catch it.

FC: Was Yasui cordial?

JA: He seemed to have been, yes. All through, he was cordial.

FC: Offer you tea?

JA: I don't remember. I don't think so. [Laughs]

FC: Was, did he impress you as an intelligent man? An honest man, a leader?

JA: Well, as I talked with him, it just kind of died away.

FC: Were you looking for a leader?

JA: Yes, somebody to work with, because he had the background. And I have, he wasn't in camp long enough, while I was in camp when the, opening to the time I met him, and I saw what's going on and what's going on in the outside. And there were a lot of things that bothered me, like newspaper would write, you know, like Jerome county and another county fighting over to draft us to, on behalf of drafting a white American from there. Then also in the newspaper, Oregonian and Washington newspaper, they're wanting to use us to fill their quota. And here we are in a concentration camp and here they're, these guys are all fighting to fill their quota so that the white Americans don't have to be drafted. And there were things like that that came up over and over and over that bothered me.

FC: Okay. Do me a favor and say these words: "I was looking for a leader or someone to work with."

JA: Uh-huh. Yes. I was looking for a leader or somebody to work with.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1993, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.