<Begin Segment 11>

RP: And you were first sent to the Pomona Assembly Center?

JN: Yeah.

RP: And do you remember, did you take bus to the assembly center?

JN: Yeah, took a bus.

RP: And do you remember anything about the day that you assembled to go to get the bus and go to the assembly center?

JN: Yeah, I just remember that we had to gather at a certain location at a certain time and we got on the bus and then we went to Pomona Assembly Center and I still remember a couple of my friends said goodbye to me. So that was pretty good, you know, John Corbin and Pete Masters, amazing people, and when I say a true friend, that's what you call a true friend. To me... I'll say a positive thing, went into Pomona Assembly and I said, "Oh, I don't have to work on the farm anymore." [Laughs]

RP: So many kids your age, many Nisei kids your age saw this experience as kind of an adventure, would that characterize your feeling when you went into the assembly center?

JN: Yeah, to me it was kind of an adventure, it was something that was different that, you know, I never experienced and I think my father and mother, I think they experienced that they never had so much free time in all their lives 'cause on the farm you're working all the time. And so they had leisure time and they were able to do things that they never did before. So maybe some of these are the positive things about going into camp.

RP: What was it like being in Pomona Assembly Center?

JN: Well, I know we lived in a barrack and like there was eight of us in one room and I know that my mother, we hung a blanket between my mother and my two sisters lived on the one side of the blanket and the rest of the male because they got embarrassed, you know, when they had to dress and whatever. So that's one thing I remember in the camp, what happened. I still remember I've never seen so many Japanese in all my life. [Laughs]

RP: So what did you do in the few months that you were at the Pomona Assembly Center? Did you meet up with friends or did you make new friends?

JN: We had a few friends, not too many, and we still had to go to school. And the thing that I didn't like about it is, you know, living in one room and then you had to go to a bathroom, a central bathroom and a central mess hall to eat and all this. And I still remember in Pomona, the food was terrible because they just gave us C rations, you know, the army food until they can get... make arrangements to do things better. But until then it was terrible, I hated the food in Pomona, it was terrible.

RP: Did you get a chance to use your marbles at Pomona?

JN: Yeah, a little bit. Other kids did the same thing I did, I think, because I have friends that had marbles too. [Laughs]

RP: How did you get those marbles in there, you know.

JN: So that was probably the only entertainment we had 'cause we still had to go to school and everything.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.