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RP: Then you were sent with the Portland community to Minidoka.

RS: Yeah.

RP: Do you recall any memories about the train ride to the camp?

RS: Yeah, I don't know where they got the train, I don't know where they got the train. I'd been on train rides before, you know, before this and I know what railroad passenger cars were like. And here's this really, really old train car with I'd say really musty smell to it, and I don't know whether I'm making this up or not, but I sort of picture a potbelly stove on one end of it. I may have mixed that picture up with something else but anyway, it's old enough so that it didn't have a heating system other than that potbelly stove. And riding all day and all night, stopping very often and going on a side track so that other trains could rush through and then every time we'd stop there soldiers would jump out with their rifles and make sure that none of us escaped. And of course the blinds were pulled down so we couldn't look out. Why couldn't we look out? I don't know. Why can't people look in? I don't know. Anyway the blinds were pulled down and the seat was one of these things that sit like that. How do you sleep? Can't lean back or anything like that. You can't sleep sideways because there's only enough room to sit up. Anyway, I can't believe they found a train that old in order to transport us.

RP: When you got to Minidoka what block were you assigned to, Dick?

RS: Initially we were assigned to Block 39. We lived there for just a week or so but we were assigned to one room, one of the larger rooms, but that room was too small for our family. There were eight of us all together and that room was designed for six or seven, I think. But we stayed there for a week or so and they said you could go to the next block, you know, 41. We'll give you the same size room plus another one which is a small one right next to it. So room A was a really small room just for a couple people and then room B was one of these ones that was good for six or seven people. So we had two rooms.

RP: So who stayed in room A and who stayed in room B?

RS: Well, two of my sisters and my brother and I stayed in room A. And then in room B my mother and father and one brother and one sister stayed in there. And that was considered to be the main room, the little room, we had the four beds in it, you see, and that took up the whole space. But since there were only four beds in the bigger room, that left a little space as kind of a living room, that was the main room.

RP: Where was Block 41 located in the camp area?

RS: The very end of the... the camp is sort of spread out like that and at the very end of one end. There was a Block 44 as well but it was two rows of blocks and so it went at 41 here and then a long over here was 42 and then there was 44 over here but 43 was missing, that's where they had the softball fields and things like that.

RP: That's where you took advantage of that and you played a little baseball in there, didn't you?

RS: Yeah, somebody had cleared one corner of that block, empty block and put that softball field there. The rest of it was just left there so some of my friends and I, we smoothed out one section there and somehow we were able to get a post and some lumber and so we built a basketball post and put a board, the back board up there and put a basketball hoop up there so we had a half-court basketball court there that we built ourselves. And then somebody came along who drove one of the trucks that they used in the camp you know, truck to deliver things back and forth. Delivered something or other came along and backed into that post and cracked the post.

RP: Did you get it repaired at some point?

RS: The guy just went off and there's this cracked post and this heavy backboard up there so we were afraid it was going to fall over so we took it down. Of course we didn't have another post to put up there so we just had to abandon it.

RP: So do you recall when you got there? Was it later in the summer of '42?

RS: Yeah, it was either late August or early September. And as soon as we got there we were in one of the barracks which was used as a registration office and we were there for just a very short time standing in line waiting to register, and all of a sudden everybody that worked there jumped up and ran to all the windows and slammed all the windows shut. I thought, what in the dickens is happening? And a minute or two later there was a big dust storm, big dust storm, and of course the people that were working there, of course they were also internees but they had been there a few weeks longer than we were. They had been the ones that do the registering, they had enough experience to know when that dust storm were starting out so they, the windows were ones that came out from the wall like that. And so they just slammed them shut. That's my first memory of the camp. Later on all that dust that used to come up every once in a while after it started raining later that fall, all that dust turned into mud. Oh, it was terrible mud, it's just mud, really sticky mud, and of course there's no sidewalks, there were some planks that were put that you could walk on, but other than that there was just a big sea of mud. After we were there for a while, by the next year, of course, more things were growing again so it wasn't as bad but that first year of course they just cleared that place you see, the sagebrush that was there it had all been cleared away so all the dirt had been exposed and of course it was hot, so it all turned to dust and so this dust storms were just really, really thick dust storms.

RP: Did you ever get caught out in one of those?

RS: Oh, yeah, nothing you can do, close your eyes and so you wouldn't get all that stuff would get into you. Just wait it out try to get in the shade of a barracks building or something like that so that the dust wouldn't blow against you.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright &copy; 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.