Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: George Yoshinaga Interview
Narrator: George Yoshinaga
Interviewer: Alisa Lynch
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Date: August 10, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-ygeorge_5-01-0012

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AL: What do you remember of when the train arrived at Heart Mountain? What did you see? What time of day was it?

GY: We arrived about four o'clock in the afternoon. And they had trucks there to take us to our barracks and I don't know how they decided that. But they seemed to be pretty organized. They didn't say you want to stop here or there, they just took us and said this is your place.

AL: Do you remember what date that was about?

GY: What date?

AL: I mean what month, year?

GY: It was late spring as I recall.

AL: Okay.

GY: But then that's right after that the weather was hot and then it got cold and we weren't really equipped and if it wasn't for the mail order catalogs like Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck, we would have froze to death 'cause we were able to order through the mail.

AL: What kind of things did you order?

GY: Mostly heavy coats.

AL: Did you ever get a peacoat?

GY: Yeah, we all had peacoats. [Laughs]

AL: When was that given to you?

GY: It was about I guess early August as I recall.

AL: What is your address in Heart Mountain?

GY: 2410A.

AL: Okay, that's Heart Mountain? What about at Santa Anita?

GY: Santa Anita I was in the barracks. I can't recall what the numbers were.

AL: Okay, but Heart Mountain is 24-10-A.

GY: See, we were, being from northern California we were the last group to come to Santa Anita, that's why we were in the barracks. The early arrivals were in the stables but there again they paint such a gloomy picture of stables. I had some people I knew that lived in the stables. It wasn't the kind of picture that they draw today like lot of people say they smelled the stench of horses and I kind of disagree with that. I think they did the best they could to clean out everything. And even today when the horse race is going on, the stables don't stink of horses.

AL: That's right and people pay money today to go there. Did you ever visit anybody in the stable at Santa Anita?

GY: Oh yeah, I got to know a lot of the LA guys.

AL: So you were in the stables yourself?

GY: Yeah.

AL: So back at Heart Mountain --

Off camera: Before you leave Santa Anita but his name, Horse.

AL: Oh, does your name Horse have anything to do with Santa Anita?

GY: Yeah, that where I got it.

AL: I missed that.

GY: That's where I got it.

AL: So could you tell us how you got the name?

GY: The thing was, being of that age, nothing to do, I used to run around the track every morning for exercise. And then the people would be standing around and started calling me or they started asking me, "You think you're a horse?" And then that's how the name stuck. [Laughs] "He is a horse."

AL: That's where it came from, okay, I wondered. Did they still call your Horse when you got to Heart Mountain, that name stuck?

GY: Yeah, that's where it developed, you know.

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