<Begin Segment 10>

RP: This is tape two of a continuing interview with Mas Nakajo. And, Mas, we were just talking about, a little bit about the preparations that the family made to go to Manzanar. Storing or selling items and... you had, your half-brother, Jimmy, actually volunteered to go to Manzanar?

MN: Yeah. Yes.

RP: Tell us about that.

MN: I think he, they asked for volunteers to help the carpenters that was building in Manzanar, the barracks, and seemed like they were running behind schedule. So they asked for volunteers from head of the household. And they guaranteed that the family, rest of the family would follow without being separated, see. That's why we had a lot of people with that situation where different area. A lot of different people from different area was in Manzanar. Not just a few... like Tule Lake they had mostly Sacramento people and Manzanar they have people from all over.

RP: And can you share with us a little bit of Jimmy's background? He was apparently a...

MN: Yeah, he, I think he went to a mechanical, mechanic's school, automotive mechanic's school in L.A. And after that he got a job with the Asahi Garage in Little Tokyo. He was a Chrysler, Chrysler-Plymouth dealership. So he was a mechanic there until the war broke out.

RP: One of the advantages of volunteering to go to Manzanar was you could drive your own vehicle or vehicles up.

MN: Yeah, he had a Ford Coupe. Like in 1930, '32, a Ford Coupe. It had a bucket... not a bucket seat, what they call...

Off Camera: Rumble. A Rumble...

MN: Right. Yeah. It had that in the back. So a lot of time we used to ride with him. But that's what he took to Manzanar. And after I think when he got to Manzanar there was all the people that drove up. There was an area where you could put your vehicle that came up with. So I guess after that everybody came to Manzanar and they must have either junked it or sold it or what. I don't know.

RP: He never drove it again.

MN: No.

RP: Did he ever tell you, talk to you about the convoy of cars that went up there?

MN: No, no.

RP: Yeah. It was quite a caravan.

MN: Yeah, I heard. I heard about it.

RP: So, another thing that you had to do before you left to go to Manzanar was get shots.

MN: Yes, we had, we had to get shot. I think two or three shots. Tetanus shot and all that stuff, yeah.

RP: Do you remember where you had to go to get those shots?

MN: We had to go to downtown L.A. In fact, I think where we boarded the train was Santa Fe Station. And they had facilities over there to get our shot too.

RP: So you got the shots just before you went on the train.

MN: Yeah.

RP: Do you remember wearing the little tags that had your family number on the suitcases and on your person?

MN: Vaguely. I don't remember that. But, I guess a lot of people had tags. I must have had tags on. I don't know.

RP: They required you to have 'em but...

MN: Yeah.

RP: And so you took the train up to Manzanar?

MN: Yeah.

RP: Do you remember the day that you, that you went to the train station?

MN: Well, according to the date that we entered Manzanar, it was March the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth or something like that. So we must have got on the board, train that, about that, either twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth. Because it took us a whole day to get up there from Santa Fe Station.

RP: Now how did you get to the station, to the train station?

MN: I think we took a bus or a bus or train, not a train but streetcar down there. That's all I remember. Because we didn't have any bus service or anything to pick us up and take us.

RP: Do you recall how, any feelings or emotions that you had before you got on the train?

MN: No. I guess we were, we didn't think about those things. You know, all the people that are lined up to go on the train. And we saw the MPs standing by and that's all I recall. That's all I remember.

RP: For a number of Nisei kids, to them it was a big adventure.

MN: Yeah.

RP: Going on a train.

MN: Right, right.

RP: Going somewhere strange place.

MN: Right, right. Yeah.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.