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RP: When the, when you found out or you learned that you were gonna be excluded from the West Coast, your home, what kind of emotions did that trigger?

MN: Well, we thought, "Where are they gonna send us?" We never heard of the place, and so we thought, "Where, what's gonna happen to us?" And we thought, well, as a family we'd get separated, but they made sure, luckily we were on the north side of Los Feliz, we got to go with the valley people with my uncle and, they were all living in the valley. That was considered valley, Burbank, San Fernando. But other than that, well, Mom says, "Well, we just have to go with the flow of the crowd, you know."

RP: And how did you, how did you prepare to leave your home?

MN: To leave? Well, because we were renting the place, leasing the shop, my mother had this friend, good friend, Mr. Stone, and he had knowledge of the shop and things, and he said he would take care of the shop. And apparently my mother, with whatever, apparently whatever he made from there, he would pay the rent and everything. The house, now, we didn't own the house, so what little furniture we had, we took it over to the valley, on the ranch, and there was a, my uncle had a big room there, so we stored some of the things there. But we didn't have a lot. And then as far as packing, well, they said you can only pack what you could carry. Okay. And we had these heavy old duffel bags, heavy, they're canvas so they're heavy, so you'd put things in there, but how much can you carry? And not knowing what we were getting into, you know? They said, "Well, you have to pack, because it's very cold up there." Well, it was. We didn't have clothes, warm clothing. But we did the best we can.

RP: So what was the most difficult thing to leave behind? Or things?

MN: Our pets. Yeah. And the kitties, well, the kitties, the lady that lived in the apartments, she said, she was feeding them off and on so she would look after them. I think the dog, the dog had to, was taken over to the ranch and the man was supposed to look after him. But see, he was always tied up, and so the man apparently did the best he can. But losing my friends, not seeing any of them anymore 'cause they were on, they lived south of Los Feliz, they went to different, they were all split up, Heart Mountain, Poston. It was, it wasn't easy, you know. You miss your school friends.

RP: And your grandparents, your grandmother was ill at the time that you left.

MN: Yes.

RP: So did she stay behind, or what happened to her?

MN: They couldn't transport her because she had, she wasn't able, she was bedridden. And so the doctor, Dr. Thompson, Elmer Thompson in Burbank, he had, owned a hospital up there on Olive, and so he took it upon himself and he said, "I will take full responsibility and keep them," my grandmother and grandfather, because my grandma didn't speak English and my grandfather did. So he said, "I will take care of them." But in the meantime, I don't know if somebody reported them or what, the army came in and took them from Burbank and put 'em into some place in Temple City, which was, you know. But the people didn't know them there, and she says that my grandma was in, like, left in a hallway, not a room, and when she would ask for certain food -- she couldn't eat certain things, but she liked plain white rice -- the nurse would purposely pour milk right on, my grandma said, just purposely pour the milk over it. She couldn't eat that. So anyway, my grandfather, he wrote and he told my mother what was going on, so she, my mother, there was a Catholic priest, Father Lavery, who was with Maryknoll, he helped a lot. And she somehow got him to help her, and so she was able to go back to Santa Anita. She stayed there for weeks and weeks, trying to get, make, negotiate so that my grandma and grandpa could come up to Manzanar 'cause this hospital was just not, she was going downhill. But she said that there wasn't, they weren't helping her, they wouldn't keep her in Burbank, and so finally, I mean, she tried and tried and tried -- and see, we left, I think we went to Manzanar maybe about April or May -- well, the end of December they finally, made negotiation. My mother had to, she paid for the ambulance, private ambulance, and got my grandma and grandpa up to Manzanar. She lasted one day, that was it. But she knew she was with us. Yeah, she was already so weak. But she, she says every morning she was out there trying different... she, apparently she knew how to, say, cope with people or talk to them, but through the services of Father Lavery too, she was finally able to get them to come up. And they said, "Well, you have to have an ambulance. You can't have..." She says, "Well, I'll pay for it." Well, luckily she had some savings, so whatever she had, she put it into expenses. But yeah, she lasted one day, but she knew she was with us.

RP: And you were there with her?

MN: Yeah, when she passed away. One day, and that was it. She was barely, I mean, you could say she was barely moving. So then my grandfather, he lived with us in the barracks for a short while.

RP: Can you share with us your, well, first of all, the trip to Manzanar?

MN: The bus trip?

RP: You have some pretty vivid memories of that.

MN: [Laughs] Oh boy, yes. Oh yeah.

RP: What was that like?

MN: Well, first of all, you stand and you wait and wait and wait for the bus, which bus do you take and all that, with all your things. And then going up, there was, the bus was just jam packed with people, but they don't stop for restrooms or anything, so what happens is all of a sudden, he doesn't say anything, he stops, "Everybody get out." Well naturally, everybody's getting out to go to the bathroom. This is wide open desert, and the wind is blowing and everything, and so what happens is, being girls and ladies, you do the best you can to hide behind some kind of a bush or something, right? It was, it was quite a trip. It just seems like so long, the trip. Then we, when we got up there, we had no idea, I mean, whether you could take anything to eat or anything on the bus. You know, we were older, but the little ones, sorry for them, my uncle had, I think he had maybe four or five at the time, four little ones, and the oldest was, maybe they were two, going on three. But we didn't prepare for anything like that.

RP: Did you hear any rumors about Manzanar before you left or during the trip, about what, what might happen to you when you got there?

MN: No. Nothing. They didn't, we had no instructions, just out there in the... and we had no idea where it was.

RP: Obviously you say you weren't told what type of clothes to take.

MN: No. No, they didn't instruct, they just, all they said was, "You better take warm clothes and take boots." Well, none of us owned boots out there. [Laughs] And so, and for me, I always had trouble finding shoes that fit. I don't wear children's shoes and I wear adult shoes, but anyway. Oh well. So we took whatever we could, but we took mainly our own clothes, nothing frilly or fancy.

RP: So you grew up in a predominantly Caucasian community in this area. Kind of upper middle class?

MN: Most of them were, I, most of my friends, I mean, these, they're, the friends that I had were, the Japanese ones were, the parents were either gardeners or maybe they had a small Mama Papa store or something. But the Caucasian people, they were like, L.A.... I never really did any outside activity with them, but they were always good to us. These were people that had, lived up in the upper hills here.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.