<Begin Segment 9>

RP: How did you feel about being removed from your homes and shipped to Manzanar? Did you have any strong emotions about --

SK: Well, we didn't know what to do, so we just went along with what they told us to do. Yeah, and I said, well, I don't know, we just, almost like the whole thing, it was like a standstill, for me it was. I said, "Okay, we're gonna be shipped there, so we just have to go over there. We can't say no. We can't go." So we just, like cattle going along, you know? Being pushed. To me, it felt like that. I thought, "Think of those poor cattle being slaughtered and they're all pushed like that. Well, we're not gonna be slaughtered, but then okay, we're gonna go." So that's the way...

RP: Do you remember what you took with you to Manzanar?

SK: All we could take was just a suitcase. We couldn't, or a couple suitcases, whatever we can carry in our hands. And the best we could, we just stuffed everything into where and that was about it. And I said, "Oh god, take the soap. We have to take the soap." So I know I had a lot of soap in my suitcase. [Laughs]

RP: Soap?

SK: Soap. Yeah, I think I had more soap than clothing, I don't know. [Laughs]

RP: What was your first impression of Manzanar when you got there?

SK: My first impression there, I says, "Oh, goodness gracious." I said, "What are we coming into?" You know that, what do you call these places that they put us in? They still had those holes, those -- was it the WRA that, or something like that, they were in charge at first or something like that -- anyway, later on I heard that, well, I forgot what that was. Anyway, there were holes here and there, so when the wind blew and dust coming in, we had sand, or that, sand, so much on the floor. It was just terrible. And the bed, that was, those army beds. And then we got bitten all over. It was all that -- my mother was so angry -- it was all those bed bugs, or some sort of bugs. We just got bitten all over. By that time we were just like that. It was terrible. Straw mattress, god, I thought that was horrible. And all they gave us was one of those kerosene little stoves. Here we didn't know kerosene, so we had that thing filled up, before morning it was all gone. Here we're just freezing cold. Yeah. So my mother'd go back there to the headquarters there, and she was giving them hell. [Laughs] "Bedbugs," she said, "We got bitten all over." Yeah, that was bad. I didn't know what bedbugs were.

RP: You never...

SK: No, no. I know she had to put some sort of alcohol, it starts swelling up. You get... but you itch, itch. Oh god, that was something else.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.