<Begin Segment 9>

KL: Well then you got the, after the Pearl Harbor attack, and the announcement at school. When you were talking with your Japanese American friends about leaving your home, what did you guys think? Where did you think you were gonna go?

RF: Well, it was really a period of unknowns. You didn't know what was going to happen, you didn't know what was out there for you at Manzanar, we knew we were going to Manzanar.

KL: How soon did you know that?

RF: I don't remember.

KL: Do you remember how you learned you were gonna have to leave?

RF: Well, I had these posters.

KL: And you saw one?

RF: Yeah. And I don't recall getting an official letter, although my parents might have gotten it. But most of my friends, we all knew we were going to be together, so it wasn't the trauma of separating, it was just the trauma of not knowing what was ahead of us and when we were coming back, if we were coming back, where we were going, what it was like. We all knew there was a desert, we all knew there were a lot of scorpions, and so we all bought boots, which I've never had before. And we didn't know what going to happen. One of my closest friends, the Hiranos, they decided to not go to camp and move to Utah. And later found out that their life was probably a lot worse than ours, because we had a roof over our heads, three meals a day, some degree of protection, security, although the insecurity of not knowing what the future would hold. But they went to Utah on their own, didn't know anybody, didn't have a place to go to, and ended up farming without having a house, lived in a chicken coop.

Even a year after, when I visited Manzanar and returned to Salt Lake, I notified (Henry Hirano) that I was coming and I wanted to see him, and we met in the city at the Mormon temple. He didn't invite me home, but we just talked and enjoyed, renewed old friendships and then got on a bus and left. Later I learned that the reason he didn't invite me, it turns out that one of our dance friends is his sister, and I didn't even know that. But anyway, she told me that, "The reason he didn't invite you is because he didn't want to invite you to a chicken coop." When I heard that I just, I had tears in my eyes, you know, the hardships that these people... then that story I think is much less known than our stories of camp, because they ran into, these people ran into all sorts of hardship. Starting new, starting without homes, starting with an unknown farming in an area that was different than Southern California. So that greater stories of tragedy I think were people like that, than there were with people at the camp. I can't say, it's all relative. But that was really tragic to me. But that's what they chose.

KL: How did they decide on Utah, do you know?

RF: No, I don't, although a lot of people did go to Utah. I guess some went to Idaho. I've never heard of people going anywhere further east or even to Arizona for that matter. Most of the people I know went to Utah. and I guess because they were either relatives, there was farming, it was outside the zone, and so relatively easy to get to in terms of relocating themselves. I don't know the history of what the choices were and why.

KL: Did your family consider that at all, do you think?

RF: Well, my dad was not a farmer. So I don't think he even considered going there, although one of his careers was as a produce truck driver, where he'd drive semis across Utah and places like that. Maybe that's why he didn't want to go to Utah, I don't know. I have no idea.

KL: So you knew Manzanar was the name of the place, and knew it was in a desert. When did you, when did you leave for Manzanar?

RF: Oh, well, people in West L.A. all left at the same weekend, I believe it was. And we all met at the Japanese school and boarded buses there.

KL: What was the departure like? Were there other friends who were not Japanese American there, or spectators?

RF: I didn't see any Caucasian friends that I knew. They were mostly, my recollection was they were mostly the people who were departing. Do you recall if there were other people, visitors seeing people off?

Off camera: There were people there [inaudible].

RF: Oh, from your family. But we had no other visitors, our family didn't. I don't even remember how we got to the Japanese school from our home. Our home was about three miles away, two miles away. I don't know how we got to the Japanese school to get on the bus. I don't remember that.

KL: How did you dispose of your household...

RF: Well, we were not that wealthy, we didn't own the home, so it's all personal goods, things that we couldn't carry, like furniture, beds, and refrigerator, those things. And people were knocking on the doors wanting to get the stuff for dirt cheap. And what do you do? We're getting rid of it, so you just got rid of it. We didn't have enough to store or anything like that.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.