<Begin Segment 18>

KL: When was your next communication with your dad?

MS: Personally, I didn't have any communication. I don't know whether my mother was in communication with him or not. After we moved to Utah, we ended up, the families ended up -- oh, by the way, when we went to Utah, I also found out later, after the fact, that... not this part. We were invited by my uncle, my father's younger brother, uncle, who was in Los Angeles, and he was running a small hotel in Los Angeles. And he invited us to move in with him temporarily, because Terminal Island had to be evacuated immediately. So we moved to his hotel, and he also took charge as to what, where we should go. And his original plan was a default plan to go to Manzanar. However, later, very shortly later, he got an invitation from the person in Utah who happens to be from the same, I think, prefecture in Japan, and they were acquainted before the war. And the person in Utah invited us to come to his farm to live, and it ended up that we decided to take up the invitation to live there and sharecrop on the farm. So anyway, when we moved to Utah, both my uncle's family and my mother and my sisters and I, and one other person who was living with my uncle who was my cousin from, who was the son of my father's oldest brother. So we had to, the person who invited us out to the farm, offered us what used to be some kind of a shed, storage shed. And two families and my other cousin lived in the same space, so it was no different than going to Manzanar and sharing one of the barracks with more than one family. So our partitions were just like Manzanar, blankets and sheets separated sections. And we shared a common little space that was a kitchen, and that's how we lived and sharecropped with the family that invited us.

That caused hardships on everybody who were not used to farming, because Utah farming is every hard work, and most of the work is done during the summer months. In the winter months they could relax and do other things, but they were, the work was from about five in the morning to about eight, eight-thirty in the evening, with breaks for lunch and everything else. But just imagine anybody going from California doing other than farming, suddenly doing Utah farming, which was hard, really hard work, especially the womenfolks. The kids sort of adapted to it like kids adapt to almost anything, because there were other kids they became friends with there.

KL: Who was that person who invited you?

MS: It was one of the... his name was Gensaku Miyagishima.

KL: Okay, you have to spell that.

MS: G-E-N-S-A-K-U, Miya is M-I-Y-A, gishima is G... either I or E. I think it's... okay, it's going to be I or E, then S-H-I-M-A. They usually use the name Miya for short, just the first four letters. You heard a lot of "Miyas," they're really Miyagishimas, and there was a bunch of them from Shizuoka Prefecture.

KL: That's the same number of letters as my last name. [Laughs]

MS: Really? [Laughs]

KL: So I understand the desire to shorten.

MS: Anyway, he was the father of the family, and very generous in that sense. But maybe he just ignored the hard work that people are not used to that hard work, who lived in California, non-farming. And it was hard work.

KL: Do you have recollections of the time that you spent with, it's Hikota, right, the younger brother?

MS: Yeah, Hikota Ojisan, yeah.

KL: That hotel in Los Angeles, do you know its name or where in Los Angeles it was?

MS: No, I don't remember. Roughly, let's say it was near Figueroa, and I don't know which street it was on. I kind of recall Tenth Avenue for some reason, Tenth and near Figueroa. But that wasn't the address now, okay, it's somewhere close to there. And we stayed there for roughly five weeks and had to go wherever, move, that's where we departed for Utah.

KL: What were conditions like during those five weeks?

MS: Personally I attended the Maryknoll school where the other, my cousins were going. My sister attended, I think it was Belmont, Belmont High School? Was there such a high school?

KL: There is.

MS: Okay. I think she attended there for that period, for that short period before leaving for Utah.

KL: How would you categorize your life during those five weeks?

MS: Interesting. [Laughs] Suddenly I'm behaving like a Catholic and dressing like... the kids wore sort of a uniform, same kind of clothes, men and women, or boys and girls. My sister was otherwise, she was going to a regular high school. And then I sort of got introduced to nuns and priests, but mostly nuns, which were basically, they were nice people, right, they were very supportive and really tried to help you in any way. So it was a good experience, but very, very different from what I was used to.

KL: What about for your mother?

MS: You know, I can't say how she was feeling through all that. I think she probably was trying her best to get along with whatever was happening. Because she wasn't working anymore, right, and I imagine she tried to help out in whatever way she could. So since I really wasn't talking to her about important things right now, I don't know what her feelings were.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.