<Begin Segment 11>

KL: You guys ended up in Topaz and you were talking about the dust on the open truck. How did you get from Tanforan to Topaz?

WI: By train.

KL: What do you remember about the train?

WI: We had to keep our blinds down, and it was like we were going to a secret destination which they didn't want us to know about. And then as the train would pull into all these little train stops, sometimes you'll hear outside, "Oh, bunch of Japs," and they'll be throwing rocks at the train, thump, thump, thump. We're inside, but you hear all this thumping, finally the train will pull out.

KL: How was that for you as a kid?

WI: Oh, it was a little scary, it was a little scary. Because I've never experienced any sort of anger of that nature. It was a little concerning.

KL: What time of day was it that you arrived at Delta or at Topaz?

WI: Yeah, it was day, and it was probably early afternoon, because I do remember the, it was windy and the alkaline dust was blowing around. And it was warm because we were dressed like you would in San Francisco, and suddenly it's that heat. It was fortunately dry heat. Then we thought, oh, finally, as we could see the barracks in the distance, and we got to the point where we were, we departed the buses and trucks and were assigned our barracks. And we went in feeling, oh boy, we're gonna escape this heat. It was as hot inside, because no insulation. There were just wooden buildings with tarpaper for insulation, nothing else. And then sitting in the middle of the room was a potbelly stove where we would burn coal during the winter to keep warm. But during the summer you had to leave the windows open for cross ventilation. And at that time the alkaline dust would be blowing in and out, so my mother said, "Oh, we can't leave the doors and windows open because look at how dusty it is." But then without it, it was scorching hot, and it was just something that we never really experienced that type of climate change.

And then, of course, when winter came... well, yeah, when the following winter came, winter of '42, never experienced such cold. It was horrendous. And then, of course, we were only able to bring what we could bring. So the necessities that we brought were our basic San Francisco clothes, so we had to get the Sears and Roebuck and the Montgomery Ward catalogs to order winter clothes, jackets and boots, scarves. I never experienced where you have to wear mittens and gloves and earmuffs. This is all a new experience for me. And so that first winter, everybody made a big dash for the community area where the trucks would come and dump coals, and we had little coal buckets, and we would all make a dash for the truck, get the best pieces of coal, we had to scramble. And then we would all huddle around the potbelly stove for warmth, because if you ventured too far from the stove to where our beds were, it was just freezing. So that was it.

KL: What was your apartment, or your address?

WI: 31-12-C. Barrack 31, Building 12, Apartment C.

KL: Who was in there with you?

WI: That was basically my mother, father, my sister and myself, four of us.

KL: How did you guys...

WI: In a room not too much bigger than here.

KL: How did you guys set up that room? Same kind of question as for your house in San Francisco. If we walked in the door, what was where?

WI: Yeah. Well, I don't remember too much strategically where we had our beds, but I remember a lot of our blankets were hung for a partition. So where my mother and father slept, the blankets hung in partition, and then I had one corner and my sister had the other corner. And then around the middle we had the stove, well, the stove maybe favored one wall, and then we had a little table, and the table was makeshift. My father gathered leftover lumber from the barracks that was built, and made makeshift tables and chairs and whatever.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.