Densho Digital Archive - George Kiyo Wakatsuki Interview (denshovh-wgeorge-01-0010)

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AL: This is Alisa Lynch with Kiyo Wakatsuki, tape two of an oral history interview on July 22, 2014. Mark Hachtmann is the videographer, Larisa Proulx is taking notes, and Bernadette Johnson is also present. So, Kiyo, we were just talking about the bus to Manzanar. What do you remember about the bus ride?

GW: The bus ride, as much as I can recall, wasn't bad at all. I mean, it was a bus ride. I don't know how many hours it took, but we had what they call bentos, the water to drink. But I remember that we had to close the windows, or shades, so we couldn't look out and see where we were going. But the bus ride was uneventful as far as I was concerned, nothing happened to me.

AL: Were there any soldiers?

GW: I don't recall. So maybe there were soldiers there to watch us get on, but as far as on the bus, no. I don't think they rode with us at all.

AL: Did the bus make any stops?

GW: That I don't recall. They must have, because you got to go potty once in a while. So we didn't, as far as I know, I don't think we stopped. [Laughs]

AL: What did you think when you stepped off the bus and saw Manzanar?

GW: You know, it was kind of dark. There wasn't much of anything. All I remember is it was dark and we had to line up and get this mattress with hay in it, with straw, and then I don't know whether it was the next day or what, but we had to get, they gave out blankets and clothes for us to wear, which was, I guess, surplus GI stuff. It wasn't long after that, though, maybe a week later or so, that I got measles. And I remember lying in a barracks, and I had fever and everything. They had these panel trucks that were ambulances, and I remember being trucked back in this ambulance to the hospital. I had measles. [Laughs]

AL: So if it was when you first got there, that was one of the first hospitals there, right, not the big old, the big hospital, it was the...

GW: No, as far as I know, I was being trucked in an ambulance, but it wasn't no ambulance, it was whatever, a panel truck.

AL: Going to a hospital in a barracks, probably.

GW: Yeah.

AL: Because the first hospital was in Block 1, no running water, barracks. Then they moved to Block 7, running water, barracks. And it wasn't until August that they built the big hospital.

GW: It was up further, yeah.

AL: So you were probably in one of those.

GW: Yeah.

AL: You lived in which block first?

GW: Block 16, Barracks 12, I think that's it. I think we took up the first unit, the first apartment, that was Jeanne, I, Ray, Mae, Mom and Dad, and then Woody was next door to us with his family. Then the last two ends were some other family. So we weren't all together. Frances was married at that time, and Eleanor was married at that time, so they had, lived in different units.