<Begin Segment 18>

RM: I was just going to say, maybe this is a good time to ask about what you and your family did after camp. When did you leave Manzanar?

GO: That's in August, August of '45. That's what my sister told me, August '45.

RM: And where did you go?

GO: I went to, we went to Henderson, Colorado.

RM: What took you there?

GO: My brother went out earlier, and then they found out that this farmer wants helper to help harvest his field, his crop. So he called the family over there, so that's how we went.

RM: Do you know the process that your brother went through in order to get out of camp and head out to Colorado?

GO: You know, in camp, they have a job offering from back east or whatever. So I guess he found one place, that's where he went out to Chicago and start, I don't know what kind of work he was doing there. And then my sister joined him with some of her friends in Chicago. And then my brother found out there was a job opening in Henderson, so he went over there. So that's where we decided to relocate.

RM: Do you know if people in the WRA and the relocation office helped that kind of thing?

GO: Yeah, they do. That's why they had this Seabrook back east, that's where a lot of people went. Because they said that's something like another camp.

RM: So when your family decided to join your brother, and was this Mas?

GO: Mas.

RM: Okay, so your older brother. You went and joined him in Henderson, Colorado. What was it like, first of all, to know that you were leaving Manzanar. Especially for your parents, because you'd been out on furloughs, but your parents probably had just been in Manzanar for the past three years.

GO: I don't know what they were thinking. But the first time they ever went out, so I don't know what they felt like. And that's another place where there was one person that was working on the farm, and my sister, I don't know why, they got married. [Laughs]

RM: She met a guy in Henderson.

GO: She met a guy in Henderson.

RM: What was his name?

GO: Kasamatsu. That's a name that the pictures, she was married to this Kasamatsu that was working over there helping them out.

RM: So how did you get, tell me a little bit about the process of going from Manzanar to Henderson?

GO: Well, this is, for me, something like going on a furlough. For the folks, I don't know.

RM: But you packed a, did you pack up your whole barracks?

GO: Yeah. There wasn't that much, but we packed up. I think the government gave us so much to go out, I don't know how much it was.

RM: Did they help you ship your stuff?

GO: I think that was... no, I think we took our own stuff. But I don't know I forgot that.

RM: Do you know if your parents had any savings from before the war that they were able to retain?

GO: Before the war? No. One thing is, I think the first or second year was there, my mother had some money under the mattress, you know how they are, the older people. I think she had six hundred dollars or something under the mattress, and it disappeared. It was stolen, never found it.

RM: That's a lot of money.

GO: That's a lot of money, that's the money, what they sold here, like the car or whatever. That's a lot a money those days. That was it.

RM: Did you hear people robbing, or I guess burglarizing like that much in camp or was that a rarity?

GO: It's a rarity, yeah. I didn't hear too much of people... because most of the time, somebody's home.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.