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KL: Okay, so you went, how long were you in Salinas Assembly Center?

MM: About three to five months. Three to five months, yeah.

KL: So where did you go from there?

MM: And then they put us on old, rickety, unused trains, I remember that, and we chugged along to Arizona. When we arrived there it was so hot, and my mother put on sweaters and extra clothing on us because that means we could have more clothing and that would take place in our...

KL: In your duffel bags.

MM: Duffel bags. And so when we arrived we were perspiring and just, we had to peel off everything. And even our bus driver who came to take us from the train depot to the camps, he was bare from the waist up it was so hot. That's how hot it was.

KL: What month was it? I should've looked at the roster.

MM: I think probably June.

KL: Sometime in the summer.

MM: Yeah, it was summer.

KL: How long was the trip on the train?

MM: That I don't remember. I don't remember.

KL: Do you recall who was with you in the train car, or any military personnel or anybody's mood or what you did?

MM: I think we traveled with my grandmother and our family. We were together. And we had to put the black curtains on the windows so that we can't see out, we couldn't see outside, so I remember that.

KL: Did you try to look outside or raise it anything?

MM: No, no. We're very obedient. [Laughs] That's our culture, you know. You just do what you're, you have to, and that's that.

KL: Did your, did your Aunt Gloria go into Poston too?

MM: No, they opted to leave early because they were told if you want to go inland you can and be on your own, so they had trucks and, their family had trucks and cars, so they loaded their trucks with their household belongings and they took off to Gunnison, Utah, and they lived amongst the Mormons. And they were treated terribly, but, and the boys, the four boys had to, had to stick together or else be beaten up by the other kids. They had to fight their way home sometimes.

KL: Her kids, her sons?

MM: Yeah, her sons.

KL: This may be an obvious answer, but what was the cause of the hostility? Was it because they weren't Mormon or because they had Japanese ancestry?

MM: Because they were "Japs." Yeah.

KL: How long did they stay there?

MM: They stayed there until after the war, so I guess when they were able to go back to California they went back, to California. And they lived a harsh life. They found housing that nobody else wanted, and so, I mean, they were really, had to live under poor conditions.

KL: This was in Utah?

MM: When they went back to California, Compton. And they, they had to eke out a living with, by growing flowers again, 'cause that's what they knew how to do, grow flowers.

KL: In the months before, like in the spring of 1942, from February until, say, April, do you know if they helped house people from Terminal Island or anywhere?

MM: I don't know anything about Terminal Island people.

KL: There was a, there was a Japanese language school in Compton that stopped being a school and was kind of a hostel, and I know some people from Terminal Island who stayed there. And they said that it was full, like they had a corner of a room with their blanket and that's where they lived for, from February until like, I don't know, April or mid-March, whenever they went into Manzanar.

MM: No, as far as I remember --

KL: I was just curious.

MM: -- when I went to live with them one summer, they had a, they lived in an old house, old house and it had an outhouse and bathhouse.

KL: What was their work in Utah?

MM: They grew vegetables. I think they grew sugar beets.

KL: Was, were they always in the same place? Were they sharecropping or were they...

MM: No, they were on their own. And I remember my aunt told me that she would pray over the seeds that they had to plant, that it would provide for them a living so that they could eat and just live. She prayed. She told me that, and I thought that was wonderful that she had, she trusted in God.

KL: Sounds like it was really tough for your cousins. Do you have a sense of what social life was like for your, for her and her husband among adults?

MM: No, she never did say anything about that. All she said it was, it was, would eke out a living and that's all you concentrate on.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.