<Begin Segment 22>

KL: Well, how did you leave Poston? What happened, when did you leave and what happened next?

MM: It was 1945, but I don't know how we got to Salinas, or I mean Watsonville. I imagine we went back by train, but a lot of us don't remember those kind of things. It's so odd. We came back and --

KL: The trips you mean, the to and from.

MM: Yeah.

KL: Yeah, I think that's true. A lot of people don't.

MM: Yeah, they don't, we just don't, I just don't remember. Sab doesn't remember either. But I remember Salinas didn't want us back, so we went to the next town over.

KL: Was that Watsonville, or that was somewhere else?

MM: Watsonville, yeah.

KL: Did you, you tried Salinas? You tried to return there?

MM: Well, we got word that Salinas didn't want us back because so many of the boys were killed at the hands of the Japanese.

KL: How did you receive that word?

MM: I guess my mother heard of, well, in the newspapers, I guess, too. "We don't want you back." In the Watsonville paper, too, I think it was also. But there was enough people coming back that they had no, they had no choice but to accept it.

KL: Did you, when did you learn about what had happened to your belongings and the car?

MM: Well, as soon as we got back, my brother, my oldest brother and my mother went back to Salinas to get their stuff. And when they discovered it was all gone and the car was just a shell and we lost everything, it was awful, it was just awful. My brother came back and said, "It was awful." To see everything scattered and the clothing just no good anymore, that we left behind, and our, my mother's wedding gifts, all gone. My mother, she never put out her wedding gifts because she was, I guess she was planning to buy a house and so she didn't, she just kept it and used only the bare necessities for her family, because one day she was going to buy a house. Well, everything was gone.

KL: Did your oldest brother graduate high school in Poston?

MM: Yes.

KL: In Poston?

MM: No, I think it was after. I think... he was thirteen or fourteen when he went in, so fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen... yeah, I think he graduated outside, his senior year.

KL: Where did you live in Watsonville? What was your situation?

MM: We lived in the Buddhist church for one month. It was so crowded my mother moved us over to the Westview Church.

KL: What was the Westview Church?

MM: It was a Japanese Presbyterian church, and it was more room. They had a gymnasium, they had a big kitchen, they had Sunday school rooms, so we stayed in two rooms.

KL: Just your family?

MM: Uh-huh.

KL: Can you give us a description or a sense for what it was like in the Buddhist church? you said it was crowded, but, like, where did people live, how many people, were services still --

MM: All I remember was so crowded. There was just a lot of people, I remember that. And I remember rubbing the old people's shoulders 'cause they were all achy, so I just rubbed their shoulders for them and they appreciated it.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.