<Begin Segment 13>

KL: What do you recall about the trip to Arkansas?

MU: First time on the train, got to see part of the country. We went down from Fresno, I think we went through Colorado and then down to Arkansas. We didn't know what was going to happen. We didn't know exactly where we were going. It was very unsettling.

KL: Did people talk much on the train, or was it a pretty...

MU: They must've, but I don't recall any special conversation.

KL: So when you arrived at Jerome, would you walk us through those couple of hours from getting off the train to...

MU: I can't remember if we had been assigned, I guess we were assigned our barracks, or at least we were, I think we knew when we got off.

KL: What was your --

MU: I don't, I don't remember how, actually, we wouldn't know... they had, our barrack was number forty-five, forty-four, forty-three. Forty-three. It was on the corner surrounded on two sides by forest, and I don't remember how we got there with the belongings that we had. We must've been taken there by bus, but I don't recall.

KL: What was the barrack like?

MU: Cot beds, nothing else.

KL: And who was in there with you?

MU: We had the end barrack, which was the largest among the five, six rooms, and then we had the smaller one, so we had two rooms in the barrack.

KL: How did you divide, it was, so it was your whole family, all of your siblings and your parents?

MU: Yeah, we were able to be together.

KL: In two rooms. How did you, how did you decide who, did you all sleep in one room and kind of have the other free?

MU: The two young, the older boys took the small room and the rest of us took the bigger room. So there was Father, who was ill, and Mother, and three girls, and one brother.

KL: And it was October when you arrived?

MU: Uh-huh.

KL: What were your first impressions of, how did it feel? What was it like to see that?

MU: Surrounded by forest, muddy ground. I thought, "What a terrible place," wondered how long we were gonna have to be there. It was very unsettling.

KL: What about your parents? What do you remember of their reactions?

MU: The Japanese has the word "shikata ga nai," can't be helped. What else you gonna do? Orders are orders.

KL: So they were stoic.

MU: Yeah, so we just had to go along.

KL: Well, what are your memories of those first couple of weeks?

MU: It was... they said there were rattlesnakes around. In fact, we had two young men that caught rattlesnake and -- where they got the container, glass container, I don't know, but they had snakes in their apartment. So there were, I didn't see any, actually, within the compound, but we were surrounded by forest, so we knew that they would be out there. I don't recall some of the earliest feelings.

KL: Who was around you, in the rest of the barrack building or in that part of Jerome?

MU: There were people from, well, we moved from Fresno and then some were people from the community in neighborhood in Fresno, and there were people who were from other communities. They were, we were all mixed.

KL: Were you, were dating anyone? Was there anyone special that you were attached to at that time in your life?

MU: No, not really.

KL: You sounded really busy on the farm and just focused on that.

MU: We knew the people, but not that attached.

KL: So the people around you in Jerome were people from before, from your life before.

MU: There were some people that we didn't know. They were from Sacramento, Florin area. But most of them were from the community, so we knew each other.

KL: You mentioned the soil in Arkansas being different. What else, what else was different about Arkansas?

MU: The weather was different. We didn't have that much contact with the people in the neighborhood. We were hemmed in, so...

KL: Were there -- you mentioned that you got your barrack assignment -- were there other things that you remember from your arrival, like did you have to get inoculations, or were you told to go other places, report?

MU: I don't remember if we had, had to be inoculated. We had to, we ate in the mess hall, so we got to know some of the people from other communities that were in that block.

KL: Did you hear any --

MU: There was a lot of adjustment that we had to make.

KL: Yeah, I wondered what the conversations were like in the mess hall in those first couple of weeks. Do you remember any?

MU: [Laughs] I don't remember that. I don't remember.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.