Densho Digital Archive - George Maeda Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

<Begin Segment 17>

KL: When did you leave Manzanar?

GM: We were one of the first to leave when they allowed us to leave, 1944, I think.

KL: You went back to, I mean, you went back, you never relocated to the Midwest?

GM: No. Again, this is slightly out of phase, but my aunt, Mrs. Oki, Mr. and Mrs. Oki owned this general merchandise store since the early 1900s. And Mr. Oki swallowed a fish bone that somehow got located somewhere in his kidney or something and the doctors misdiagnosed him and he passed away before, I think slightly before the war started. So here was Mrs. Oki by herself, and so what she did was got rid of all the perishables in the store. And by perishables, I meant they had anything you can think of. I mean, chicken feed, meat, ice cream, it was truly a general merchandise store. And so she got rid of all the perishables, and they lived in an apartment type house in the back, so she just boarded it, left everything in the house, and she left for Santa Anita and later to Heart Mountain. So when we were allowed to come back, we had decided, or she had decided that we could stay with them until we were established. So my father came out ahead of time by himself to straighten out the apartment. And I wish to this day he had taken a picture, but one of the things he told me was when he walked upstairs and looked at the mattress, there were mushrooms six inches big growing out of the mattresses. And I guess the dampness and so forth, I often asked him, "Why didn't you take pictures?" Probably didn't have a camera. But I never forget that story he told me. But we came out and we lived with them, the Oki family, for probably a year, and then we moved to Glendora, the next town.

KL: How had the community changed in San Fernando when you came back?

GM: You know, I only remember that one visit there. I remember my father making a comment because the family that he turned the farm over to, we had a couple cars, 1940, the '39 Chevy, which was a nice car. They had Cadillacs parked, so they must have done very well during the war. But I remember my father saying something like we really missed out. I was going to say something, I forgot.

KL: Did your dad go back into farming?

GM: He wanted me to. He wanted me to, and he said, "Would you like to?" And I said, "No." Because all I remember was waking up at five in the morning and going with him to Saugus and the farms, and I'd play with the German family who owned the property. And then he'd throw me on top of the truck and we'd come back about, whatever, five, six. That's all I remember was waking up so early, so I said, "I don't want to go into farming." Speaking of that German family, we had no place to store our things. So they were German immigrants, so they stored our furniture, radios and things like that, in their shed. So after my father came back, he wrote a letter and asked if there was any way they could bring it up. So one day this huge truck pulled up, and it was just like Tobacco Road. The radiator had steam coming out, and the truck was just slowly going. And that was the German family that brought our furniture to us. And I guess we were forever grateful to them for keeping it for us and bringing it up to us. But yeah, I remember that well, because everybody came out of their barracks wondering what that truck was that had all the steam coming out. We didn't even know until it stopped at our place.

KL: Was that at Manzanar?

GM: Yes, in Manzanar. He drove all those things in this huge truck from Saugus, California, to Manzanar.

KL: Wow.

GM: We owe a lot to them.

KL: Did they stay with you at all?

GM: No, I remember they just dropped it off, had conversation, shook hands, and he left. I don't know if he paid him or what, I don't know the business end of it.

KL: Do you recall that family's name?

GM: No, I don't. But he had a very heavy accent, so he was a German immigrant. He had a son who spoke English very well.