<Begin Segment 13>

LP: What block were you in at Tule Lake, do you remember?

MW: No, I don't. We were right next to a mess hall, we were way up... I think they told me some of the people had already just moved. Otherwise there wouldn't have been enough room for us. I don't know how many people went from Manzanar, but I couldn't understand that. I still didn't understand that "no-no" and things that they had. Because I don't remember the questions because I never filled it out, so I don't really remember. But it was the strangest thing to be asked and to be sent to another camp. That's not what I really wanted at all. Because then Tule is entirely different than Manzanar, it was cold up there. And like I say, you don't have the clothes. And back then, women didn't wear slacks, we wore skirts.

LP: Something I was thinking of earlier when we were talking about the weather at Manzanar, had you ever seen snow prior to being in camp?

MW: Yeah, we used to go to the mountain, Big Bear. You had to go drive to Big Bear to see snow. That was because it never fell, well, if it did, it melted. And it was so seldom that you hardly ever remember. So I really don't remember it snowing ever, but it could have a little bit.

LP: What was the Japanese school like at Tule Lake? I know there were a few different ones. Some people remember them being very rigid, other people really enjoyed that.

MW: Well, the school was... the teachers were pretty strict. But then I had gone to the Japanese school before the war, too, you know, my parents sent me. Like I told you, my dad, it was his (house) that he gave up for them for the school to be held there. Anyway, and so, to me, there was a lot of... it wasn't like the time when I went when I was younger. It was already things, lot of the things I knew, but then there was a lot more things I didn't know. But I'm not gonna be able to learn, in that short period of time, to learn to read and things like that, like my brother did, 'cause he went for a long time, 'cause he was older. But being next to the mess hall was kind of fun, even if I worked in the block office, see, you could take breaks so easily, and grab something down there at the mess hall. And the cooks get to know you, so they would treat you very well. But it just... the people there were really different. I guess maybe it's a difference when you go to school with the kids and enjoy their company afterwards, you know, whatever we did, sports we did. But those... and it's because when you've known 'em for such a short time and they came from all over the area, everywhere, I don't even remember where, but they came from all... not around my area. Well, you know, when you come from a little town and it's a lot of difference, the little town, even now, if you're back east somewhere, and the little town, then you come out to big L.A., it's overwhelming. It's almost like that.

LP: By the time you were at Tule Lake you had already graduated high school, correct?

MW: (Yes).

LP: So the school that you were going to was just for the...

MW: Japanese language. I worked in the block office, too, 'cause I had experience in it. So I worked in one of 'em that we were in. And I wish I could remember, do they ever have records of what block I was in?

LP: Yeah, there are similar records that would be for Manzanar.

MW: In Manzanar?

LP: Uh-huh.

MW: Really?

LP: Yeah. Some of them have been scanned, and like Ancestry.com is a resource sometimes for people, but the original records are kept at National Archives facilities. And the one that tends to have War Relocation documents is actually in Maryland. But we could probably help you kind of...

MW: How did Maryland get to the point of.. you know, that's a faraway place.

LP: Yeah, I think it's a bigger facility, there's a Washington, D.C. facility, too, I'm not sure what the criteria was.

MW: That would be a place I would never think of.

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