<Begin Segment 8>

KL: Well, we're back with tape two with Sadako Kashiwagi, it's July 11, 2015, and we were starting to talk a little bit about Tule Lake, so let's just back up and I'll ask you if you remember traveling to Tule Lake and what your arrival there was like.

SK: Okay, I remember going on a train, and Mother was in a Pullman car because she was pregnant. I remember going, you know, with shades drawn. That's just about all I remember about the train ride, and getting to Tule Lake and again getting in another truck and being taken to our quarters. And when we got there, it was with the cot beds and the stove in the center. My father was very handy, so he built a separate, there was a living room area, and then the bedroom area was for them. Then we had two rooms, because we were eight of us, so he cut a door, connecting door to the other room, and that's where my sibs and us, we were in that part. Although he didn't build any walls there, he did, you know, the famous rope with the sheets, and then I guess he built a closet in one corner because I remember later on when we had the military coming through during the riots, I remember that closet.

KL: Do you remember your address?

SK: It was Block 45, 16-A and B I think it was, Barrack 16 A and B.

KL: And were you in the same place the whole time your family was in Tule Lake?

SK: Uh-huh.

KL: So shortly after you arrived -- well, I'll just ask, a lot of things happened during those first couple of months. Can you walk us through those first few months at Tule Lake?

SK: Turns out we had the same neighbors we had at Arboga. We're running out, oh, same neighbor, Fujimotos. Again... let's see, when did we get there? August. So the first, again, I don't remember, it's a big blank to me.

KL: Yeah. The roster says it was June 28th of 1942, but sometimes they're wrong, the rosters are wrong. But you think it was later that you got there?

SK: And then Shinobu was born...

KL: August 28th. And she was born in Tule Lake. Do you know if she was born in a hospital?

SK: Uh-huh.

KL: Did you ever hear anything about that, what that was like, from your mother, what her care was like or how it was?

SK: Well, I just say the nurses immediately gave her an American name, Jeanie. And I guess it was later that Naito-Sensei named her.

KL: Later what?

SK: Later, because... well, anyway, I don't know, exactly remember the chronological order of that. And, well, got into the routine of the mess bells would ring and we'd get up and go to breakfast, lunch and dinner, you know. I don't even remember how soon school started. At one point we were in the barracks and then they had built the largest school, you know, the Jefferson Center that you have in Manzanar? Right next to it, there was that same kind of building in Tule Lake. And then right next to it they built the schools. And so because the camp was so large, half of us went, half the camp went in the morning... I mean, a split session, in other words.

KL: Yeah, you said you were nine when you arrived. I think that's usually third grade, and the you turn ten in fourth.

SK: Yeah. So we had white teachers, and some Nisei teachers, too. But mine... I think her name was Mrs. Smith. But we went out to play, and played this game, last couple out. And you choose your partner and line up behind each other, and so we were the last couple out. The person who was it says, "Last couple out," so we're supposed to split and supposed to come around we're supposed to tag each other. But the person who was tags one of us and that person is it, they become, you know. Well, Ruth and I were couple, was a couple. And the last couple out was circling around and I went to reach for her hand, and my hand went through a window. So I have a scar to this day.

KL: Wow. Did you have to go to the hospital? That's deep?

SK: Oh, yes.

KL: That looks like a big wound.

SK: Yes.

KL: Wow.

SK: And so, again, this is military contact, because it was a military ambulance. And there was a fence between the hospital area and the camp itself, so we had to go through a sentry there to get to the hospital. And then this was taken care of. Quite a few stitches, I think, at least ten.

KL: Yeah, I would think so. How were your interactions with people in the hospital? Were they kind to you?

SK: Yeah. It's interesting how medicine's changed, because I was confined at home for a week, I think. But then I remember also that my sister, Tomiye, I think it was, got the measles, so we were quarantined. And then Shinobu got eczema, her eczema was so severe she had to be hospitalized.

KL: When she was an infant?

SK: An infant. Then my sister, Neesan, again, worked as an aide in the hospital. And so did, actually Hiroshi, my husband, was an aid in the hospital at one point. I don't know if they knew each other at that point.

KL: So that was your sister's first... was that your sister's first, sort of, independent job with a salary and stuff?

SK: Probably. She worked in the mess hall as well. Those were the jobs that were available to them, you were working in the mess hall or the hospital.

KL: What about your parents? Did your parents have jobs?

SK: Well, he says he was handy. He went around finishing the house because when we got there, it was just the studs and the tarpaper. And so the sheetrock came, so my father went around putting up the sheetrock. And so when he left, or was taken away, he was the primary source of income at that point. So my sister, who was sixteen and still in high school, quit school so she could get a job to replace the money my father was earning. So subsequently she got her GED after she was married, so that was about four or five years after camp. She went to Los Angeles and she was a housemate to this family, and she'd come back and talked about these celebrities who would come because he was a dentist, I think.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.