<Begin Segment 11>

LP: So after this long train ride, you got to Fresno, and what were your first impressions of what you saw when you got to Fresno?

EY: Well, dry, hot, there was also many Japanese people in my whole life, all black heads. Our parents weren't quite gray yet, and maybe the great grandparents might have been, but majority of parents were not yet. So when I got there, and then we were assigned our living quarters. Fortunate for our family, we were assigned a barrack that had concrete floor. So when it was hot, as long as we lifted the few things that we had off of the floor, they could get a bucket, get water on it, and throw it on the floor. Then from the end you just sweep all that water out and it cooled the floor at little bit, so that was okay. But my girlfriends, I don't know how they separated us, but we were from the same area, from Weyerhaeuser. We were sent over here, my girlfriend were sent from far away, and their barrack had asphalt tile. So when it was hot, and the only thing we could sit on was our cot, no chairs. On the cot we sit, you could feel yourself kind of go down a little bit. Because the tar was getting so soft that it made it... so the bed would sink about half an inch or so. Well you don't dare drop anything, boy, that tarpaper would stick on your clothes, you can never wash it off. They found out the hard way. So we were lucky. Although we had outhouses, and the outhouses, they built, from the ground they had wood slats, and from there on up, they had fine screen, and one door that opened up, and we had five holes? Five holes and no partition. I think it was men and women, and then once a month, it was very difficult for us girls. And then coming from Washington where it's much cooler, then you go to a hot country like that, then your body changes. So when you have your period, it's really difficult. So quite a few of us from Washington had a hard time adjusting to that, even if it was for a few months, because Fresno was so hot. But anyway, you learned to make do. Then I think about five months later, they moved us to Tule Lake. It was okay.

KL: We often have high school students and middle school students come visit Manzanar, and a lot of times the girls especially are curious about how people dealt with having their period and female hygiene. Would you be willing to speak a little bit more about how people dealt with that?

EY: [Laughs] Yeah. Well, in my own case, I tried to go either early morning when people were sleeping, or a little later in the evening. If I could just take care of needs, but because there was no privacy, it was very difficult. But most of us knew when we had it, it was oh boy, we got that. We never specifically talked about it, but we'd say, "Oh, darn it," kind of a thing. But the boys got a hold of a napkin, I remember one time they got a hold of a napkin, and they were, "Hey, girls," you know. And it used to upset me, how nervy they are. Just because they don't go through it, they don't understand that. [Laughs] So they were flagging it. And I remember one time I got upset, I said, "You know what? You guys, you don't respect us at all, just because you don't go through it." Oh, and then one of 'em, he really felt bad. It was very difficult. And some, of course, naturally depending on all of us, each of us were so different, some had it real bad, some had a light case of it, so it wasn't too bad for them. But boy, once a month, we dreaded it.

KL: How did you get supplies?

EY: How did I get what?

KL: How did you get, like, the napkin that that the boy found?

EY: Oh, the supplies? I wonder how we got that. I wonder if whether the main administration realized that that's what needed to happen. We had to get supplies, something, 'cause we didn't have canteens then, we just moved over. Gee, that's a good question, I really don't know we got it. Or we went... unless we had a manager, I know that in Tule Lake camp we had a block manager, but when we went to assembly center, we might have told someone in charge. I don't know how we got the supplies, but we were lucky to get it, otherwise we would have had to fend for ourselves.

LP: Was there like a hospital or first aid station or anything like that?

EY: I'm sure they had established one, and it could be that they provided it, I couldn't answer that. But we had to get supplies from somewhere, and especially how the guys got a hold of it, I don't know. [Laughs] That's something I never really thought about.

LP: So what was Pinedale prior to being used as the assembly center? I'm not as familiar with it. Because I know, like, some places were fairgrounds or racetracks or things like that, did it seem like it was something prior to...

EY: All I saw was a lot of barracks, I guess, not really full barracks. All I know is it was hot in there.

LP: Besides the barracks, if you looked out, what would you see? Was it, the landscape, was it...

EY: Yeah, I was going to say barren, yeah. In fact, just yesterday, I went on a trip with a group from the hospital, and we went to a succulent garden landscape place, and it's a nursery that just raises all these different type of succulents, and I see these ladies buying it. For me, it just reminds me of camp too much. I could never put... in fact, my neighbor has succulents there, it just reminds me of camp so much. But I just figure, okay, she likes it, that's for her. But I never talked about it to her, I figure it's none of my business. It just means I have to change my way of thinking, but it does, it reminds me of camp too much. And then like people who have friends who bought homes in Las Vegas, there again with all that dry and all that tumbleweeds, that's another thing that reminds me of camp too much. It's okay.

LP: So was it pretty isolated where it was, or did it seem...

EY: I felt isolated, yes. And I thought, well, yeah, I'm not surprised that the government would locate us in such a place. But then when you think about Tule Lake and Manzanar way out there in the boonies kind of thing...

LP: Had you ever been -- it doesn't sound like it -- but had you ever been to California before that?

EY: Never had.

LP: Did you, later in life, associate California as being that as a whole, or did you, in your mind at that time seem like... because I think of, I'm from the East Coast, so I had this vision of what California was, and if California the first time I saw it was Fresno, I might have thought California wasn't really pleasant. So I don't know if you thought...

EY: Yeah, I had an idea, almost similar way, yeah. Somehow California depicts hot, warm, and not too much vegetation kind of thing. But boy, now, you go everywhere, you got vineyards here and there and all these crops, this and that. Interesting, isn't it?

LP: Yeah. So what was... since it was only a few months there, was there anything that really stood out to you about Pinedale in terms of just how people passed the time or the, were there any friendships that developed over that four or five month period?

EY: Actually, there wasn't too much chance to... at least for me to establish a good friendship. Because I guess I was more busy making sure that my mom got her food and back and forth and doing the laundry and what have you. So I tell people, when they say, "I want to hear your story," I said, "My story is very non-interesting. My daily life was so different from other teenagers." And they said, "Oh, come on and talk about it," but it's because I did all the domestic stuff that most of the young teenagers don't do. So at that short period of four to five months, I really didn't make that many friends. Although I made an effort to go see my friend, because she was from the same area. And then when I found out she had the asphalt flooring and I had concrete, I said, "Wow." I was lucky to be assigned to that. I don't know how many barracks had concrete, not too many. I think when they realized there were more evacuees than what they thought, they probably hurriedly made the asphalt flooring, and that's why my girlfriend ended up there. But how they came about splitting us, I have no idea. Then, see, we were sent to Tule Lake, my girlfriend was sent to Minidoka, Idaho. So after that, I never got to see her.

LP: Could you share her name?

EY: Let's see... sister's name was Kiyo Yamaguchi, I think she's still in Seattle, but I don't know her health status. And her sister Miyo, Miyo and I were in the same class, she just passed on, Miyo Yamaguchi. And there was a Masako Abe, she was very intelligent, brilliant, she relocated to Los Angeles, no, to Chicago, she relocated to Chicago.

LP: Is she related to Sahomi?

EY: Pardon?

LP: Is she related to Sahomi Tachibana at all?

EY: I don't know, I couldn't tell you. She had a brother named George, George Abe. Then there was the Tanaka sisters, they relocated to Los Angeles, Lillian Tanaka and then the other one was, I want to say Dorothy, but I don't think it was Dorothy. I haven't seen her since then.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.