<Begin Segment 16>

JA: At what point were people allowed to leave camp?

SE: Well, originally the people who were allowed to leave camp were those who went out on short-term furlough to harvest crops, to go to another camp if someone, a relative was ill and they had to go visit, or if a woman was engaged to a soldier and a soldier was in an area outside of the coast, they were allowed to leave to get married. And then after the "loyalty oath" program was instituted, then people who had answered 'yes-yes' were considered the ones who were being relocated.

[Interruption]

JA: If you would just back up to where you were saying, after the "loyalty oaths," the people who said 'yes-yes,' what happened?

SE: After the "loyalty oath" was collected and people who had answered 'yes-yes' were considered loyal enough to go out, people started to leave. The government office, the War Relocation Authority, started to open up offices on the West Coast and on the, not too far east but around the Midwest, to get businesses to hire Japanese Americans, and they got the assistance of the Quakers and the Baptist church groups to help find housing and jobs for everyone. And so the movement to relocate people started early in '43, and the students who wanted to go to school also were able to leave, and women who were getting, wanted to get married to soldiers outside the area were able to leave to get married. So, it was a very slow effort but it started early, and the government I think was beginning to feel the economic pinch of having to take care of so many people when they could have been using the money for the war effort.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2002 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.