Densho Digital Archive - Victor Ikeda Interview (denshovh-ivictor-01-0033)

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RP: When it came time to go to Minidoka, were you told that you were going there or was it kind of another big secret?

VI: Well, it was kind of a secret, but we had heard that we were going into Idaho or someplace. We got in the train not knowing where we were going. It took us, I think, a couple of days to get out there. And I remember when we got there the train stopped at Eden, and that was the end of the line, it was kind of a transfer point. And then when you got out you looked around and wondered where in the devil we were. [Laughs] I remember we left in August so you can see it was pretty dusty and hot, and it was kind of like a God-forsaken place that we landed up in.

RP: It's interesting you mention that because that was a quote that I just read recently as, "God, we've arrived at the end of the world."

VI: Right. Eden seemed like the end of the track and the end of the world. [Laughs]

RP: The end of the line.

VI: Right. And we were the first group to reach Minidoka, that train.

RP: What did you see when you got to Minidoka?

VI: We got there, and, of course, we went through the gates and there were, the guards were there. And you looked down, and all of the sudden you could see the barracks. You could see some barracks in Block 1, 2, 3, 4. They were building other ones, but it almost looked like a prison camp because they were just tarpaper barracks. It was dusty, I remember.

KP: Can I ask a question here? What about barbed wire and guard towers when you first got there?

VI: Right. When we got there you had a guard tower, and you had guards, and there was barbed wire right at that point there. There was an administration building there so you had to come through that to get into camp. And then they had barbed wire around part of the areas. The other part was a canal, so...

RP: On the north side canal?

VI: Yeah. It goes all the way --

KP: Probably the boundary on the north side.

VI: Yeah.

RP: Okay, right. There were some, some books mentioned that there was very little barbed wire early on, but then in the fall they began construction --

VI: Construction of barbed wire.

RP: -- of barbed wire fence. And then because people had obeyed the boundary signs, they were incensed that the government would be putting up barbed wire --

VI: Barbed wires.

RP: And towers.

VI: Yeah. Basically, the Japanese community are very law-abiding. And they used to say things about the people in Seattle, middle of, midnight it'd be pouring rain, and you had a stop sign, no cars, and the light says "red." You see people standing there in the rain, no cars around, at midnight waiting for the signal to change. [Laughs] So that's the type of mentality. So if you have boundaries, you probably observe the boundaries so... another thing, when you looked around, out of camp, there's no place you want to go, so whether they had barbed wires or not, I don't think it would have really mattered. But there wasn't too many barbed wires 'cause you had the canal on one side, and on the opposite side you had some wires.

RP: That's very much the way internees describe it at Manzanar, "Where were we going to go?" Mountain ranges, too hostile communities.

VI: Yeah, that's right, that's right. So, you know, it's not like the assembly center where you had barbed wires and guards. You just came to the main gate, and that was about it. In fact, after you got a little established, a lot of, like my dad and stuff will go out to sagebrush to get the sagebrush wood. Some would go after rattlesnakes and bring it back so they could eat the rattlesnakes. So it was pretty wide open, so I don't think anybody thought of like the illegal coming over, crossing a desert or anything, 'cause there's no place to go.