Densho Digital Archive - Henry Fukuhara Interview (denshovh-fhenry-01-0013)

<Begin Segment 13>

JA: (Tell me a little about the circumstances when you left camp.) At what point did that happen, and what did you do?

HF: Well, they came out with the order that you can leave camp, but you can go east but you can't return to the three Pacific Coast states.

[Interruption]

JA: Just tell me that again, what was the order?

HF: Well, they came out with the order that said you could go out, out of the camp but you can't go back to the three Pacific Coat states. But you can go east anyplace, anyplace that you choose. So I took that opportunity and went out of camp to, to look for possible relocation, relocating site because I was afraid of... I was talking with my father and with all the prejudice going on that I don't think it would be too, too good to be waiting in camp just to see what was going to happen, so this opportunity came to leave camp, so... so I left. And this was, this was in February, February of '43. And so I and a friend -- I can't think of his name now, he's deceased -- we left together and the first place we went was, go to Denver. And we had some friends that were there, had moved, had moved to Denver instead of going to camp. As soon as, as soon as Pearl Harbor, they decided to move and they moved to Denver. So we went to visit them. And then we looked around Denver, but I couldn't... well, we were all, each one of us was on our own after that, because he was to look for something for himself and I was to look for something for myself, so I don't know whatever happened to him after that. But I looked around, and after you've been living in an area like Santa Monica, near a city where you have all the conveniences, you have the movie theaters, and especially if you're living near the beach and you have entertainment like that, and then to look around in a place like Denver, which was very remote -- to me was very remote -- it was all flatland country, and I couldn't see anyplace that we could, I could see my family relocating here. And that was the same situation when we went up to Idaho.