<Begin Segment 5>

JA: What were your feelings when you got the order that you had to go to camp?

HF: Well, I, I always had the feeling that when there's, when there's a war, there is very little or anything that one can do individually because there is no way that you can start a civil suit or anything like that. So, I felt they'd just got along and do the best, make the best of it. So, even though the time that we had to, that we went to Manzanar it was disruptive, but I never felt really bitter as some of the, some of the people that I talked to, they still hold bitterness against, against it. But somehow I never felt that way, and all the members of our family have never said anything to that effect, and my father never felt badly about it. He went along with... so, roll with the punches, so to say. So --

JA: So, did all your family go to Manzanar together?

HF: Yes, we all, we all went to Manzanar together, and that was one thing that, that the government considered very seriously was that to keep the family together. So I know of families that were in Santa, in Santa Monica that had relatives up in, in the Sacramento area. Well, the Santa Monica people went and moved with them to another camp, or vice-versa, because the government felt that the families should stay together. In our case, we were, we were always together so it wasn't any problem that we had to call anybody or anybody had to come and join us to go to Manzanar.

JA: And you lived together in the same place?

HF: In Manzanar?

JA: In Manzanar?

HF: In Manzanar, all those barracks had -- the barracks were 100 feet long and they had four compartments. So there, so each compartment was for a family. So, in our case, our family was too large, so we had two comp-, we had two of those compartments for our family, one right next to the other.

JA: Did it feel kind of crowded?

HF: No, but if we had to live in, all of us had to live in that one compartment, yes. But when it was split up, it wasn't, it wasn't crowded. The only thing that was a little uncomfortable was that my wife's sister, she was single, so she, she came with us and she lived with us. And when I say "with us," is that it was myself and my wife and two daughters, which they were very small. And when I say they were very small is that... well, when we went to camp, we only had one daughter and then in camp she gave birth to the second daughter. And then, my brother and his wife who were staying in the same, in the same apartment. So, it made it -- we didn't have the full privacy that if it was just -- just us. So, we had to, we would have the sheets to divide us so we would have some privacy.

JA: You had what?

HF: Sheets, you know, bed sheets? Somehow we had sheets or something to give us some privacy.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2002 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.