<Begin Segment 13>

AL: How did you find out, or when did you find out that you were gonna be taken to a camp?

EO: Well, we were still wondering what was happening, this was in December and January, and there was, the FBI picked Dad up. We'd hear all kinds of rumors from all of our friends. One of the rumors was that, "Well, we hear they're gonna take all of us Japanese people and put us into jail, into a jail or some kind of a prison. Maybe some kind of a camp." And then we'd rationalize and we'd say, "No, they can't do that because we're American citizens. We were born here, just like all of our other friends are." And then some more rationalization. Then we end up with, "But our father and our mothers are, are still Issei, they're not American citizens." And of course they weren't able to be. The naturalization law, I think it was still in effect. And so they said, "Maybe they can take them and put 'em into this, put 'em into this jail or their camps that they're talkin' about." And we often wondered what was happening. And then of course, Dad was picked up. And then we saw these posters in the, by telephone posts. We saw ours, I think it was in May, about the first, second week in May. And it said that we can take with us anything and everything we can carry, except pets. And of course firearms, radios, shortwave radios, any kind of weaponry, had been turned in already to the government in Seattle. That was the requirement. So we had to hand over all of firearms, everything we had there we had turned in. So, we had just ourselves now to think about. And everything were very unclear. And, 'cause this poster never did say too much. It just, except that we were being evacuated. And then of course Dad was now, after February the 7th, was in the POW camp away from, away from us. And according to what we had heard, we had five days to get ready for this evacuation. They recommended things we could take with us, toilet articles, a few bedding, light bedding, clothes, shoes, socks, everything we would be wearing, toilet articles. And then... oh, we had our horse, good horse, Prince. So we had, we were able to sell the horse because it was such a good horse. And we were able to sell a little farm truck we had, we had a little 1928 GMC. When it comes to mechanic things, I'll remember. It had a Pontiac engine in it, two separate cylinder heads.

AL: How much did you sell it for?

EO: I think I sold it for fifty dollars.

AL: And how about the horse?

EO: Horse, I think we got about $125 for it. That or a hundred.

AL: Was that considered a good price for it?

EO: It's a good buy. 'Course, back there then, everything costs less. When we bought the horse a little earlier, we paid $150 for it. It was a Belgian Percheron, kind of a grayish-colored horse.

AL: What was the most difficult thing to leave behind?

EO: Well, you know, it's the, it's the ignorance of youth that was probably a lifesaver. I know a lotta the older people that were, shall we say maybe in their twenties and thirties and forties, realized they were leaving all the things they had, that they had accumulated and worked for and earned, for the last many years. They were leaving that behind, not knowing what's going to happen. Because there was no place to store it. They had to entrust it to some friends which did not turn out to be friends in all cases. But, no facilities large enough to store everything, so they had to leave it. So they felt a very depressed, very unsure of what was happening. But, here again, the innocence and the ignorance of youth was our lifesaver. We felt like we were just taking a trip from the farm. We saw the people for the last time and we knew we were going to miss them. We would say goodbye, but there was no great attachment... well, there was attachment, but not attachment through which we would feel separation, a negative separation. We didn't have that. But I guess while we're young, we're still pretty dumb. As we get older we just, we get smarter. But while we're young we have a lot of physical energy. And as we get older our energy drops. So it compensates, one compensates for the other. [Laughs] That's the way I kinda look at it. That's what I kind of analyze.

AL: And those of us in the middle don't have too much of either. [Laughs]

EO: Well, no, they, they have the balance of the two. [Laughs]

AL: Okay.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.