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AL: And you went, you went from there to Pinedale Assembly Center? Is that correct?

EO: Yes.

AL: How did you end up in Pinedale?

EO: Well, there was a little piece of paper that said, "You are assigned to Pinedale, California." When... I'll back up a little bit here. When the signs first came up -- and I have two of the original posters yet. A friend of mine had taken them off, Caucasian friend, and he had them and gave them to me several years later. But I remember being instructed by whoever it was then, the military people, to pack what we can carry like it said on the poster. And, "Be ready for the evacuation and the government will pick you up." And they mentioned the date. We had five days to prepare for the evacuation. Some of the people were more fortunate because they had up to seven days. We were more fortunate than others because some of 'em only had about two days. So, I managed to sell the horse, and then sell the little truck, nothing else. Everything else we had to leave because no one was interested. And what I remember was I helped my two younger brothers pack whatever we had that we were taking with us, clothes, toilet articles, the things that I already mentioned. And we stood there at the kitchen window, looking out at the driveway, and we saw this army truck pull up and then back into the driveway. And as it backed into the driveway and stopped, we can see into the back of the truck. There were some people there. Soldier, armed soldier with his rifle, got out of the truck and came up to the house. As he came to the door, we opened the door and soldier said, "All right, come on with us." And so we picked up our things. I remember going to the truck, dropped the tailgate -- army truck has a military tailgate -- I helped my brother into it. Threw our baggage into the back of the truck, soldier went and lift up the tailgate. I climbed up back into the, into the back of the truck. And then there was a soldier in the back with us. And there was a few other Japanese people that we knew there. And then, after the other soldier got in the front of the truck, in the cab, the driver took off down the road.

And I remember looking back seeing the place where we lived, some dust coming up on the road. And then driving through the island up north to where the ferry landing was. It was a ferry that went to... I keep thinking, Point Defiance was Tacoma side. And the Seattle side was... there was a park there that we used to go there on the school summer vacation or break, summer break. Point Defiance, Tacoma... I can't think of the name of the other... Lincoln Park, was it. I remember going there and we stayed on the truck all the way while we were on the ferry. Where the others, after we drove onto the dock and then onto the ferry, they marched down the platform and gangplank onto the ferry and went up to the passenger compartment. But they were the ones that were dropped off first, and the trucks come back and picked us up. Since we, since we were the last ones to be picked up, we remained on the truck.

Truck took off through the city, I knew it was Seattle. And then a little later pulled up to a railroad siding. Not the Union Pacific station, but the siding. And there were a lot more people there and a lot more soldiers and more trucks. We were ordered off the truck and over towards the old railroad cars. People were lined up in front. We got our stuff, we went up there, and all the other people were there. All three of us were together, three boys. Some of the people would ask, "Where are we going?" No one knew. Some people would ask others, older people, "Do you know where we're going?" "No. They haven't told us." And later we were ordered to board the train. They had taken our baggage, put 'em onto a separate railroad car, rather than to carry it inside the old troop train car. And we ended up in the car. It was kinda, it was kind of covered with soot, pretty dirty, if I remember. There was a soldier at each entrance of the car, one on each end, with a rifle. I know when they took us down to the railroad station and picked it up, they had their bayonets fixed at that time. But anyway, on the train, I remember traveling for three days and two nights. And we would talk with some of the soldiers. They would talk to us. A question would come, "Where are we going?" They didn't know. They said they didn't have that information. They said, "Don't know." I remember at night we were ordered to pull the shades down on the windows on the railroad car. And any time we came to a little town or where there were people congregated, we were ordered to pull the shades. And at night, shades were always pulled. I think it was because any light being visible from the outside can be seen by enemy planes flying overhead, and chances of being bombed or shot at was much higher. And we traveled like that, not knowin' where we're going. I remember a time the train was, slowed down, and I know because of the experience, it was getting colder. So we were going up a hill into a mountain country, at night. And I remember going down, hittin' a level country. It'd be hot. I remember train stopping at the railroad siding. And soldiers would get out to face the train with maybe 15-20 feet between them and the train and we were able to, able to get out and stretch and just kind of walk around a little bit. Back onto the train, train would take off. We had the meals on the train, very basic kind of meal. Not the dining car meal that you see in the movies. But this movie didn't have those cars. And we were kind of looking at some, any signs at some of the little places we would go by, little railroad stop. Some of the people saw some, but I did not recognize any of them.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.