Densho Digital Archive - Eddie Owada Interview (denshovh-oeddie-01-0016)

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AL: How did you, how did you get to Tule Lake and what did you know about Tule Lake before you got there?

EO: Yes. They transferred us, that is, the three of us were together, to Tule Lake to our permanent Relocation Center. We didn't ask why. But they just took, took us there in the troop train. I remember going to Nevada, looking at the desert. Made a kind of big loop at Winnemucca. And I can see the Winnemucca countryside, Battle Mountain, and then we ended up over in Tule Lake, up north into Tule Lake country. We were assigned... our address up there was Block 59, 17 barrack, room F. It was the end one right next to the mess hall. And that's how we ended up there. And when we were there, this was already in 1942, May, June, July... probably about July of '42. We ended up there and we would hear about work. My brothers were too young to work. I had already turned sixteen now. And so I was eligible to get a part-time work working at the hospital and the hospital kitchen. I went there with another friend of mine, Frank Takahashi. And both worked there with some other folks in the kitchen. The kitchen night shift was a fellow named Makino. He was an old Issei man, he was a good cook. And we worked there during the, part-time in the evening. Then we went to school when the school started in September, in camp, and I continued working part-time at night.

AL: So you went back to school, in camp?

EO: Yes, uh-huh, in camp we had high school. And my brothers, two brothers continued in school. I went back to school and I remember some of the kids there at school, there was quite a few kids of course, I remember some of the kids from California, some of the kids in our blocks. And I remember working at the hospital during the summer months as a tray boy. We'd take the mess food from the kitchen on these big carts to the different wards. We had Ward A, B, C on through F, I believe it was. And we'd deliver the food there. I met some of the dietician, one was Joycelyn Tsujimichi. She now lives in Nevada, Reno. Married Tom... Tom, oh, last name starts with a K. Not Kinoshita. But, he's from Auburn, California. Hank Teshima, another boy from Loomis County, California. And I made quite a few friends that way.