Densho Digital Archive - Kinge Okauchi Interview (denshovh-okinge-01-0014)

<Begin Segment 14>

RP: What about the family, your family in Stockton, your cousins, I think it was?

KO: Oh, they were in Chicago by that time.

RP: Oh, they already had left, that's right, okay.

KO: And the interesting thing about it is we had, there was a family had a own farm in Mountain View, and they pulled out before all the deadlines came. They moved, I guess they leased their farmland to whoever wanted to do it, or let it lay fallow or whatever they did with that land. And they moved to the Nevada and tried to make a living, couldn't get anywhere. There's no place for farmers to work in Nevada, so they wound up over in Utah. And the younger, I guess they had a boy my age, he wound up driving a truck for a coal company. And he wound up supplying, driving the truck to Topaz with the coal. And his brothers and stuff, well, they went east and elsewhere. But it's sort of interesting that this one guy that I knew, my age, we used to play games out on the farm and stuff, he wound up driving a coal truck to Topaz. I met him a couple of times, but he had one of these real long haul drive all the time type things, so he didn't have time, much time to visit or anything. But I ran into him a couple of times and found out where his family wound up.

RP: Was he surprised to see you?

KO: Yeah, sort of, yeah. We were, actually, mutually surprised. The reason we found out that we were mutual acquaintances, that he knew of, his family knew of other people up in our area. So they were contacts that referred each other around a little bit, and then that worked out pretty well.

RP: Can you describe to us your mindset, your feelings and attitudes during this time of evacuation and uncertainty?

KO: Well, the evacuation was, in my opinion, was sort of a puzzle. We really couldn't figure out what the heck was going on other than the fact that we knew we weren't "enemy aliens," but they were, they were pulling us out. And we knew from our fathers' experience about the problems the Germans had back in World War I, 'cause he was old enough. Some of the other families, they weren't old enough, so they weren't too sure. But my father was sort of "eh" about it, because he was used to this sort of thing. The people would potentially do things for absolutely no reason at all, and he just accepted it. That's what I guess sort of, I sort of picked up some of that on my own. Do things as they came, and don't worry about the details, 'cause you had to get along. So I wound up, I guess, in Tanforan, killing time for about a month. Decided that wasn't going anywhere, and so I wound up working for the kitchen area. And that was not bad, 'cause I was essentially a part-time worker, and just worked the meal periods. At that time, essentially, was a waiter. So I just got the place ready when people when in, clean up the dining area, and then go home and goof off for the rest of the afternoon, go back in the evening an hour early and do the same thing. The only problem with that is you had to get up too early in the morning, and your evenings were sort of tied up.