<Begin Segment 13>
RP: Do you remember the day when you actually left camp to go to Reno?
DI: Yeah, we went on the escort bus.
RP: Is it a bus or a vehicle?
DI: Vehicle.
RP: Yeah, it was a large...
DI: Yeah. And then they took us -- oh, no. We had a friend bring up his dad's car, truck, his dad's gardening... his dad was a gardener and had his gardening truck in the garage at 1944 Colby. He drove it up to camp. He drove it up to camp, and he brought it right up to our barrack, and we loaded everything on, and then went to the entrance and showed the papers that we had an okay to leave, and they escorted us to the border and says, "You know the rest of the way." So we just took off and went to Reno.
RP: And this was a friend that drove the truck up?
DI: I can't remember. No, no, who brought it up to us. Johnny Sprague? Who was it? [Addressing husband] I can't hear you.
RP: Postmaster.
DI: Oh, that's right. He became friends with someone who worked at the post office at Manzanar.
RP: Oh. And they went down and...
DI: They came over to Colby.
RP: Colby and picked up the truck and brought it over there.
DI: Drove it up, yeah. So we left a few days after Thanksgiving of...
RP: '42.
DI: '42? Yeah, '42.
RP: Wow, so you were fortunate you had a truck to load up with items and things. Had you acquired additional things while, the time you were there?
DI: Oh, I'm sure we did. Because we had that great old Sears catalog. [Laughs]
RP: Sears catalog? Yeah. People ordered everything out of those catalogs.
DI: Oh, yeah, I'm sure they did a big business.
RP: Do you remember, anything else about Block 16, any gardens or other features of the block?
DI: Oh, yeah, lot of, Japanese people, they just can't sit, they've got to start planting flowers, and then eventually they started planting vegetables. Then I think at one point they had like a community garden where they had more space somewhere, yeah. Maybe in between the barracks or maybe beyond, I'm not really sure. And he worked on the reservoir crew. I didn't work. I stayed home and sold his little airplane kits to the kids. [Laughs]
RP: Airplane kits. [Laughs] How much would you charge for those?
DI: I don't know. I can't remember.
RP: A quarter? You didn't make any money?
DI: I don't think it was mainly to make money. It was just to keep the kids happy and busy, yeah. Give 'em something to do. And then they'd go, after they'd build it, they'd go out in the open fields there, 'cause some had engines on them.
RP: Oh, gas engines.
DI: Yeah. Didn't you have some that were like that? Oh, you didn't have those there. Oh, just the one.
RP: The one that he has the picture of.
DI: Oh, the wind up. Oh, rubber band, you mean? Oh, my goodness.
<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.