<Begin Segment 7>

RP: Do you have any recollections at all of the events on the day Pearl Harbor was bombed or what happened afterward?

GI: I don't remember that day at all. 'Cause a lot of older people that I know, they know exactly what they were doing. I don't remember anything like that, I just remember immediately afterwards, the, we must have had air raids or something because the kids, we were all huddled together. But my mom used to put up, I don't know if it was a red bulb or a blue bulb that wouldn't show on the outside or something. And I'd hear the sirens going on, and then I remember in school marching around singing, "Buy a bond today." We used to march around every, I don't know, Tuesday or Wednesday or something. And we'd take a dime or something, I don't know how much it cost, but we'd buy a bond to fill our little book. And sometime later, years ago, I found one of those stamps and I thought, "I'm going to take really good care of this thing." And over the years, something's happened to it. I could never find it again. But I do remember that part of it, 'cause I thought it was so ironic because here we were, marching around, singing and buying these bonds, and then a little bit later, we were going someplace.

RP: You were in camp.

GI: Oh, and years later, I've gone back to Vacaville, and I see this place. And it was the Boy Scout center or something, and that's where we all lined up to get our shots before we went to camp.

RP: Oh, you got shots before you went to camp?

GI: Yeah, yeah.

RP: Are there any other... you said you returned to Vacaville in, after the, after camp.

GI: You know, I, it's really dumb, but I told my husband, I said, "You know, I was born in Vacaville. I kind of feel like buying a house in Vacaville and die here." [Laughs] But you know, it's just a little town over there, and it's now gotten to be a bedroom community for San Francisco. There's probably like, about a hundred thousand people now. But, or I don't know, maybe fifty thousand. But there's still a part of me that thinks... because there's a cemetery there, and every Memorial Day we do go there. It's kind of in the old part, but it's where all the Japanese are buried. And so my great uncle and different people are buried there. But I think you have to be a resident of Vacaville to be able to go into that cemetery. At first, I used to say, "Well, I think we should come live here." But then, since then, I've bought a niche here in Sacramento, so that's where I'll end up.

RP: Your family went to the Turlock Assembly Center?

GI: Assembly center, yeah.

RP: And that's near Stockton?

GI: No, it's near Livingston.

RP: Near Turlock.

GI: It's, you know, I remember when 99 used to go around, it was in the county fairgrounds, I think. And I remember standing there on the road and watching the cars and thinking, "I wish I could go out there." But I don't think we stayed there very long, it must have been just so many months.

RP: So many months.

GI: Yeah. The thing I remember about that place is that we used to, the floor was made out of tar or something, and the cots were on it. And in the summer it was so hot, and it would sink into that tar and all these crickets would be all around us. And so we would all be on that cot, we were afraid to step down, 'cause we'd squish 'em. But we must have gone in May, and I bet we were just there through the summer and then we must have gone to Arizona.

RP: Another cool place.

GI: Yeah, another cool place, yeah.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.